Jim Tressel doesn't forget the last time he and Urban Meyer met on the gridiron.
"Somehow, some way we've gotta keep the edge. We didn't do it and as you know Coach Meyer's team beat the snot bubbles out of us in the national championship game," Tressel said Friday at the Ohio State Coaches Clinic. "They were a great team and so forth and they deserved it, but what you feel when you're a coach is it isn't about what the other team does, you have that gut-wrenching feeling that you did not get your team to where they maybe could have been potentially."
“I was looking up there's some more banners here and I think back to when we first put these banners up we were trying to add banners. Now even more banners have been added. It just makes it special.”– Jim Tressel
The 41-14 beatdown at the hands of Meyer came in January 2007 at the Fiesta Bowl, when Tressel led his unbeaten Ohio State team and Heisman Trophy winner Troy Smith into the desert riding a 19-game winning streak. Meyer's Florida Gators did all they wanted and more en route to his first championship.
Tressel discussed that game in his roughly 30-minute speech to a field full of high school coaches at the Woody Hayes Athletic Center, invited back by Meyer, the man who now heads the Ohio State football program.
"The thing we all have to realize no matter what industry we're in, someone is over there trying to figure out a way to beat you," Tressel said. "Someone's trying to figure out how to be better than you. If you don't get better, you're going to get beat."
Constant improvement served as the basis for Tressel's address, as he outlined his five pillars of success: Selflessness, grit, curiosity, talent and work ethic. Do them all well and you have a solid chance of reaching your potential, which for Tressel meant 94 wins, a bevy of Big Ten titles and the 2002 national championship at Ohio State (the 2010 season was vacated due to sanctions, which eliminated 12 more victories).
Tressel was one of five former or current Buckeye head coaches in attendance, joining Meyer, John Cooper, Earle Bruce and Luke Fickell. All received a special recognition from Ohio State for their contributions to Ohio football and implored the high schools coaches in attendance to continue pushing to better the sport in the prep ranks.
Meyer called Tressel "one of the classiest people I've ever met" when he introduced him, then told reporters Ohio State should be a place that greets its past coaches back to campus — no matter how they left it.
"To see these guys welcomed back, and Ohio State's always been like that. I remember when Woody Hayes and that whole situation, not sure he's going to be welcomed back," Meyer said. "What are you talking about? Then Earle Bruce, Coop and Jim Tressel. That's the way it should be."
Tressel left amid turmoil as part of Tattoo-gate in 2011, receiving a five-year show cause penalty from the NCAA that expires this December. He returned last fall when Ohio State inducted him into its Athletics Hall of Fame, and he joined his 2002 squad on the field at halftime of the 2012 Michigan game for its 10-year anniversary.
But Friday, he came back at the request of Meyer, spoke on leadership, and took a minute to reflect on what he helped build in Columbus.
"It just steeps of tradition, steeps of greatness," Tressel said. "I was looking up there's some more banners here and I think back to when we first put these banners up we were trying to add banners. Now even more banners have been added. It just makes it special."
