There is one true boss in every organization.
And it’s the customer, who can fire anyone from the chairman on down despite not appearing in the company directory. Sam Walton used to preach this, and he was right - satisfying the customer is not just good business, it's essential to survival.
Ohio State football's greatest customer service agent of late is still Jim Tressel. A messaging virtuoso who could string together poignant, thoughtful and deliberately benign words with surgical intent: elating his customers without being provocative.
No one put the customer on a pedestal quite like Tressel. Public messaging that preserves the customer’s peace without irritating or alarming adversaries in a hyper-competitive, results-oriented business is more art than science. Most famously:
"I can assure you that you will be proud of our young people in the classroom, in the community and most especially in 310 days in Ann Arbor, Michigan on the football field."
Somehow that impromptu speech is now 22 years old.
It’s a customer service manifesto Eleven Warriors Dry Goods should have printed onto tee shirts and pint glasses. Tressel landed the most important job in the state of Ohio, was handed a mic during a basketball game and the good boss immediately launched right into customer satisfaction. He was hired because he understood the assignment.
Tressel arrived in Columbus in an era where academic eligibility had become an annual obstacle course heading into fall camp. The Buckeyes completed a decade where they had been just agonizingly great enough to not be elite, and of course there was the whole rivalry futility stretch which was a solid red circle on the executive dashboard he was inheriting.
Jim Tressel understood that what was important to Ohio State fans was important to Ohio State football.
Beleaguered customers just wanted a football team with starters who didn't go full-Blutarsky with their academics, oversleep for bowl game practices or sue each other. They were sick of seeing Michigan beat Ohio State - not once or twice but ten times over the previous 13 seasons.
Our guys are going to be poet-warriors and Michigan better watch its ass could have been well-received, albeit inflammatory bravado that afternoon. A rousing pep rally would have made quite the splash. But Tressel didn't really talk about his team or the Wolverines that afternoon. He didn't talk about himself, either.
He talked about you. That speech was about us. An elegant, executive assurance of our pride.
Saying we would be proud of the team in all of its facets was the most benign way possible to put the least forgivable elements from the prior era and the Michigan Wolverines on notice without manufacturing radioactive bulletin board isotopes. More art than science.
Tressel understood that what was important to Ohio State fans was important to Ohio State football. He may have reported to Andy Geiger, but he had no illusions about who the boss was.
The Buckeyes sing Carmen Ohio following their 37-21 victory over Michigan at Ohio Stadium in 2004. © Matthew Emmons-USA TODAY Sports
Humanity is a series of reruns, and today the same customers are beleaguered again. Let's clarify this right up front - we would have traded that for this 22 years ago without blinking. There's no new guy speech or rousing public display on the horizon, but Ohio State's customer service stewards are still talking publicly about the customer.
Their message today is a little different from the one on floor of the Schott that afternoon in 2001.
“It's so funny, everybody's so focused on just one game."
Correct. This has been true since the turn of the previous century. It’s never dipped in accuracy, either - Tressel could have said that phrase verbatim at his introduction and everyone would have nodded.
But he didn't. Those are Gene Smith’s words from Real Pod Wednesdays last week with Dan and Griffin. He grew up in Cleveland while Woody was building a monster. He played at Notre Dame during the Ten-Year War. Gene never needed an Ohio State football history lesson.
He was in his first year as Arizona State's athletics director when Tressel delivered his lightly-encrypted inspiration and had just inherited a football program whose most recent bowl victory belonged to Tressel's Ohio State predecessor. That guy left so he could win big at a place where winning big is the standard.
So Gene might have been too busy to appreciate or notice what Tressel's new customers had been through and the new upgraded level of service they were about to receive. The Buckeyes would claim the BCS title a short walk from his office during his third year in Tempe. Two years later Gene was back in Ohio, this time as Tressel's new supervisor.
It's Not Gene Smith's duty or right to decide how important the ohio state-michigan game is to buckeye fans.
I've gotten breathless about the importance of the Ohio State-Michigan rivalry and its eternal footing ahead of every other football priority for many years, and it appears Ohio State’s current AD believes the evolution of college football's postseason allows for the Michigan rivalry to be reprioritized.
It's not that he's right or wrong (he's wrong) as much as it's not his duty or right to decide.
That’s for the customer to determine. The distant world where Ohio State didn't have command or adequate footing in its rivalry game is likely foreign to him, since he arrived in Columbus after Tressel had made it distant. The customer never stopped focusing on that one game. That hasn’t changed at all.
What has changed is how assurances of pride have been repackaged without consultation.
“We were basically one point away from being in the national championship game, and I think had we got that two points we needed to convert and ultimately played TCU – I feel confident we would have performed well and won a national championship – I'm not so sure about all this chatter.”
Oh, everyone watched the Peach Bowl. Very appreciative of the recap, thanks. The good boss is well-intentioned, but he should know two of Coop's final teams finished 2nd nationally. Ugh, it was brutal.
The Buckeyes of the 1990s were routinely in contention for national titles well into November - that aspect of the customer experience has not changed much. It was part of the value proposition that came with exiting the Earle Bruce era. We wanted national relevance, and he no longer could deliver that. It was never either/or between rivalry and national title.
John Cooper left Tempe for Columbus specifically to deliver that. He chose to exit a successful regional program in favor of higher-ceiling national one. The big title - not to be confused with the B1G one - was the reason he jumped.
Gene should understand that, since he followed the exact same path in advancing his own career. Any program equipped for and devoted to national title contention can win the trophy, but only one program in college sports evolved out of a recreational club program into national powerhouse specifically because of its unhealthy Michigan obsession.
The customer didn’t write that history or decide it. We inherited it. I predict we’ll keep it.
It's just hard to abandon a religion created and passed down by generations of dead ancestors who wrote carols about a single November football game unborn children will sing to us someday. These are Ohio State's customers. They were Francis Schmidt’s customers. They were Wes Fesler’s, too - and they’re the reason he left.
Woody inherited them and rebuilt the customer experience which Tressel later perfected. Ryan Day serves the same customers today. And no customer among us will ever diminish national title contention. We're 100% for winning it all. And yet, everybody's so focused on just one game.
That’s right. It’s just how things are. And that’s how the good boss will always be.
