Always Will Be

I have to admit, I've been struck dumb by some of the e-mails I got in the wake of the Navy game. There were some who agreed with my "criticisms" and others who didn't. Then there are others who apparently didn't read a word of what I said about the game, yet who had the kindness and foresight to include the words "FIRE JIM TRESSEL" in the subject line, so I'd know to delete their stupid, spit-fleckled e-mail immediately. My inbox has been almost as ugly as your mother for the past few days, and it isn't showing signs of letting up. My guess is that these people read my Lloyd Carr/Jim Tressel comparison (which looks increasingly like a huge mistake) and thought I totally flipped a bitch and hated the man all of a sudden. That couldn't be further from the truth.

I sometimes listen to local Columbus sports talk radio, even though I know I shouldn't. Long before message boards coarsened sports discussion down to essentially a never-ending duel of grunts, chest-thumping, and finger-pointing, sports talk radio was the hallowed home of the red-faced college football fan. You know, the guy who can recite Troy Smith's senior year stat line off the top of his head but can't remember his wife's birthday for the life of him. The guy who wears a Mo C jersey and jorts while watching the game at home. The guy who actually thinks everyone else but Ohio State pays their players and cheats, and Ohio State, despite repeated recruiting violations, is the last bastion of college football sanctity. The guy who shouts "UNACCEPTABLE" at the top of his lungs when the team has the audacity to actually lose a game. The common clay of the college football world. You know. Morons.

I've mentioned before that I think Columbus is a fortunate city when it comes to our local media talking heads. For every Michael "Erase" Arace there is both a Ken Gordon and a Bruce Hooley. Hooley hosts the "Big Show" on 97.1 The Fan from 1-3 Weekdays and is usually joined by the always-entertaining Chris Spielman. Hooley can be both the most unrepentant of homers - he didn't see Navy having a chance of keeping it close this past weekend - but also a fairly astute observer of the program. Spielman was absent from Thursday's edition of the show, so Hooley seemed to put even more focus than usual on the listener call-ins because he had an interesting theory he was putting forth and he wanted opinions on it. Had I not been working, I would have called in. Hooley's theory is that if Ohio State loses this weekend - and does so in a fashion reminiscent of the loss in LA last year - Jim Tressel, for the first time in his career, will have a sub-50 percent approval rating among the Ohio State fanbase. Hooley made all the necessary caveats I personally would have made - this is not "fair", Tressel will never get fired, and he deserves more credit than he's getting - but it's an interesting question and one that I think bears examination.

Jim Tressel has had it good at Ohio State. He's 7-1 against Michigan, has endured just 12 conference losses in his entire career - 7 of them coming when you combin his first year at the helm with the 4th-season swoon in 2004, and he's won a national title with two appearances to go with it. By any objective measure, he has been a rip-roaring success as a head football coach. But the natives are restless. The natives are also, for the most part, being stupid. 

I've simply never seen a coach faulted so much for the big game failures of his teams. Even Bob Stoops is given a bit more slack at Oklahoma despite three losses in the last six BCS title games. Prior to the Vince Young era, Mack Brown was considered a "big game bust" too. On two separate occasions, his Longhorn teams surrendered more than 60 points to Bob Stoops-coached teams. It wasn't until Vince Young's breakout junior season that Stoops finally started winning "the big ones", first at Ohio State, then against Oklahoma, and finally, over USC in the 2nd greatest (*nudge nudge*) BCS title game of the decade. Some say Mack Brown needed that one elite talent to get him over the hump. For all we know, Jim Tressel has that guy too in Terrelle Pryor.

 Jim Tressel is not going anywhere, if Ohio State fans know what's good for them and the program they root for. Yes, the loyalty to Jim Bollman is mindboggling at times. Yes, he still hasn't exorcised those conservative demons, and that leads to games like the one against Navy, or the one against Ohio, or the ones against San Diego State and Bowling Green in 2003. I stand by my assertion that eventually, playing like that against some patsy will catch up with him. Probably not against Toledo, and definitely not against New Mexico. There are numerous criticisms you can level at Jim Tressel, and I'd probably agree with any and all that have a solid, factual basis ( "ZOMG WHERE'S THE FIRE TO THIS TEAM?! doesn't cut it). Even with that said, I still want him as my head coach. There just aren't any solid alternatives. Personally, there isn't a soul in the world that Ohio State even has a fraction of a chance of hiring that I actually want as my head coach more than Tressel.

Tomorrow, the game may not end up going the way we want it to. All our worst fears may be realized, and USC may beat us 45-3. That'll suck, if it happens. But even 45-3 will be no reason to fire the most successful football coach this decade outside of Pete Carroll, Urban Meyer, Mack Brown and Bob Stoops. That's lunacy. Go away, Tressel haters. You're not wanted. If - for even one moment - the thought of firing Jim Tressel enters your mind and isn't immediately bullet-ridled by the snipers of logic or the Heavies of criticial thinking, just stop watching now. You don't deserve this team. Jim Tressel is our head coach, and he always will be, as long as he wants to be.

Go Bucks.