Jim Tressel Quotes on Education (9 Quotes)

We're anxious to get into Big Ten play. I think the Big Ten is going to be a very, very tough conference this year. As you look at everybody from side to side and throughout the conference, they've had some tough ball games, they've had some great wins. I just think it's going to be a very strong league, and we start out with an awfully strong one with the university of Iowa. They're a physical football team. They have dropped a game, but they didn't have their quarterback that day. They're just an outstanding team as they've shown over the years, and we have to be ready to compete.

It would be a dream job if you were interested in it. Ohio State was a dream job as a college coach and it's still my dream job.

Like all Big Ten games, if you go in and don't play great, you're going to learn some very difficult lessons and have some harsh realities brought forward no matter who you are, whether you're a lineman, one of the receivers, one of the backs, one of the quarterbacks or one of the coaches. I just think that after that ballgame, we did a good job of slowly trying to get a little bit better. I don't know that it was anything instantaneous. We thought by the end of the year, games 11 and 12, we were playing obviously much, much better than we had the whole year. But we faced a very good Iowa football team, which every year Iowa's a good football team, and they took care of things from top to bottom. It was certainly a learning thing. Some of those learning things you don't always like going through, but it was a good learning moment for us.

As we move forward to play Texas, we don't need to say much more than we're playing Texas, one of the great programs in the history of college football. They've got things rolling there right now extremely well.

You know, I grew up in the early '70s in college and I had plenty of teammates who had a little hair. I don't have a problem with that, as long as they look -- I don't know what the right word is -- as long as they look sharp.

I think in this day and age, you've got to be able to attack with a lot of different things. There are so many good guys out there that can throw and catch, and the evolution of football -- there's so many good ideas. Sometimes, things trickle down a little bit from the pros. Now, the pros don't allow their quarterback to get hit quite as much as we do in college football in our spread offenses and so forth, but I just think because people are so well-schooled on defense, you've got to give them more problems. I think if you have that as part of your package, it can give you a chance. Some of the people in our league do it very, very well.

I think it adds a lot to this game. We've only played four times before in our history and the two great programs, here we are in one of the great settings in college football. I think it adds a little something to the intrigue.

Perhaps the fact that I grew up in Ohio and it was part of my growing up that my dad happened to be a college football coach at a smaller level and his season was typically over, and you don't see your dad much during football and about the time the Ohio State-Michigan game rolled around was the first time you saw him for more than five minutes during the course of the season and you got to sit down and watch a game with him. You can talk about that in all the households in Ohio State and Michigan. It's one of those special things that people enjoy together. Do I intimately understand how privileged we are to be a part of it Perhaps, but I think it's a little unfair to say that John or anyone else doesn't comprehend. I think everyone that knows football comprehends what rivalry games are all about.

We played twice in the '30s and twice in the '90s and that's the end of it. We're not that far apart and with the great tradition of both football programs and both schools, what more could we ask for