My dad was a Buckeye through and through.
Like me, he was a football coach, and that kept him busy in the fall.
But his season ended before Ohio State and Michigan played, so when I was a kid he always made sure we watched that game together.
Dad had grown up as a fan of Ohio State, and he played for the Buckeyes before enlisting in the U.S. Navy. Later, even as he was guiding his teams at Baldwin-Wallace, he always had one eye on what Woody Hayes was doing down in Columbus.
The passion Dad showed for Ohio State resonated with me. I can’t say I understood at first, but I realized early on that the Buckeyes were something special, something more than a team. They were a rallying point for the entire state and a unifying factor for fans of every generation.
I became a full-fledged Buckeye fan when I was in junior high school. The teams during those years were among the best in Ohio State history. In 1968 they earned the national championship. I recall picking up the Cleveland Plain Dealer the morning after the Buckeyes won the title by beating Southern California in the Rose Bowl. A photo of quarterback Rex Kern was on the front page. He was holding the Rose Bowl MVP football in one hand and a Bible in the other. That really struck me.
Rex was one of my first sports heroes. I liked what he was about. He was the consummate leader, and it was clear he had the respect of his teammates.
In many ways, I think Rex personifies what a Buckeye should be. He played hard and fair on the field and lived a good life off the field.
That’s something I teach my players, and something I hope our fans have learned. If they’re going to be good Buckeyes, they need to be good sports. Like our players, we want our fans to make things tough on the other team, but in a sportsmanlike way that reflects class and dignity.
As a coach, I have a special responsibility for upholding Ohio State’s great traditions, both on and off the field. Believe me, I think about that every day. I know there’s a huge Buckeye family out there watching, and I don’t want to let that family down.
Generation after generation of people root for the Buckeyes with a passion that has been passed down like a valuable family heirloom.
But unlike an heirloom, this passion is a living thing. It lives in the enthusiasm of the tens of thousands of fans who crowd into Ohio Stadium every football Saturday. It lives in the people throughout the world who are dedicated to this great university. It lived in my father as he cheered his team, his Buckeyes, to victory over Michigan.
One of the best parts of my job is that I get to meet Ohio State fans from all walks of life. I’m always amazed at the stories they tell of how their family and friends have been drawn together by their love of the Buckeyes.
Truly, it’s all about family—a family I’m privileged to call my own.
The shout came from Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel. On the tail end of Coaches Tour 2009 -- a fast-moving sweep that had taken him and six other college football coaches to U.S. military installations in Germany, Turkey, Iraq and Djibouti in five days -- Tressel's eye caught a familiar name.
" 'Iacobucci -- that's got to be Youngstown,' " he recalled as he looked down the list of names that had been pulled in a drawing for a chance to sit at his table. When Tressel beckoned, Iacobucci, 22, an avid Ohio State fan from Boardman, near Youngstown, felt as if she'd won the lottery.
"I never imagined I would have an opportunity to meet him anywhere," Iacobucci said by phone the other day. "It was absolutely amazing. He was so friendly, so down to earth, very open with everything."
The feeling was mutual, Tressel said.
"I'm sitting there thinking, 'She's from Boardman, graduated from high school in 2005, never met her, and we're sitting in Djibouti, Africa, having breakfast.' "
Such an encounter was the point of the coaches tour, which included Texas' Mack Brown, UCLA's Rick Neuheisel, Mississippi's Houston Nutt, Wake Forest's Jim Grobe, Air Force's Troy Calhoun and former Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville. Fostered by Morale Entertainment and sanctioned by the military, the idea was to take familiar faces and put them in front of appreciative personnel who otherwise, as Iacobucci said, are living a " Groundhog Day life" so very far from home.
Going 'down range'
The trip had a profound effect on Tressel. During his years as coach at Youngstown State and Ohio State, he has often paid tribute to the military. But he'd never spent time in their theater.
"It humbled you to think how unselfish these men and women are," Tressel said.
Coming out of high school in 1971, Tressel wasn't drafted and never enlisted. He went to college, then into coaching. But like many of his generation who didn't serve, Tressel said he often has felt regret.
"Absolutely. Every year of my life," he said.
"So it was a little bit uncomfortable when I'd have these young men and women come up and say, 'Coach, thanks for coming.' Thanks for coming? You've got to be kidding me. I think if you're me and you don't at least have the feeling of 'Boy, am I fortunate,' then you're confused. You're oblivious."
Or as Neuheisel recounted for UCLA Today : "It made me feel very proud to be an American, and also very fortunate to be an American. Sometimes, you need to go abroad to realize all the gifts that we have here, and that became very evident."
It was no sightseeing tour, especially after they flew "down range" into Iraq, first to the Balad Joint Forces Base and then to Camp Victory, outside Baghdad. The coaches wore helmets and body armor when on the move.
Upon arrival at Balad, they were told the frequency of mortar shells being lobbed into the base was down to ab
out seven a month.
"Somebody in our group said, 'This is the last day of May. How many have come in so far this month?' " Tressel said, and they shared a nervous laugh.
Then, at the coaches' first appearance, they were greeted by "the most unbelievable roar," Tressel said. "Us coaches looked at each other: 'This isn't even real. Really, this isn't even right.' It should have been us applauding them, but, boy, were we glad we came.
"We'd had very good response at the previous places (bases in the U.S., Germany and Turkey), but now we were 'down range,' as they say. Now we were in Iraq. We had rolled in there wearing our bullet-proof vests. This was the right place to be."
A Buckeye in command
Col. Sal Nodjomian is an unabashed Ohio State booster since his days in OSU graduate school in the early 1990s. He was the commander at Balad. He'd seen many sports stars and celebrities on similar tours.
"Few, if any, had the impact the college coaches did," he said by e-mail. "By my highly unscientific estimate, the coaches were able to raise the morale of well over 3,000 airmen and soldiers at (Balad) alone. Between autograph sessions, a pep rally, a touch football game, a hospital visit and numerous impromptu stops, coach Tressel and his cohorts left cheering fans in their wake."
Including Nodjomian, whose base office sported Buckeyes motif.
"I have admired coach Tressel since he arrived in Columbus and have only grown to respect him more over the years," Nodjomian said. "I have read his book, The Winners Manual, cover to cover and have both my boys reading it now. Getting the chance to spend the day with him and watching him interact with airmen and soldiers only reinforced my admiration."
Col. Edward F. Shock, chief of Armed Forces Entertainment, rode with the coaches the whole trip. He marveled at their indefatigable approach, especially Tressel's.
"He was easily approachable and he gave each member his personal time and attention and talked as if he met them before," Shock e-mailed. "That was remarkable because he was, by far, the coach with the longest line of fans."
Videos can be Googled that show the coaches interacting with soldiers on the football field, too. In one, Tressel runs to give a player a leaping chest bump after he makes a catch.
"These guys were out there playing on a sand field with rocks, and they were going all out," Tressel said. "You couldn't help but get into it."
What it's all about
There also were plenty of graphic memories for the coaches. Like spending the night in bunk beds in one of Saddam Hussein's former palaces, hitting golf balls into the polluted lakes that were part of the palace compound, and the oppressive heat.
There was Djibouti, where temperatures never dipped below 90 during their 12-hour stay and where mosquitoes flew 24/7. That was one reason for the malaria pills the coaches had to keep taking even after their return. And there were the flights on nearly windowless cargo aircraft.
But Tressel marveled at the precision of the trip, the way they were always on time, how their bags of "swag" -- handouts such as photos, T-shirts, etc. -- were always on hand, and how organized the meet-and-greet sessions were. And he was impressed by the usually overlooked medical, engineering and otherwise humanitarian work the military was doing in the region.
Most memorable, though, was the interaction with military personnel, he said. Like the way he and a couple of the coaches were warned that a soldier they were about to meet in a base hospital was having a bad day as he dealt with a traumatic leg wound.
"But when we walked in there, he got so excited, he couldn't stop talking to us and thanking us for coming," Tressel said. "Wow."