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Hello and welcome to another edition of Cus Words Sports!
In case you didn’t notice, spring football is over at Ohio State for 2026.
The Buckeyes had 15 practices, concluding with the spring game, to work on replacing about half the starters from the nation’s third-best team in 2025.
To that end, new faces emerged on both sides of the ball. We got to see some of the transfers in action while youngsters also stepped up into new roles — you know, typical stuff.
Now the coaches are going back to the lab (and out on the recruiting trail) to figure out how to apply what they learned in March and April while the players go back to working out to try to further enhance their bodies for season.
That’s all well and good, but what are the rest of us going to do????
(More after the ad break.)
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When you’re in the content business, the end of spring football has its pros and cons.
On one hand, there aren’t going to be many scheduled media events between now and the end of July when Big Ten Media Days returns to Chicago for the first time since 2019.
On the other hand, there aren’t going to be many scheduled media events between now and the end of July when Big Ten Media Days return to Chicago for the first time since 2019.
That means more time to explore other aspects of the Ohio State beat, eh?
Sometimes it’s good to have a little space to stretch one’s legs.
I quit my old job at the Dayton Daily News and jumped into this newsletter/freelance world last summer on the same week Ohio State opened preseason practice.
That meant it was a long-distance sprint trying to figure out what I was doing day to day while having a lot to follow either for this newsletter, Press Pros Magazine, the Associated Press or Buckeye Sports Bulletin.
You might not be surprised to learn I am generally one who misses football when it’s not around, but I don’t mind a little more time to create something more original, either. (That hopefully gives more people a reason to subscribe to this newsletter — unique content you can’t get anywhere else! Speaking of that, please remember to spread the word and help me round up some new subscribers if you can…)
That all brings me back to something I first announced in January: A recurring feature looking back at the first season Jim Tressel stalked the sidelines as head coach of the Ohio State football team.
Tuesday just so happened to be the 25th anniversary of Tressel’s first Ohio State spring game, so why not jump into our retrospective with an overview of the situation Tressel faced as spring football began?
My goal is to make this a regular feature — Tressel Tuesdays, perhaps? — starting soon with a look at the offense next week, so keep an eye on that and please help spread the word.
Today we’ll start with a very Jim Tressel way to sum up his first 10 weeks of the job after being hired in late January:
“It’s been a lot of fun,” Tressel said. “I consider work fun. I consider meeting new people as fun. I consider getting to be back with old friends fun. I consider great challenges fun.
“I enjoy organizing and trying to put together a strategy. I think that’s fun. Working with new kids and creating new relationships with young people is just a blast. The only thing we need is a few more hours in the day.”
That sounds about right, doesn’t it?
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Tressel’s first spring brought challenges on and off the field
Whenever a new coach is hired, the first questions often involve Xs and Os.
What would Jim Tressel’s teams do to move the ball and stop the other team from scoring points?
Well, there weren’t a lot of answers in the interviews that preceded spring practice.
Tressel, offensive coordinator Jim Bollman, defensive coordinator Mark Dantonio and others on the staff were already on their game when it comes to what came to be known as TresselSpeak.
What they did say actually sounded much like what we’ve been hearing from Ryan Day’s new coordinators the last few years.
Bollman and Dantonio wanted to evaluate the returning players with fresh eyes to determine what skillsets they had and where they were in their development, as was the goal for Matt Patricia last year, Arthur Smith this year and Chip Kelly two years ago.
Only then could they figure out how to deploy them for the fall.
What they had to work with was a bit of a mixed bag
The starting quarterback returned, but it was mercurial lefty Steve Bellisari.
The starting center and an experienced left tackle were back, but they were also embroiled in a lawsuit the latter filed against the former. (Yes, really. More on that in a later edition.)
The top receivers were gone, but that was not necessarily a bad thing — especially with a precocious junior college transfer from Florida turning heads early.
On defense, both corners and most of the line graduated or entered the NFL Draft, but there was more good news on that side of the ball than offense.
Standouts returned at linebacker (Matt Wilhelm, Joe Cooper) and safety (Mike Doss, Donnie Nickey).
Off the field issues
One reason Tressel was in the job in the spring of 2001 instead of John Cooper was Cooper’s inability to beat Michigan, but that wasn’t all.
Cooper’s players also had a bad habit of making headlines off the field, and that was something Tressel was still dealing with after a couple of months on the job.
That lawsuit we mentioned?
Yeah, center LeCharles Bentley was the defendant, accused of assault by Tyson Walter, who was the starting left tackle from 1997-99 but missed the 2000 season with a hip infection.
Though the incident occurred February 2000, the case was just making it to trial in the spring of 2001 (Walter’s attorney said that was because of efforts to reach a settlement.)
Would that be a distraction?
Tressel answered in a very Tressel fashion.
“Far be it from me, after being here two months, to say, ‘This is what you should do,’ over an issue that’s been going on for over a year, but I have verbalized privately to those guys that being a team is the most important thing. We can ill afford to let anything interfere with that. We’ll see what materializes as time passes.”
Tressel also had to deal with a more traditional legal issue than one player suing another. Derek Ross, who figured to be in the mix to start at cornerback, was facing jail time following a traffic stop in Licking County that went awry.
After being pulled over for doing 85 in a 65 MPH zone, Ross allegedly provided a fake name and turned out to be driving without a license.
He pleaded guilty to those infractions and was sentenced to 30 days in jail, giving Tressel an early test of how he would handle disciplinary situations.
“Any time negative things occur, it is disappointing for all of us,” Tressel said. “Hopefully we’ll get the accurate details and move forward accordingly. All decisions have to be based on having accurate data. We’ll handle it with the same compassion, fairness and firmness of any incident that will occur 10 years from now. We hope they don’t happen, but they do.”
His ultimate decision: Ross was not allowed to take part in spring practice, a crucial time for him to compete for the right to replace first-round NFL Draft pick Nate Clements, but instead assigned to spend that time at the Younkin Success Center working on his academics.
