Ohio Lieutenant Governor and former Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel was left nearly speechless after the Ohio State athletics staff pulled off a surprise.
On June 23, a video from Ohio State football’s social media showed Ohio State athletic director Ross Bjork and football coach Ryan Day surprising Tressel with a locker-room gathering of former players and coaches to announce his induction into the Ohio Stadium Ring of Honor.
“I know it’s very hard to surprise the Lieutenant Governor. There’s a lot of security detail we had to go through; we had to go through the boss here [Ellen Tressel] to make sure that we could get you here on this special day,” Bjork said to Tressel.
“But you mean so much to the university; we wanted to honor you in a special way and commemorate your legacy here at Ohio State,” Bjork continued.
“When I think about Coach Tressel, I think about legacy,” Day then said. “Legacy is leaving something better than you found it. … You left this university, you left this program better than you found it.”
Bjork and Day revealed a photo of Tressel’s permanent signage in Ohio Stadium, featured on the southeast corner of the stadium’s C Deck. Tressel is to join Paul Brown and Woody Hayes as the only coaches so honored at the Horseshoe.
“It’s all about the players. … I know we used to have long meetings, but I’m speechless right now,” Tressel said.
Tressel is the first addition to the ring of honor at Ohio Stadium since former Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Troy Smith in 2014.
As head coach of the Buckeyes for 10 seasons, Tressel led them to a BCS national championship in 2002, a breakthrough for a program that had gone more than three decades without winning a title.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Watch Ohio State athletics surprise Jim Tressel with Ring of Honor
Reporting by Dan Aulbach, Columbus Dispatch / The Columbus Dispatch
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Dan Aulbach, Columbus Dispatch | USA TODAY Network
