FILE - In this Jan. 4, 2011 file photo, then-Ohio State coach Jim Tressel signals for a timeout during the Sugar Bowl NCAA college football game against Arkansas at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans. Tressel was hired Friday, Sept. 2, 2011, by the Indianapolis Colts as a game-day consultant to help determine when the team should challenge plays. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)

YOUNGSTOWN — When he retires as Youngstown State University’s president on Feb. 1, Jim Tressel will leave behind a long list of accomplishments from both the gridiron and during his time in administration.

The list is almost endless and with a career like Tressel’s; it is filled with plenty of peaks and valleys. But ultimately, what will the legendary college football coach, who also led a Division I university for the past nine years, be remembered for?

According to Tressel, in the big picture, it doesn’t matter to him.

“I don’t spend a whole bunch of time worrying about what my legacy is because this world has been here for what, billions of years? My time here is just a blip,” Tressel said. “I just hope the people that I was with were positively impacted, and if that’s the case, that’s a good legacy.”

Last week, Youngstown native Helen K. Lafferty, a national / global YSU trustee, was named by the board of trustees as the university’s interim president. For nearly four decades, Lafferty has been an administrator and a faculty member at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. She received an honorary degree and gave the keynote address at YSU Fall Commencement in December 2019.

John R. Jakubek, the board of trustees’ chairman, said the board spoke to a handful of candidates, but the decision to select Lafferty came down to her experience in administration and a familiarity with the university. She will assume the role Feb. 1, as the board conducts a national search next year for the university’s next president. After serving in the interim role, Lafferty has no plans to make a bid for long-term presidency, and Jakubek said she will return to Villanova.

FOOTBALL

After beginning his college football coaching career at Akron as a graduate assistant, Tressel served as an assistant coach at Miami University of Ohio, Syracuse University and Ohio State University before landing his first head coaching job at YSU in 1986.

The Penguins enjoyed an unprecedented era of success with Tressel at the helm, winning four FCS national championships in six title-game appearances during his 15 seasons in Youngstown.

After returning to Columbus to coach the Buckeyes in 2001, Tressel led Ohio State to its first national championship in more than 30 years during the 2002-03 season. The Buckeyes made two more national title-game appearances during his tenure and won at least a share of six Big Ten titles.

“While I’ve stayed moderately connected with the guys, I talk to them as much as I can, I just don’t have that many hours in the day,” Tressel said of his former players. “I’m hoping that in my next life, I’ll have a little bit more time” to connect with them.

His time in Columbus came to an end prematurely when he resigned from Ohio State in May 2011, after multiple NCAA violations were revealed within the Buckeyes’ program.

Several players exchanged memorabilia for services rendered with a Columbus tattoo parlor. An investigation found that Tressel became aware of this in March 2010, but did not report it to university officials and still continued to field players he knew were ineligible.

After stepping away from Ohio State, Tressel said he was at a crossroads and had a decision to make. He could choose to continue coaching at another school or find another path.

Due to the circumstances of his parting with the Buckeyes, the NCAA imposed a five-year “show-cause” penalty on Tressel, which means any school that hired him would have to justify why it shouldn’t be sanctioned for doing so, thus making it difficult for him to find another coaching job.

SOMETHING ELSE

But after reaching the peak of his profession with the Buckeyes, Tressel said it was hard to see himself coaching anywhere else.

“I decided that I really wasn’t interested in coaching anywhere after having been at Ohio State, and that maybe there was something else I could do to make an impact,” Tressel said.

Looking for guidance, Tressel confided in his mentor, Patrick Spurgeon, a former English professor who died this summer at 92. Spurgeon served as an assistant coach on Tressel’s staff at YSU and was a volunteer coach on his staff at Ohio State.

“I remember him saying to me, ‘You do know that your greatest impact that you’ll have in your professional career is ahead of you,'” Tressel said. “I said, ‘Boy, it sure doesn’t feel that way,’ and he said, ‘Well, it is, if you believe that it is and you go and make it that way.'”

Tressel said he took his mentor’s words as a “challenge.”

“If that’s true, I am going to make it true,” he said.

So after briefly working as a consultant for the Indianapolis Colts, Tressel stepped into the world of academia. An Ohioan at heart, though, Tressel said he wanted to return to the Buckeye State.

He came back to serve as vice president of strategic engagement at the University of Akron from 2012 until he returned to YSU in 2014 to become the school’s ninth president.

Since then, he has helped grow the university in several ways.

YSU GROWTH

During his tenure, YSU enrollment increased for the first time in five years, graduation rates went up, tuition increases were limited, scholarship opportunities expanded and university and private housing options increased across campus.

Tressel also has played a major role in the YSU campus’ modernization and physical transformation, with numerous renovations and improvements made along Wick and Fifth avenues.

He and his wife, Ellen, also have a long history of fundraising and philanthropy in the Mahoning Valley, and made a $1 million gift to YSU to establish the Jim and Ellen Tressel Student Work Opportunity Endowment Fund.

The university’s seven-year “We See Tomorrow” fundraising campaign also exceeded its $100 million goal.

“I think what you’re remembered for is really based upon who’s doing the remembering,” Tressel said. “I want to be remembered by my players by our time together. I want to be remembered by the guys that played for me at YSU and the fans and the coaches and all that. That’s what they’ll remember. The people at Ohio State that I coached and worked with and the fans and they’ll remember that. My time as a college administrator, you hope those people remember that,” Tressel said.

“I hope from a general standpoint, the legacy is that I cared very deeply for everyone that I worked with and every place that I was, and I tried to make it better than what I found it.”

nmadhavan@tribtoday.com