WARREN — Trumbull Town Hall said goodbye. Jim Tressel stayed mum on his political future.

The lecture series that started in 1978 with psychologist and television personality Dr. Joyce Brothers finished with the former Youngstown State University president, former YSU and The Ohio State University football coach and the current lieutenant governor Wednesday at Packard Music Hall

“This is a very bittersweet day for us,” Chairwoman Sandy Mahaffey told the crowd. “We tried to get to 50 years.”

She then brought up all of the TTH committee members who worked behind the scenes to make the series possible.

“We have worked together for years trying to give you good performances, and I just thought it was time to recognize the whole board,” she said.

When Tressel was announced last year as Trumbull Town Hall’s final speaker, he was enjoying retirement, having stepped down as president of YSU in 2023 after “8.7 years — not that I was counting,” Tressel said.

He shared some of the details about getting a call from Gov. Mike DeWine on Jan. 31 asking to meet with him DeWine showed up with his wife, Fran, for their meeting the next day.

“I thought, ‘Oh, This is serious. If you want to do stuff on your own, that’s cool. But when you bring your bride, that’s important,'” Tressel said.

After DeWine offered him lieutenant governor, Tressel responded, “I don’t even know what the lieutenant governor does. And he said, ‘Whatever I tell you to do.'”

When Tressel told his wife, Ellen, about the offer, he admitted that he half-hoped she would object to ending his retirement. Instead she told him, “It sounds like God has some more work for you.”

Tressel talked about his current job, but he refused to speculate on what his next job might be. DeWine is term-limited and can’t run for another term, and the man who has been lieutenant governor for three months didn’t want to talk about whether he’d run for governor in 2026.

When an audience member asked if he’d consider running, Tressel told a story about a lesson he learned in his first assistant coaching job at the University of Akron.

Tressel said the athletic director told him, “‘Young man, you’ll be fine if you keep your mind and your rear end in the same place.’ He didn’t say rear end.”

The meaning was to focus on the task at hand, not the future.

“I have thought about that for the last 50 years. What we told players, ‘Think about today. Don’t worry about are we going to win on Saturday. Worry about getting better at practice today.'”

As soon as he was named president at YSU, Tressel started getting asked if he’d ever want to be president at Ohio State.

“I’d say, ‘I’m working every day to do what I can do for YSU. So, to answer your question, I’m working every day to do what I can as lieutenant governor,” Tressel said.

And DeWine has plenty of things he wants him to do. When he accepted the job, he was told his priorities would be education and the workforce. And those two issues are intertwined.

In the last six to eight years, 63 companies have moved to Ohio from other parts of the country to begin or expand. By 2030, the state estimates it will have 540,000 jobs it needs filled.

“We need every Ohioan to help us take advantage of our opportunities,” Tressel said.

That includes rehabilitating those who’ve gone to prison and helping those battling addiction issues. It also means teaching children at a young age about the opportunities that will be available to them when they’re old enough to join the workforce.

Currently, about 68% of the state’s population only has a high school education. But on the Ohio Means Jobs website, 68.7% of the available jobs that pay at least $50,000 a year require a four-year college degree and another 7% require a two-year degree.

“We have the jobs, we have the pathways. Now we have to do a better job of exposing young people to all the different ways you can go to get them excited about a career,” Tressel said.