Last Words: Final BCS Preview Press Conference – Ohio State Buckeyes
1/6/2008 12:00:00 AM | Football
Ohio State head coach Jim Tressel joined LSU head coach Les Miles at the final press conference Sunday in New Orleans before the BCS championship game Monday.
The following is a transcript of Tressel’s press conference Sunday.
Click the links above for PDF downloads of Tressel’s transcript and Miles’ transcript.
OHIO STATE HEAD COACH JIM TRESSEL
THE MODERATOR: We’ll have Coach
Tressel make an opening statement about how this
week is gone from his standpoint and Monday
night’s game.
Coach Tressel, if you could open with a
statement.
COACH JIM TRESSEL: It’s been a
wonderful week here for us. It was a great
educational experience for our young people and
our coaches to be here in this community and just
see and feel the importance of this week and the
importance of hosting an event like this and to see
the strength and passion of the people that are
hosting three games in a row or whatever it
happens to be in two huge weekends.
It was a great experience for our guys to
see that. But most especially to feel that. Our
guys have all seen many, many big games in the
Superdome on television, and for them to have a
chance yesterday to get over there and see that
facility and envision themselves having a chance
to play in that venue, and the people here have
been extraordinary.
The Sugar Bowl committee and all the
folks at the Hilton Riverside have been
outstanding. An experience our guys — I’m not
sure they’ll understand for years and years how
fortunate we are to be taking part in this.
And we’ve been happy with the way our
kids have handled themselves and prepared
themselves. I know they’re anxious to get out
there on Monday evening. It’s been quite a
number of days since we’ve had a chance to play a
game for real, and I’ve been real proud of the way
they’ve prepared themselves to play against a
great team from LSU and hopefully present the
nation and the world with a great football game.
THE MODERATOR: Questions.
Q. Coach Miles described his team I
think as pent up, held hostage, trapped. How
are yours handling the final hours here?
COACH JIM TRESSEL: Well, you know,
they are on a schedule that is very limiting. And
I’m sure their minds are racing a million miles an
hour and going over all of those last-minute things
with the emotions that they have.
And, you know, you wish you could snap
your fingers and be out there at kick-off, but that’s
not the way it is. And I know a lot of them here in
the last day or so have had a chance to welcome
their parents to this community and their parents
have enjoyed seeing them.
When you’re spending all this time in
preparation over so many days you don’t get as
much time with family as you’d like to have. And,
you know, so I know they’re anxious. And if they
feel pent up now, just wait until you see how they
feel tomorrow because tomorrow is a long day
when you don’t play until 7:00 at night.
Q. Coach, LSU has obviously played in
some kind of wild games this year. And Les
Miles has gotten this reputation as kind of a
risk taker. Do you prepare your team as if
they’re facing a squad that will basically do
anything at any time, or do you think it was
more just a happens of circumstance and you
would have done the same thing in a lot of
those similar situations and not been a
conservative call?
COACH JIM TRESSEL: I don’t know that
you can ever put yourself in someone’s shoes
unless you know the whole context of what you’ve
prepared, what you’ve studied, your opponent,
what the moment holds. That’s one of the difficult
things about those decisions in that 25-second
period, is that it’s pretty easy to evaluate them after
that. But it takes a special knack to do them well at
that moment.
And you have to — as you study LSU, you
have to say that they’ve done the right things at the
right time. And that’s why they’re playing in this
game. And I don’t know that — people use the
phrase “gambler.” I don’t know that it’s gambling
when you’ve prepared it, when you know why
you’re doing it. I don’t think any of the things they
did were just off the cuff, well, let’s try this.
They all had some rationale to them.
Sometimes it just takes the courage to do them.
And that’s what I’ve enjoyed about watching this
LSU team. I think they’ve been a courageous
bunch. They’ve done what they’ve had to do at the
moment. They’ve had injuries. They’ve had the
ball bounce the wrong way a couple times. Yet,
they’ve just kept moving forward and that’s how
they became the SEC champions.
Q. Todd Boeckman played very well at
Penn State, probably in the toughest road
environment you faced this year. You said that
night he threw with confidence and threw with
authority. What can you do, what can Todd do
to get that quarterback to be the one who
shows up at the Superdome tomorrow night?
COACH JIM TRESSEL: You know, I think
the most important thing to give a quarterback a
chance to succeed is protection. That’s the key. I
think if you look at any ball game where a guy
makes poor decisions, sometimes it’s maybe
because he was rushed, maybe there was
someone in his face. Maybe he didn’t have quite
that extra instant to make the best decision.
The name of the game, and we’ve said it
forever in this game of football, the name of the
game is protection. And great defenses put
pressure on quarterbacks. The LSU defense puts
pressure on quarterbacks, and you have less time
to make good decisions. The Ohio State defense
puts pressure on quarterbacks and makes it a little
more difficult to be as efficient.
So what’s the one thing we can do? Make
sure we do a great job protecting.
Q. Coach, your staff was down at LSU
for some of the practices and I’m curious what,
if anything, you guys took away from that?
And then just secondarily, what would you say
were the one or two biggest similarities and/or
differences between yourself and Les Miles?
COACH JIM TRESSEL: Well, we
anticipated January 7th, 2008, and that’s why we
asked Les if we could come down and study him a
little bit in the spring (laughter), and he was
gracious enough to let us. But that’s one of the
great things about our profession.
In fact, the American Football Coaches
Association convention just began today, and there
will be 10,000 coaches out in Anaheim, California,
sharing ideas, sitting and talking about how can we
do this thing better, how can we help our kids
better, how can we X and O a little bit better. How
can we stay up with the innovation that is a part of
everything.
And we’re always open to one another
visiting our campuses. Very seldom do you find
someone from your own league visiting one
another. Because you know you’re going to play
them. But, you know, it’s amazing the number of
times ironically it turns out that you visit — we
visited Florida a year ago, and obviously that
wasn’t a great study. Maybe they didn’t go to the
football office that much (laughter). But it’s
amazing that this profession is willing to help one
another and share ideas, and that’s one of the
things you love about it.
As far as the similarities between Les and
I, we’re both Ohio guys, and we’ve both been very
blessed with very good football players as head
coaches and very good staffs.
The thing that our coaches came back
from their LSU visit that every one of them said,
outside of the little technicalities that they picked
up at their position, was how well those kids
practiced. Those kids practiced like crazy. That’s
what preparation is all about. It’s that focus and
intensity and tempo in your practice.
And I’d like to think that that’s something
that our kids do.
Q. What are the things for LSU about
Matt Flynn and Ryan Perrilloux, what are some
of the things watching game film about both of
those two players that really stand out in your
mind, some of the things that they really do
well and maybe do differently from each other?
COACH JIM TRESSEL: Matt obviously
has a lot more experience, and you have to really
tip your cap to him to the patience that he’s had,
the way that he hasn’t always been the guy and
then he got a chance to become the guy and here
they are playing for everything. He’s extremely
disciplined. He’s extremely tough. All those things
that we love in a quarterback. He makes great
decisions.
Perrilloux, on the other hand, has had the
fortune of getting to play some. And a lot of times
when you’re the back-up guy and you get some
experience, you can see a guy evolve. And when
he stepped up in the SEC championship game and
took them to a championship against a very
tenacious Tennessee defense, that shows you that
he’s been paying attention as well and that the
future bodes well for him.
Q. Since you went to Florida two years
ago and you went to LSU last year, have you
scheduled any visits for this coming spring?
COACH JIM TRESSEL: You know, we
haven’t done that yet. I’m going to have a chance
to go out to the convention because I’m on the
board of trustees so I have to. But at that point in
time that’s when you start — believe it or not, on
Tuesday night you’re going to start thinking about
your 2008 team, that’s just what — and where
would be a good fit and who could we learn from,
who were we impressed with as we watched film
throughout the course of the year.
But, no, we haven’t got quite to that point
to make that selection.
Q. LSU is an offense that seems to be
very versatile in the way they can spread you
out. They can run power football. In your
experience, how unique an offense is that?
Have you faced anything similar in the Big
Ten?
COACH JIM TRESSEL: You know, that’s
what I would like to be, is I would like to be a team
that’s power-oriented but that can give you
everything else that possibly puts pressure on you.
Spreading the ball out. Getting the ball to good
wide receivers, getting the ball to good tight ends,
throwing it to your backs some, doing all those
things. Because in my mind that puts the ultimate
pressure on a defense, is that you have to prepare
for every single concept that there is.
And, you know, they’ve obviously done a
good job evolving within their offensive scheme,
and they have great players doing it.
Q. Coach, as the BCS moves forward,
would you at all be in favor of a plus-one
model, a de facto playoff?
COACH JIM TRESSEL: You know, I’ve
not been one that’s been a real, quote, playoff
advocate. I was six or seven years ago, because I
had experienced it. And I thought maybe it would
be a good fit for the next level. And then I became
a part of the next level, and there were some
things that I think are a little bit different at this
level. Then we went to a 12-game season. I think
there’s some student athlete welfare issues that I’m
not sure would fit well adding more games,
especially games of that magnitude.
There’s a bunch of kids that are hoping to
have a career at the next level that would be a part
of those playoffs and so forth. And there’s to me a
little risk factor.
We already ask a lot of our kids from a
time commitment standpoint. And I would like our
experience at the college level to be complete and
thorough, and the more you’re asked to do one
thing, it becomes a little bit less of that.
And I’ll the tell you, the other thing, in my
mind, that would keep me from being a real
advocate of it — I can be convinced of anything —
but bowls are extraordinary. You watch a group of
bowl games, I don’t care where they were, we’ve
been in a lot of different bowl situations, and it’s a
tremendous thing for those communities. They
happen to revolve around the same time period,
give or take 10, 15 days.
There’s a lot of travel involved. Someone
told me that the economic impact of having both
the Sugar Bowl and the BCS title game here was
extraordinary for this. And I’m sure the impact on
those communities and the fun that those kids
have and their families and their marching bands
and all that they have at bowl games, I just think
it’s a little bit difficult to go much beyond what we’re
doing.
Q. Getting back to Todd Boeckman.
He’s one of the few key guys for you that
obviously didn’t play in this atmosphere last
year. Are you curious or anxious at all to see
how he’s going to respond or do you know
enough about him that you’re confident in how
he’ll react?
COACH JIM TRESSEL: I’m confident how
he’ll react for sure. But I don’t know anything for
sure. I don’t know how I’ll react there. I mean, the
energy. It’s so exciting and it really takes a real
good performance to really be on top of every
single thing at every moment in a neat
environment like that.
Sometimes a lot of it has to do with
something that you’re not even a part of. It might
be a pass protection. It might be a bad call by the
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Coach Tressel – 01.06.08.doc 4
coach and all of a sudden the quarterback doesn’t
look comfortable. But I have a lot of confidence in
Todd Boeckman.
Q. Coach, the success of Southern Cal,
LSU, Ohio State was discussed earlier with
Coach Miles. Can the winner of tomorrow
night’s game, multiple titles over a short span
say that they’re the program, the preeminent
program now in the country?
COACH JIM TRESSEL: No, you’re only
as preeminent as your next game. And I don’t
know that we can make proclamations like that,
because I don’t know how you define that.
Now, I happen to think those are some
great programs. But we also tee it up against a lot
of other great programs. And I’m sure there would
be some debate by others as to their preeminence.
Q. Apparently LSU is going to watch
the movie 300 tonight, which makes me think
that Les is trying to portray his team as the
underdog; i.e., Sparta. What do you think
about that and do you guys plan on watching a
little movie tonight, too?
COACH JIM TRESSEL: No, I don’t know
what 300 is. I’m not a real movie guy. The last
movie I went to was Jaws I (laughter). So I don’t
know what 300 is.
But watching movies and relaxing, that
kind of thing, because you do feel pent up and you
do feel like, oh, my gosh, is this ever going to
arrive? That’s a great thing.
And, no, I don’t know much about the
movie.
Q. Can you describe — obviously the
championship moment is here. But could you
describe your emotions from the
disappointment of losing the championship
game to spending a spring and then the
summer and then going through a Big Ten
season and to now finally kind of getting to this
point, just describe whether you were thinking
about getting back here or whether you really
didn’t think about it until now?
COACH JIM TRESSEL: I think you only
daydream about those kinds of things. Because if
you spend time thinking about them, you’re taking
a lot of time away from working. And so, of course,
you always set as your ultimate goal to be in the
ultimate game. You’d be selling yourself short if
you didn’t.
But you don’t spend a whole bunch of time
because there’s so much to do, so much that it
takes to be successful in every game, that just
can’t do it.
Q. A lot was made about the DVD and
the motivational tools that you used. I would
think that got your players through a lot of the
hard work of this bowl preparation. They said
it was harder than anything else they’ve ever
done in the bowl season. And yet now you’re
down to the last couple of days. I think you’ve
even mentioned before that the bulletin board
stuff, once the ball’s kicked off, doesn’t amount
to anything. How has the message changed in
the last two days from no respect to what has it
become?
COACH JIM TRESSEL: I think it’s all
about execution, because ultimately that’s what it
takes. You’ve done your preparation. You’ve put
together a plan that you think is the right plan. I’ve
had many a plan where someone came out and
played something very different and you think back
to all those hours, I could have gone to the movies,
because it was a waste of time.
But you have a plan and you need to
execute your plan and execute your adjustments to
your plan. And that’s what it’s all about come
Monday night.
Q. How much of — regardless of —
COACH JIM TRESSEL: This is not an
“old” question, is it? Todd was killing me yesterday
talking about how old I was and Bob Hunter and I
are ready for shuffleboard and, you know — but,
okay, go ahead.
Q. Fairly or unfairly, if you win that
game tomorrow night, your program will be
painted in one light. If you lose, it will be
painted in another. How much of your
program’s reputation is riding on the outcome
of the game tomorrow?
COACH JIM TRESSEL: I think it all
comes down to how you concern yourself about
who does the painting, because what’s most
important is how you feel about yourself and where
it is as a part of who you are.
And so the biggest goal we have is to play
as good as we can possibly play and us coming
close or perhaps even doing that will really help us
paint ourselves in a good light, regardless of what
the outcome is.
If we don’t play as well as we’re capable of
playing, we’ll paint ourselves not in as good a light
as we would like because we knew we were
capable of more.
If you worry about much more than that,
then I think you have things out of perspective.
Thanks so much. See you on Monday.
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