YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio — Jim Tressel greeted the servers one afternoon last week at an 89-year-old Italian restaurant with wood-panel walls. He sat in a booth and crossed his legs. He still had his familiar correct, salt-and-pepper haircut and the same glasses, worn crookedly. He wore a blazer, a tie, a blue sweater — was it a sweater? He flared open one side of his blazer to reveal that yes, it was a sweater vest he had on under there.

During the decade Tressel was Ohio State’s football coach, the sweater vest — always Buckeyes scarlet — was as closely associated with him as the red cape was with Superman. But that was then, before an N.C.A.A. scandal ended his tenure at one of the country’s great football powers and, starting in 2011, effectively barred him from coaching at any college for five years.

Next month, Tressel, 63, could, if he wishes, return frictionlessly to the sideline: The N.C.A.A. order requiring a university to “show cause” and receive approval to hire him expires in December. Tressel is not sure the precise day it does, because it does not matter to him.

“Coaching is not in my future,” he said.

It is not that Tressel would not be in demand. Visit an online message board populated by fans of down-on-their-luck college teams, and you might find threads yearning for this school or that college to hire him. This very past week, he said, he received a call from a search firm.