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Former Ohio State assistant coach Jim Bollman will be taking his mustache to East Lansing, Mich., as he becomes offensive coordinator at Michigan State.

(Photo by Thomas Ondrey, The Plain Dealer)

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Jim Bollman won a lot of games during his tenure as an offensive assistant at Ohio State. A lot of Big Ten titles. And, yes, we know he drove you nuts.

By the ragged end of the Jim Tressel era at Ohio State - which must in some way include the 6-7 season in 2011 with Luke Fickell as the interim head coach leading Tressel's staff - Bollman was the one OSU coach fans blamed the most for a season that went south.

But for a long time, it really worked.

With everything at Ohio State now viewed through the prism of the Urban Meyer era, which is more aggressive in recruiting and offensive scheme (though at times last year the execution didn't look all that different), that can be forgotten.

Though it drove you nuts even while it was working.

And now both FootballScoop.com and Coachingsearch.com are reporting that Bollman will leave the position he recently accepted as Purdue's offensive line coach to become the offensive coordinator at Michigan State. He had been the offensive line coach at Boston College in 2012.

That's leaving former OSU and Tressel assistant Darrell Hazell to work for former OSU and Tressel assistant Mark Dantonio.

(As I noted on Twitter, the biggest blow to Purdue comes in the mustache department. The Boilermakers have a legacy from the Joe Tiller and Danny Hope eras of flaunting fine 'staches on their head coaches and many assistants. Considering that Hazell is mustache-free, Bollman's fine facial hair may be particularly difficult to replace.)

Clearly, Tressel loved and trusted Bollman as a friend and integral part of his coaching staff. With Tressel as the brains of the operation, Bollman had the title of offensive coordinator and aided in the weekly planning and gameday execution of a Big Ten-winning offense.

But it was clearly Tressel's plan. It was an offense that was designed to avoid putting the defense in a bad spot, that opened up a bit for established playmakers like Troy Smith and Santonio Holmes when it was time, but that never was as aggressive or wide-open as many people would have liked, and that probably never maximized the potential of players like Ted Ginn Jr. and Terrelle Pryor.

They made a lot of their yards on individual efforts off standard plays, not off plays designed to get them in favorable matchups in space.

But the Buckeyes sure won.

They won because they usually had better players than the other team, and that style maximized a talent edge, limiting mistakes and the unknown while playing the odds. If the Buckeyes didn't mess it up, most of the time, their players would win.

I wrote last year before Ohio State played Michigan State that that game was the closest we'd get to a Urban Meyer-Jim Tressel showdown now. Mark Dantonio's style is very similar to that of Tressel, one of his best friends and his coaching mentor.

So hiring Bollman is no shock. It's a continuation of what Dantonio has already been. At Ohio State, under Tressel, fans liked to talk about bringing in a new, fresh offensive mind. We'd ask if Tressel would ever give up running the offensive show.

He'd ask what he was supposed to do with his time if that happened.

Now that idea is rooted at Michigan State.

The difference is the Spartans don't recruit at Ohio State's level. They are just a step below Ohio State in that regard. So this hire doesn't change the Spartans' chances of staying right where they are: as a very competitive Big Ten team that is going to win nine or 10 games a lot of years, and be in the fight for division titles at times.

But the spread offense, for instance, evolved as a way for underdogs with talent deficits to take on the big guys. Michigan State may never consistently challenge Michigan and Ohio State when those programs are rolling if they don't take a couple risks and try something new.

That doesn't seem to be the way they're going. But that was the case before Bollman. That's Dantonio's game.

It has worked pretty well. Michigan State went 7-1 in the Big Ten in both 2010 and 2011 before a down year last season, at 7-6, while breaking in a new quarterback.

Dantonio is 51-28 in six years with the Spartans and 30-18 in Big Ten play.

That's hard to argue with. And that's what the Spartans are going to keep trying to do.