CLEVELAND, Ohio -- For Jim Tressel, the former Ohio State coach who brought both great joy and great pain to the school and the state, his workplace was also, in a way, his home.

"I got a letter from a guy the other day who apparently had lived in the same house I lived in when I was an assistant coach at Ohio State," said Tressel, referring to his time as an aide to Earle Bruce in 1983-85. "Back in 1970, when they went from grass to turf, his family had replanted some of the old grass from the stadium in that lawn. So all the time I lived there, I had some of the stadium grass in my lawn."

The saying "Once a Buckeye, always a Buckeye" is certainly not true for everyone. Ohio State is too big, too rich, too arrogant for many. But it is true for Tressel and many others.

"Ohio State is bigger than any one team or any one [coach's] tenure," said Tressel. "Ohio State is such a part of our culture. It's not just about the people who went to Ohio State. It's everyone in the state. No matter where you went to college, part of you is a Buckeye."

Tressel joined players from his 2002 national championship team at the Cleveland Ohio State Alumni banquet at Windows on the River Tuesday night. The reception was warm, as would be expected for a Clevelander who, in that rarest of sports accomplishments around these parts, won it all.

A Baldwin-Wallace graduate who is now an administrator at the University of Akron, Tressel basked in fans' cheers at the Horseshoe Saturday, when the 2002 team was recognized at the end of the first quarter. He even received an impromptu ride through the north end zone on the shoulders of his players, with defensive tackle Kenny Peterson and offensive tackle Mike Stafford giving him the lift.

"I know [linebacker] Cie Grant was right there and [safety] Mike Doss, too. They never listened to me when they played and they didn't listen to me when I told them, 'Put me down,'" Tressel joked.

Tressel said he never expected Saturday's rousing greeting.

"Oh gosh, no. It obviously was one of those surreal moments. You're with your guys," he said. "They were, like 20 years old then, now they're 30, you get the chance to meet their spouses, see pictures of their families, hear them tell stories about what they remember and what they took away from their experience."

Asked if the end zone ride made him yearn to coach again, Tressel said, "Oh no. I just enjoyed being with them, enjoyed being with the fans. I didn't all of a sudden go back upstairs and feel like calling plays. I've made a commitment to the University of Akron."

His name continues to be mentioned for NFL and even collegiate job openings, although he has served only two of a five-year virtual ban on college coaching imposed by the NCAA.

Are the mentions flattering? "It depends on who's doing the mentioning," said Tressel, whose Akron job description is Vice President of Strategic Engagement.

"I enjoy what I'm doing there," he said. "It has all the same principles of trying to help kids, the school, the region, and the state. All the same components outside the Saturday afternoons. That was only a dozen times a year. I have 353 other days. I'm pretty darn fortunate."

The former coach said he saw similarities between the 2012 and 2002 teams, beyond both being undefeated. With the dynamic Urban Meyer taking over, the Buckeyes went 12-0 after a 6-7 slump, the first losing record since 1988, under interim coach Luke Fickell in 2011.

"Maybe the biggest similarity is that both the '02 and '12 teams were coming off disappointment that drove them. We were coming off 6-6, 8-4, and 7-5 seasons," said Tressel, although only the latter, in 2001, his first season, came with him as coach.

"That 2002 team wanted to be different from that. The 2012 team had obviously gone through a very difficult, emotional, tough year, in which they didn't come up with the record they wanted, and they were determined they were going to be like the very good Ohio State teams."

Tressel's rules violations, in knowingly playing ineligible players in the tattoo scandal, led to his ouster. It is the reason this year's team cannot play in a bowl game or compete for the Big Ten and national championship.

"Obviously, you feel terrible," said Tressel. "You always feel regrets for anything that didn't go the right way, especially when you were a part of it."

Yet even the players banned from a bowl this season seem to bear him no ill will. Many had tears in their eyes watching the salute to their old coach.

"It wasn't all Tress' fault that the team isn't playing in a bowl," said Doss. "If a bowl ban had been self-imposed last year, the NCAA might have acted differently. Why go to a bowl when you're 6-6, anyway?"

"Tressel turned that program around," said Dustin Fox, a radio personality in town now, who was a defensive back on the 2002 team. "He won a national championship. He beat Michigan nine times. And he was a father figure to his players."

"When you get away from the football uniform to the world of the authentic human being, you see how much he cares about developing young men," said Maurice Clarett, the star-crossed running back on the 2002 team.

The thunderous ovation Saturday probably appalled some observers, especially the Michigan fans at the Shoe. In a sport in which the players are so interdependent as in football, however, a team becomes a family. The fans, particularly at a school with the reach of Ohio State, see themselves as part of an extended family.

Families feud. Family members make mistakes, even father figures. But when you go home, family takes you in.

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