Jim Tressel Comments On Urban Meyer and Ohio State

Former Ohio State head coach Jim Tressel spoke with WTVN's Bob Conners about his replacement, Urban Meyer, and Ohio State's future under the former Florida Gators head coach. Tressel, who has largely avoided interviews following his retirement from Ohio State on Memorial Day, broke his silence and made a special appearance for Conners' last show on the airwaves.

In true Tresselian fashion, Tressel began the segment praising Conners for his long career in radio and the charity work he has done within the Columbus community. Conners then returned the praise and asked Tressel whether the Lake County-Sentinel's report that he was considering taking the Akron job was true. It was not.

"No, the rumor isn't true," Tressel said. "I think they were just going through the archives of their graduate students and discovered that I had gotten my Masters there. It's a wonderful place and I had four wonderful years there and they've done an extrodinary job with their campus and their athletic facilities, but there's no validity to that."

The questioning moved to the Indianapolis Colts and their rough season.

"Talk about having some adversity," Tressel said. "When you lose Peyton Manning and about eight other starters, it's tough. I didn't get to see much of Thad's big win, because we're playing the Patriots this week and have to find a way to stop Tom Brady and go to Foxborough."

Conners returned to Ohio and questioned Tressel on the state of the Buckeye program. Tressel spoke highly of Meyer and predicted success for the Buckeyes in the future.

"Urban has done a great job wherever he's been," Tressel said. "He'll come in and do a good job with a great group of kids. When you go through some suffering like (Ohio State) went through this year and you have the right kind of players in the program, you're probably going to have some good things happen," Tressel said. "So (Meyer) will come in and do a good job. He knows how to coach the game."