Filed under: University of Miami, Ohio State, Coaching

It’s a thought that seems too odd to consider legitimate, except it almost happened. Imagine: Jim Tressel, coach of the Miami Hurricanes.

Six years before he took the Ohio State job and while he was coach and athletic director at Youngstown State (then in Division I-AA), Tressel interviewed for the job and wowed UM officials to the point that he was under serious consideration to replace Dennis Erickson.

“The guy was unbelievable,” said Larry Wahl, Miami’s senior associate athletic director in 1995. “He was as good as any coach I had been around with his plans and philosophy and personality.”

Wahl spent five hours interviewing Tressel while then-AD Paul Dee and two members of the Board of Trustees were in another town interviewing another coach. When Dee returned, Wahl pulled him aside and said: “This guy (Tressel) is going to knock you off your feet.”

Tressel eventually removed his name from consideration, deciding it was not the right time to leave his home state. UM went on to hire Butch Davis, a coach it did not interview until Tressel withdrew. But that timeline does not reflect how close Tressel came to being hired at UM. In his interviews, Tressel had obliterated all concerns about a button-down, sweater-vest kind of guy, a Division I-AA coach, taking over the flamboyant Hurricanes.

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