Ohio Governor Mike DeWine announced Monday that he has nominated former Ohio State University football coach Jim Tressel to be his next lieutenant governor.
DeWine said of DeWine, who also spent nearly a decade as the President of Youngstown State University: “I want someone who every single day is working to come up with ideas, and this is a guy with ideas.” DeWine added: “And they’re thoughtful and they’re based on what he has seen and what he has learned.”
Live: https://t.co/JTtNbT23Ib pic.twitter.com/46MfnD0ChP
— Governor Mike DeWine (@GovMikeDeWine) February 10, 2025
(In 2014, Tressel became President of Youngstown State University, where he stayed until 2023.)
The 72-year-old Tressel was an exceptionally successful football coach, winning numerous Coach of the Year honors while leading the Buckeyes to multiple Big Ten titles during and winning the National Championship in 2002.
Congrats to @ryandaytime on the big win last night and punching that ticket to the National Championship!
Huge thanks for taking the time to join us on the podcast—always a blast talking Buckeyes with you! Let’s finish this journey strong! #GoBucks #NationalChampionshipBound pic.twitter.com/OFcaycvbxv
— Jim Tressel (@JimTressel5) January 11, 2025
Many Ohioans also remember the less glorious aspect of Tressel’s days at Ohio State — one commenter on DeWine’s post replied “didn’t he resign from OSU in disgrace?”
Tressel resigned as the Buckeyes football coach in 2011 after an NCAA investigation into improper benefits for players from the owner of a tattoo shop in Columbus. The scandal, which became known as “Tattoogate,” led to Ohio State vacating all wins from the 2010 season (including the 2011 Sugar Bowl win), a postseason ban in 2012, two years of NCAA probation, and Tressel’s resignation. Tressel denied any wrongdoing in the case.
[Tattoogate and its like are a relic of the NCAA landscape before it adopted “Name, Image, and Likeness” (NIL) rules that allow college athletes to be paid for endorsements while in school. Following the NCAA’s opening of the NIL floodgates in 2021, the NCAA and its five power conferences agreed in 2024 “to allow schools to directly pay players for the first time in the 100-plus-year history of college sports.”]
On the day of his Lt. Gov. nomination, Tressel wrote on X: “‘If you never take risks, you’ll never accomplish great things. Everybody dies, but not everyone has lived.’ C.S. Lewis” with the hashtag QuietTime.
Quiet Time, a 30-page guide on “how to improve daily devotionals,” is part of the reading material for the C.S. Lewis Institute’s Fellowship program.
“If you never take risks, you’ll never accomplish great things. Everybody dies, but not everyone has lived.” C.S.Lewis #QuietTime
— Jim Tressel (@JimTressel5) February 10, 2025
If confirmed for the Lt. Gov. job, Tressel, 72, would succeed Senator Jon Husted, who DeWine recently appointed to fill the Senate vacancy left by Vice President JD Vance.
Note: Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost is seeking the Republican nomination for governor (DeWine is term limited) and former 2024 GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is widely expected to announce his campaign for the job, too.