Football
Book by OSU Head Coach Uses Sports Experiences to Teach Life Lessons
Tressel's Book Available to the Public Beginning Today
By John Porentas

Ohio State Head Football Coach Jim Tressel makes his debut today as an author.

Tressel's book, The Winner's Manual, releases today and is expected to be the best-selling book ever written about Ohio State football. According to Tressel, 70,000 copies were pre-sold prior to the book's release moving it to 50th on the best seller list before the first copy found its way into the hands of a consumer.

The book itself is not so much a football book but a compilation of the principles that have guided Tressel through his coaching career.

"Xs and Os, by the time you print the book its obsolete, so you really don't see a whole bunch of X and O books out there. Our goal is to talk about some things that were a little more enduring than that and a little more universal," Tressel said on Monday in Columbus.

While the book does not focus on the game of football it is not devoid of football either. Football anecdotes from Tressel's days at Youngstown State and Ohio State are used to illustrate the points being made and form the backdrop for the book. According to Tressel, the point of the book is not so much to inspire but to share with the public the principles that have helped make his football programs successful in the hopes that those same principles can be applied to not only athletic endeavors, but endeavors of all kinds throughout everyday life.

"Our hope is that we can become a resource for coaches in the future, become a resource for anyone that's in the leadership realm no matter what their group happens to be. I hope this book can add some value for someone else and people can use it for their team whatever their team happens to be," Tressel said.

Tressel also hopes to raise some money, not for himself, but for the renovation of the Thompson Libraries at Ohio State. His share of the proceeds from the sale of the book will go toward that cause which he and his wife Ellen co-chair.

"Probably one of the things that tipped the scales, because time is not one of the things that we have a lot of, is the fact that we could continue our partnership with the Library and it being a book, we thought that made a lot of sense, to have this continued relationship, so we're looking forward to being able to help in that process," Tressel said.

The book is really a summation of all the experiences that Tressel has gained and used in his coaching career. That, according to Tressel, made the task of authoring a book more tempting to him, because carving out the time to tackle the project was one of his biggest challenges.

"That was my biggest concern," he said.

"They (his publisher) assured me that this was something that could be done without much time. It was a lot less time consuming than I thought simply because it's what we do. It's not like we had to go research and figure out what we should put in this book. We sat down and in one weekend probably did 70 percent of it," Tressel said.

What made the job efficient for him is that he simply compiled the principles he applies daily.

"It really was an accumulation over the last 22 years. We've always had what we call the winners manual. This book is not our winner's manual. That's designed more specifically for what we're going through that particular year and the lessons we're involved in that year, but there are some things that never change. This is kind of a how to book, as to how we've used our winners manual and that's why I think it has a little bit of a universal appeal," he said.

Tressel will be in New Jersey today for the release of the book and will then do three days of book signings to kick off its distribution.

Tressel Book Signing Schedule

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