October 27, 2006

Coach Ginn

Glenville High School coach Ted Ginn Sr. has seven former players on the 2006 Ohio State Buckeyes, including four starters, his son, and the Heisman Trophy frontrunner. In this clip from a good this DDN feature article, he talks about his relationship with Troy Smith.

When Smith had trouble adjusting at OSU and groused to the press about his playing time two years ago, Ginn Sr. got into his car, drove to Columbus and told the QB to keep his mouth shut. When Smith was suspended from the team at the end of the 2004 season for accepting a booster's money, he watched his teammates play in the Alamo Bowl from a television in Ginn Sr.'s basement.

Ginn Sr. admitted Smith has "broken my heart" at times: "Troy didn't ever know how to trust anybody, and he probably still needs to work on that.

"Some of it comes when you haven't had a father in your life. Me, I'm 50 years old and I wish my dad was still alive so I could run things past him, just have that reassurance. But if you never grew up with it, you don't understand it. Still Troy never could question my love, and finally he surrendered some reluctance."

This week Smith didn't hesitate to give Ginn Sr. credit:

"Sacrifice and humility, those are the two things, to me, that exemplify him as a man. He sacrifices everything around him for someone else's kid biologically. As soon as he gets us to learn and take in his teaching, we start to understand about being humble."

More from Ginn Sr.:

"For any player who comes here, I have to be attached to everything from here to his home. What happens out on the street filters in here. Nobody's watering down this system. That's the only way it can work. We don't have some of the things other schools do, but we do have each other. That's our strength."

Then he hands them off to Jim Tressel and they're still in good hands. Ginn Sr.'s Glenville-OSU connection is a great success story.

With The Game approaching, a friend sent me the image below (click to enlarge) from the November issue of Readers Digest. The rear cover illustrations are by C.F. Payne (and can be viewed at rd.com/CFPayne)

Posted by dan at October 27, 2006 11:01 PM