On the day after the spring game in Ohio Stadium, the Dispatch Web site "Mailbox" ran a headline Readers Find Tressel's Salary Hard To Swallow". I didn't bother to click on it because I didn't want to give them the satisfaction of a hit. Now if they had run a headline about the salaries of all college football coaches, one could have a reasoned debate as to whether or not that was out of whack and we all could probably mix it up someplace on the various sides of that one. But to single out Coach Tressel? The thing I do have a problem with is the Dispatch headline. For that reason I won't link to it either.

One needs to look no further than the Dispatch story right below that headline to see why. Tressel Tells Story of How John Reed Became Honorary Coach is a video of Coach T paying tribute to Coldwater Football Coach John Reed, who is fighting a tough tough battle with cancer. I was in the audience a couple of years ago when John Reed was inducted into the Ohio High School Football Coaches Hall of Fame. So was Coach Tressel, sitting right there at the head table with John. I had never met John Reed, but in the fifteen minutes of listening to his acceptance speech, I instantly knew that here was a class act and a guy you would be proud to have mold your son. In the moving video Coach talks about how he and Ross Holman had planned to honor Coach Reed yesterday in the stadium. My book will have chapter on the role that high school coaches have in Ohio Stadium, and what Coach Tressel has done to honor that relationship.

Need more evidence? Well click on Spring Game Supports Spielman Fund for Breast Cancer Research to read the inspiring story about how Ohio Stadium was bathed in Scarlett Gray and Pink yesterday, and about Coach T's idea to wear pink numbers and auction the jerseys off for the Stefanie Spielman Fund for Breast Cancer Research

I am sure the Coldwater Community doesn't have a problem with Coach T's salary. I am sure the beneficiaries of the cancer research that will be funded by those jerseys won't either. Neither does this writer. Nuff said.