As the Ohio State Buckeyes get ready to embark on what's sure to be another exciting season, did you realize that their head coach, Jim Tressel, was born and raised in Northeast Ohio?

Coach Tressel was born in Mentor, where his father, Lee, was the high school football coach. Later the family moved to Berea, where his father became head coach of the Baldwin Wallace College football team. Jim graduated from Berea High School and went on to play quarterback for his father at B-W, winning all-conference honor his senior year.

After graduation, he stayed in NE Ohio, as a graduate assistant at the University of Akron, where he assisted in coaching quarterbacks, receivers, and running backs. Coach Tressel's also had assistant coaching positions at Miami (Ohio), Syracuse, and Ohio State (under Earle Bruce) before accepting the head coach position at Youngstown State in 1985.

Coach Tressel's loyalties to this region run deep and he has looked to Northeast Ohio often for young talent. This season 23 of the 95-man OSU roster hail from Northeast Ohio.

The OSU Buckeyes kick off the 2007 season on September 1 against Coach Tressel's former team, Youngstown State University.

^{(photo credit: Andy Lyons/Getty Images)}