Former Ohio State football coach and Youngstown State’s ex-president Jim Tressel becomes Ohio’s 67th lieutenant governor officially Friday with a Statehouse swearing-in ceremony. After Gov. Mike DeWine nominated him on Monday, Tressel was confirmed two days later with votes from all Republicans in the Ohio House and Senate. Sen. Beth Liston (D-Columbus) was the only Senate Democratic to oppose his confirmation, along with 27 House Democrats.
Tressel said his first order of business is to make sure education is lining up with needs of the workforce, which he said the Department of Education and Workforce has been studying.
"We've got all of these extraordinary opportunities. And the question is, are we developing what they need? And do we have a broad enough spectrum going of all the different things, from credentials to, to certificates to two year degrees to four year degrees to apprenticeships," Tressel said in an interview. "So I think part of I'm hoping part of my early time here will be getting with the people, the stakeholders—companies, business, industry, education."
Tressel has said he knows he doesn't know "this world" of state government, but he pushed back against criticism that he isn't qualified for the job. He credits DeWine's staff with helping him so far.
"I guess the person that would say that I don't have the experience probably in some of the topics, that's true. And I need to learn and, and the governor promised me he's in good health and I'm not going to have to worry about knowing everything anytime soon," Tressel said. "But I do need to continue to listen and learn and sit down with people and count on this staff and find out where specifically the governor thinks I can be helpful because I don't want to just go to school for six months on all these issues and so forth and not do anything else, you know?"
DeWine said he and Tressel didn’t talk about political plans when he was asked to take the lieutenant governor job. Tressel isn’t ruling out a run in 2026, but says he’s focused on the job at hand.
“My goal is to live my life trying to progress every day. And then if I'll do that or I'll be relatively successful at that, then whatever happens down the road, I'm sure I'll be good with it," Tressel said.
Tressel also said if there's time, he’d like to work on developing a statewide physical fitness task force.
"When you think about the health—physically, mentally, emotionally—when you feel better, when you're healthier, when you're more fit, everything's better," Tressel said, recalling discussing the concept with DeWine. "And so one of the things we laughed about is if we run out of things to do, maybe we can create an initiative that could be the beginnings of something that could help the health and fitness of our state for years to come."
Tressel also has thoughts about Senate Bill 1, the anti-DEI higher education bill pushed by Republicans as a way to combat what they see as too much liberal influence at public universities. Tressel was part of discussions on a previous version of Senate Bill 1 when he was president at Youngstown State University.
"Probably the one that would benefit us the most is when they were talking a lot about the training and the efficiency and effectiveness of our board [of trustees]," Tressel said. "The board has to do a great job of oversight, of evaluation of, in our case, the president and the provost, of making sure that we've got sustainable strategic vision, but they've got to be engaged to do that."
And Tressel added that he was interested in "the whole conversation about how we want everyone at the institution to feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and their feelings and also wanting to learn the thoughts and the feelings and opinions of others—you know, that good dialogue. When I was growing up, if someone asked me what the definition of a university was, I would always say, well, it's unity in diversity."
Senate Bill 1 would ban most diversity programs and faculty strikes. Tressel says he’s like to see what he calls more "clarity" on collective bargaining and what should be included in contracts.
