The numerous Ohio parents who named their children after Buckeye football coach Jim Tressel do not seem to express any regret now that Tressel has resigned in disgrace over a mushrooming scandal:
Hearing a discussion play out on sports radio, 4-year-old Tressel Huffines wondered aloud to his father:
"Why are they talking bad about me, Daddy?"
The chatter, of course, centered on the man for whom the boy is named: Jim Tressel, who resigned as Ohio State football coach on Memorial Day.
The younger Huffines, a database of state birth records shows, is one of 20 Ohio newborns given the moniker Tressel since January 2003, when coach Tressel led the Buckeyes to the first national championship. ...
Despite that, parents of some of his namesakes aren't second-guessing themselves.
"Do I have any regrets? No," said Brent Huffines, 31, of Logan, who came up with the idea in 2007 and had to persuade his wife, Kattie, to go along.
"I think he got a raw deal, and she thinks he got a raw deal," the longtime Buckeye fan said. "Tressel was 9-1 against Michigan, and I still respect him off the field."
(A footnote: Their son's middle name - and that of four other young Tressels - is Hayes, a nod to another OSU football coach who departed under a cloud (of dust?). And Tressell Hays Ray, born in 2004, stands in a class of his own with the modified spellings of his first and middle names.)