The Associated Press

COLUMBUS - When Jim Tressel was a kid, his father, the coach at Baldwin-Wallace College, used to invite players home to eat spaghetti with the family.

On any given night, by the time the youngest of Lee Tressel's three boys arrived at the dinner table, there might not be any chairs - or pasta - left for them.

But the Michigan-Ohio State game was a time when father and sons had a chance to bond while watching Woody Hayes storm the sidelines and Bo Schembechler bellow at the officials.

"My earliest recollection would be somewhere in my childhood that, typically my dad's season was over and the Ohio State-Michigan game was probably the first time we had a chance to sit down and do anything with him because he was a football coach," the 49-year-old Tressel said. "For sure, he was going to be watching the Ohio State-Michigan game."

Those were far different times. Now Jim Tressel is the coach at No.2-ranked Ohio State as it prepares for its annual showdown Saturday with No.12 Michigan.

His father died in 1981, and his mother died a year ago. The game between the Buckeyes and Wolverines remains special, a link to his childhood that conjures up many other Saturdays in November.

The second-year coach of the Buckeyes is almost a block of ice in public - showing almost no emotion, speaking in a near monotone and answering questions in a cool and detached manner to sidestep controversy.

It's not just a facade. His players see the poker face and know that he's still on top of things.

"Some of the younger guys were saying, `How tight is coach Tressel going to be this week?'" linebacker Matt Wilhelm said. "I was like, `He's not.'"

Tressel always knows how long it is to the most important game on the schedule. A TV reporter mentioned Michigan to him last spring and Tressel promptly said the game was in 174 days.

"We all have idiosyncrasies and mine might be keeping track of that," he said.