Ohio Lt. Gov. Jim Tressel isn’t wondering whether the Cleveland Browns should build a dome in Brook Park — he’s wondering why Ohio didn’t build one decades ago.
“Personally, I wish we would have had a dome for the last 40 years,” said Tressel, who spoke to the Hall of Fame Luncheon Club on Monday, Nov. 3. “I think we could have attracted some things to this state that we've never been able to have.”
But that doesn’t mean the former Ohio State football coach supports every part of the Browns’ plan, including the state’s decision to use $600 million from Ohio’s unclaimed property fund to help finance the stadium.
Tressel said he preferred Gov. Mike DeWine’s original proposal to fund the project by doubling the state tax on sports betting companies.
“I thought the governor had a great idea: to take the fee from the gaming, which was leaving the state, and have that fee handle the state’s portion of building the stadium,” he said. “But we have a democratic process. That idea didn’t win out. So we’re in the moment we’re in.”
The Browns’ new stadium is slated to open in 2029, marking the franchise’s first home away from the lakefront since its founding in 1948. While some have criticized the move out of downtown, Tressel said that view is short-sighted, pointing out that major cities such as Chicago have sports venues spread across different neighborhoods.
“We’re not that big of a region,” said Tressel, who played quarterback at nearby Baldwin Wallace under his father, legendary Yellow Jackets coach Lee Tressel. “It's not that far from the lakefront to the airport. And I'm an optimist and I think, 'Wouldn't it be cool if all the way from the airport to the lake became booming and everything in between?'"
Tressel was quick to note that he doesn’t have a say in the decision, either on the planning side or the funding side, but he drew on his coaching philosophy: whatever the score is, you play from there.
“And the score right now is, we’re going to have a dome stadium,” he said. “I think that’s cool. It’s going to be by the airport, so OK, that’s where it is. I’m going to get behind it.
"I just want something great to happen for Northeast Ohio.”
Tressel won one national championship and seven Big Ten titles with Ohio State from 2001 to 2010, after capturing four Division I-AA national championships at Youngstown State between 1986 and 2000. He later returned to YSU as president, serving from 2014 to 2023.
During his decade in Columbus, Tressel earned nearly $22 million, a figure that underscores how dramatically college football’s finances have grown. Ohio State’s current coach, Ryan Day, is set to make about $12.5 million in 2025 alone.
Those coaches’ buyouts have ballooned, too. Between Sept. 23, when Oklahoma State fired Mike Gundy, and a month later, when LSU dismissed Brian Kelly, 10 FBS programs parted ways with their head coaches. Those buyouts will cost a combined $169 million, including $54 million for Kelly and $49 million for former Penn State coach James Franklin.
“It is amazing when you see that,” Tressel said. “I guess on one hand, when (schools) feel as if they have the right coach, they say there's so much value to that. And then on the other hand, when it turns out that maybe it wasn't, they're saying, ‘Well, there's so much value to going and finding the right one.’ It is a little bit mind-boggling.”
Part of the problem, Tressel said, is that schools are no longer willing to be patient with head coaches. Lee Tressel won just four games in each of his first three years at BW, then went 9-0 in his fourth season. Lee eventually finished 155-52-6 at BW, including a Division III national championship in 1978. His son, meanwhile, went 2-9 in his first year with the Penguins and also had a losing record in his third year.
“In this day and age, that might have been curtains, right?” he said. “I wouldn't say that in this day and age, whether it's sports or anything else, that patience is a virtue. It doesn't seem like they're letting someone go to the extent of the course of time.”