'I couldn’t get us turned around'; Jim Tressel on Ohio State build up to 2006 BCS National Championship Game

When athletes and coaches think back on their careers, they have plenty of memories. That is the case for former Ohio State head coach Jim Tressel. And like many of those in his profession, the memories that often come to mind first aren't the happiest ones.

It's been over a decade since Tressel coached football at any level. And despite leaving the Buckeye program in 2010 as one of the most successful head coaches in the team's history, Tressel like many fans thinks back on "What if."

The major "What if" in Tressel's mind goes back to the 2006 season. The Scarlet and Gray were the country's No. 1 team for nearly the entire year. Ohio State beat two No. 2 teams during the regular season but couldn't beat a third in the BCS National Championship Game.

As Buckeye fans will begrudgingly remember, the Scarlet and Gray took on Florida, led by Urban Meyer, in that title game. The one-loss Gators came into the game as seven-point underdogs but, despite an Ohio State touchdown on the opening kick off, dominated the Buckeyes to the tune of 41-14 in the Fiesta Bowl.

In the 17 years since that game, there has been a lot of discussion of overconfidence by the Scarlet and Gray. Speaking on the "More Than Coach Speak" podcast with Ohio State basketball head coach Chris Holtmann and former Buckeye forward Terence Dials, Tressel admitted that even he could feel that bravado heading into the national championship game.

“Probably the one that I think about that I knew where we were heading and I couldn’t get us turned around was in 2006, we were undefeated and we had beaten Michigan, who was No. 2, and it was a big game, we were ranked one and two," Tressel recounted. "And all of a sudden going into the championship game, you could just see our guys were on their phones with their agents. It was an older team, you couldn’t get their attention. You could see they weren’t training like we normally trained, and we talked to them about it."

Florida put on a show, humiliating Tressel's Scarlet and Gray team. Quarterback Troy Smith, who completed just four of his 14 pass attempts, looked like a shell of the player who won the Heisman Trophy a few weeks earlier. The Gators' offense did whatever they wanted, totaling 370 yards while the defense held Ohio State to 82.

Tressel says he still thinks about how he and his staff could have better gotten through to the players in order to have them ready for that championship game. He said they flew out to Arizona earlier than originally planned to try and get some focus from the team, yet no one stepped up to get things back on track.

"I think maybe somehow getting them to address it to each other," Tressel said. "I’ve always found that if the players tell each other how they should be thinking, it can be even more effective than the staff doing it."

Of course, many involved with college football, including, it seems, the Buckeyes believe that the national title was already decided before that game kicked off. After beating No. 2 Michigan 42-39 in what some people called "The game of the century" at the end of the regular season, the Scarlet and Gray couldn't return to that level nearly two months later in the desert.

"The whole build-up to the game, and then Bo Schembechler passed on Thursday," Tressel said of the magnitude of that year's rivalry game. "And Michigan was playing out of their minds. It was 42-39 and the whole deal. And I think our emotional tank got emptied. And then Troy won the Heisman and everyone -- the agents telling them where they're going to be drafted. And they're humans too; they're allowed to be thinking about that. I'm not mad at them. I'm mad at us for not being able to get our folks thinking."

The win by Florida began the run of dominance by the SEC over the rest of college football. Ohio State got back to the BCS National Championship Game again in 2007, this time as underdogs, but still couldn't get the job done, losing 38-24 to LSU. It wasn't until Meyer came to Columbus that the Buckeyes won another national championship, defeating Oregon 42-20 in the first College Football Playoff title game in 2014.

Like many Scarlet and Gray fans, that game against the Gators will also always stick out to Tressel. Ohio State's talent was unquestioned but the staff wasn't able to get the players' attention where it needed to be to win one more big game that season.