Twenty kids in Ohio who are named after Jim Tressel are not amused by recent events

Naming your kid after Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel probably seemed like a pretty safe bet at the time; what could possibly go wrong? The youngster might develop a taste for sweater vests? He’d go prematurely gray? At least 20 sets of parents in Ohio are doing some soul searching at this hour, as their children deal with the consequences of being named after the disgraced Buckeyes coach. Some are defiant, at least on the surface. Here’s the father of 4-year-old Tressel Huffines:

“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.)

According to the Columbus Dispatch, Ohio birth records show that 20 newborns have been named Tressel since January 2003, when the Buckeyes claimed their first Jim Tressel-era national championship. This includes a girl, Tressel Bockover, 4.

I’d mock these hapless parents further except that I have to get my children, Blagojevich and Weiner, ready to go to the park.

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Parents don’t regret naming their kids Tressel [Columbus Dispatch]