Frank Abagnale

Jim Tressel

Big-10 Head Football Coach, University President, Hall of Fame Recipient, Avid Reader and Youth Mentor

Jim Tressel served as president of Youngstown State University from 2014 to 2023, and was the former head football coach at The Ohio State University from 2001-2011. His tenure as head coach came to a sudden end in 2011 after National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) violations by players. After this unexpected development, Tressel was forced to reexamine the remainder of his career. His entire professional life had been guided by hard work and helping others, and as he moved forward, Tressel remained committed to his core values. “I always wanted to have that opportunity to think what was next, now it ushered in a little bit more quickly,” said Tressel. He lost his coaching position over Memorial Day and within a week, “I kept getting all of these calls asking me to come do this or that with other people and I said, ‘You know what, I’m not doing anything until I read 100 books.’ I started that, and I got up to about 30 books and I didn’t want any of them to be about sports.” Some companies respected his plan and suggested some reading about their own industry. “I had gotten calls from Chesapeake Energy. They had wanted me to come on because they were going to start getting this plan in Ohio. They thought I might be a natural with them to develop it. So, they gave me three books. All of a sudden, I got into energy. I got to about 32 books and I was feeling good about what I was learning.” But in August, he got a call from Jim Caldwell, coach of the Indianapolis Colts. “He called me and said, ‘Hey you know, we’re not going to have Peyton Manning, we’re going to be terrible. Could you come and help me a little bit? I’d like to win a couple games.’ What’s funny is that Jim is a voracious reader. Riding on the bus to a game, he’d be reading a book. I asked him how he became such a reader, and he said that his parents demanded such good grades, and he went to the University of Iowa and played football.” Tressel explained. “There was no question he was going to have good grades, but he wanted to go out with the fellas at night. He came up with a way to get all of his homework done whether he was riding the bus on the way to class,” said Tressel. Tressel hadn’t reached his 100-book goal yet, so he had some reservations. “Jim said, ‘You can work from home and just come three days a week.’ Columbus and Indianapolis aren’t far. I asked him to let me think about it, then I asked my wife because I had made this commitment. She said, ‘Do it. I’m tired of you being around here seven days a week. Get out of here. If you ask me one more time, ‘What are you doing today?’ For our sake, it was time. So, I did it.” His decision became pivotal. “It made it clear to me that one, I didn’t want to do this,” Tressel said. “It really affirmed that it was time to take on something new and grow. But I had no idea what that was going to be. As the season was going on, I was pretty clear at the end of the season that after I had this experience it was time to move on.” Tressel had a lot of opportunities to consider. “In December I was getting calls from headhunters about small college presidencies.” Tressel had attended a small Ohio School, Baldwin-Wallace College, where his father was the football coach. “I was a small college guy, in fact. I had a guy from Connecticut stop at my house in Columbus and he was the President of Trustees at Wittenberg University. I had never thought of that, but I knew I wanted to be in education. He told me he wanted me to interview with their committee in Columbus and they would be downtown in a hotel with 22 people.” He interviewed for the job and said, “When I got home, my buddies from Baldwin-Wallace called me and said that they heard I interviewed with Wittenberg, who was their rival. They said, ‘Our presidency is open, you better come interview for ours.’” So Tressel interviewed at Baldwin-Wallace. “I went back to Columbus and got a call from the president of the University of Akron, where I had got my Master’s. He called and asked me to come and meet with him and that I ought to work with them.” I said, “That’s funny that you mention that because I just interviewed for these two. I don’t even know if I’m going to make it to the next step.” I agreed to visit with him. Northeast Ohio was home, and Akron was the one that gave me my first chance and there was some sentiment there. I went and met with him and he asked me to come on as a vice president. I went home and that night, the two schools called back and said that I was in the final three and I have an on-campus interview. Now, I’m scared because I didn’t know if I could do this.” However, he chose to take it. “None of it was orchestrated,” he said. “It was all studying what is next.” From here, even though he was learning what the university needed, he didn’t feel like he was under what he calls duress. “What I think we need in life is for the game to slow down and not feel the duress so that we can do what we have to do and stay focused. Execute what we have to and not allow the duress to affect our performance. I remember William White who played at Ohio State, telling me when he was with the Atlanta Falcons. He talked about the key to being successful is to just slow the game down. Slow it down and understand what’s going on. He said that the same thing is true in life. Slow the game of life down so that you can make good decisions and execute.” Tressel learned and improved in this new venture. After two years at the University of Akron, Tressel became the President of Youngstown State University. One of his biggest frustrations from coaching, the NCAA scandal, followed him to higher education, too. “People would talk about my players that did this or that. So often, not publicly, I would be like, ‘If you would have grown up where he did and had the same role-modeling, or lack thereof, you would have gotten to the point where he is now.’ I said to my department chairs, ‘Guys, the only thing I’d like you to be willing to do is make sure you and your faculty treat every kid exactly the way you would treat your own children with those expectations because I know all of your kids are brilliant.” He urged the faculty to be more hands-on. “Make sure they are managing their class schedule while involved with internships and extra-curricula’s. Don’t wait three weeks to find out if they went to class. If they are five minutes late to the first class, you’ll nip that right there because that is not what is expected or what it’s going to take to be successful. If you just do that with all of your students, you’ll be fine.’ There are some faculty that do just that. But there are some faculty that think, ‘Hey, they’re big boys, they’re adults.’ There are some students that think they’re adults and don’t want to be told what to do. It’s not easy for us. There are some, at our college, that feel as if those habits should have been developed by now and that’s not our job. Our job is to take them to the elite intellectual level. If they don’t want to do it then, that’s their problem.” During a guest lecture on the economics of sports, a student asked Tressel, “‘What’s different about what you did all those years in coaching and what you’re doing now?’ I said, ‘There are so many things that are similar, but one observational difference I have is as a coach, if we succeeded it was because we had a really good performance by our players. If we didn’t succeed, it was the coaching. That was just our mentality. What I’ve learned in higher ed is that if the students didn’t succeed, they weren’t prepared, and it was their problem. If they did succeed, it was the brilliance of the faculty member. So, it’s just the opposite mindset.’” Growing up, Tressel said, “There was nothing more important in my life than education and college education.” He said he was heavily influenced by his grandfather. “I watched my grandfather, who was a farmer, herd dairy cattle, and there was no such thing as a day off. We were up at 5 o’clock to milk cows and then we were up again in the early evening and worked in between, and that was seven days a week. My father went on and became a teacher and coach. My grandfather never had a chance to watch him coach. My dad left the farm environment, but he wanted to make sure we understood the farm environment. So, our vacation when we were little kids, every summer, we got sent to the farm individually and we worked for a week to understand. They assumed it would be a great experience. So, just to watch the work ethic that it takes. My father wasn’t a farmer, but he had those exact same qualities in his work. My mom, who was not a professional, spent every day of her life serving somebody, whether it was us, the PTA, or the community. Every single day, she was working extremely hard to make it a better place.” From his upbringing and his professional experience, he has distilled his learning into five guiding principles. “There are five non-negotiables and I always give them to them in descending order. The fifth important one is work ethic. I’ve never seen anyone great that didn’t work extremely hard. I’ve never seen a great team that didn’t work extremely hard. “Number four in my list is talent,” continued Tressel. “You’ve got to become competent in what you do. You’ve got to have some talent. I could practice basketball all day long and I’m not playing for the Cavs,” he went on. “My number three is curiosity. I’ve seen people work hard, develop their competencies, have capable talent, but they’ve lost the curiosity to get better and someone ended up beating them. Curiosity is a non-negotiable and it’s even more important than work ethic and talent. “My number two is grit. I’ve seen teams who worked hard, who were talented, who were curious, constantly studying the films and trying to find ways to get better, but they got hit in the mouth and they couldn’t handle it. They didn’t have that ability to deal with adversity. They hadn’t thought about it in advance. The one thing we talked a lot about to our teams was that I say, ‘I’m old enough now that I can predict the future and I guarantee you, here is your future. It’s going to be combination of things you hoped for, trained for, and wished for, going exactly the way you thought it would and some things that you can’t believe the way that they happened. It’s going to be a combination of the two and it is the ones that you didn’t plan for that twill determine how close to reaching your potential you can get.’’ Tressel’s number one non-negotiable is, “You have to be selfless. That’s hard as humans. We’re all selfish by nature, but you have to work together as a team. You have to work hard at trying to be selfless and that is difficult. It’s not just something you say, ‘Well, I hope to be selfless.’ You’ve got to think about ways to be selfless. You’ve got to have constant dialogue and recognize selfless activity. “Those are kind of my five non-negotiables,” Tressel concluded. “In education, sometimes I’m afraid that we spend so much time trying to give temporary knowledge. They don’t need us for knowledge, they need us for ‘What’s it going to take to make it in this tough life?’ It’s difficult for us, as educators, because chances are that most of us had no problem in school, most of us had a pretty good life with not a lot of duress. Yet, we’re being assigned to help someone along, but we’ve never been in their moccasins,” Being selfless is a start, he said, because it generates empathy and the compassion necessary to understand others who come from different circumstances. “To feel it,” he said. “To recognize their opinion and where they’re coming from.

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Master Storyteller, Motivational Speaker, Moralist, Mentor, Reformed Con Artist (Featured in Hollywood’s Film, “Catch Me If You Can Played By Leonardo DiCaprio)

The cashier had given him too much change. Frank Abagnale sat in the Wendy’s drive-thru, his three sons in the car, and counted what was in his hand.

Change for a $20 bill, not a $10.

“I’m sorry,” he told the girl in the window, handing back the cash. “You made a mistake.”

His boys, the oldest just 12 at the time, couldn’t believe it. As they pulled away, one of them muttered what they all were thinking.

“Dad, you could have kept that change.”

Abagnale pulled the car over.

What he said next would have stunned anyone who thought they knew legendary con man Frank Abagnale.

Decades earlier, Abagnale was a young man—a kid, really—in a rush to prove something. His impatience led him high above the clouds.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. The forecast today to beautiful Los Angeles is sunny with a high of 85 and scattered clouds. We’re looking forward to a smooth journey with our fellow passengers, and we thank you for flying with us. Now sit back and enjoy the ride.”

As the aircraft lifted into the luminous sky, a wave of adrenaline awakened every nerve in Abagnale’s body. Decked out in a formal black fitted blazer and trousers, paired with the classic gold wing pin and embellished cap, he assumed a seat in the cockpit, hitching a ride with the pilots steering the aircraft. Although internally rattled, he couldn’t show it. He had to preserve his complicated ruse.

The 16-year-old secured a front-row seat to the most extensive landscapes and oceans the world has to offer.

When the wheels finally hit the runway, phase two of Abagnale’s deception was in full effect. The impeccable uniform and forged pilot certification provided limitless entry into the vaults of oblivious bank agencies. His cunning smile and prematurely graying hair sealed the deal. Using a stack of forged checks and his temporary addresses of lavish hotels, he could seamlessly accumulate wealth at a staggering pace.

Abagnale was living out a picturesque fantasy as a teenager. The movie Catch Me If You Can, where he was played by a dashing Leonardo DiCaprio, chronicled his glamorous, felonious exploits. The world was his oyster, and he gobbled it up. He guzzled century-old red wine and snacked on the finest caviar at soirees around the globe. Beautiful women would flock to his side, hoping to accompany him on his next grand adventure.

The risks were great, but the highs were greater. Over the next few years, Abagnale became a master of disguise. He nimbly juggled his aliases, transforming from a pilot to a doctor to a lawyer—whatever persona suited his needs. Each move left his heart pounding.

What trace was he leaving behind? Which trip would be his last?

If you saw the movie, you know that answer came soon enough. The FBI did, eventually, catch up with Frank Abagnale.

He was swept off to prison, and society thought that would be the last they’d ever hear of him. But the very talent that landed him behind bars also opened a one-of-a-kind opportunity. The Federal Bureau of Investigation knew they had met their match. Instead of throwing away the key, they decided to employ his expertise for the greater good. That is, to teach agents to think like a criminal in investigating the seedy, dark underworld of schemes and scammers.

At least, that’s how the FBI saw it. Abagnale had other motives. He saw an easy way out—a shot at freedom, if he was willing to play the FBI’s game.

“I try to be very, very honest about this,” he said. “After two years, I didn’t come out of prison as a reformed person. I didn’t come out of prison saying I saw the light and prison changed me and from now on, I’m going to be a good guy and I’m never going to break the law again. When the government offered to take me out of prison at 18, I saw that only as an opportunity. I had an opportunity to get out of jail, so of course I was going to say yes.”

He was still thinking like the kid who’d pulled off an extraordinary con, fleecing banks and cashing huge checks against multibillion-dollar corporations. But working every day with high-profile FBI agents began to alter the way Abagnale saw the world. The good guys wore off on him. He stopped thinking about what he could gain by swindling industries and started worrying about who he might be hurting in the process.

And then there was the woman.

Her silky brown hair and tender heart drew him in like a magnet. She was one of the first people who saw him for who he truly was—and so he told her who he truly was. He broke FBI protocol and revealed his true identity after a six-month undercover assignment.

“She accepted me for who I was,” he said. “We went on to get married against the wishes of her parents. The truth is, she changed my life. She turned my life around. She had faith in me, she trusted in me, she believed in me. I didn’t have a dime to my name.”

For the first time in his life, Abagnale began to believe that being who you are—your genuine self—could attract the right opportunities and bring the right people into your life. As the self-confidence poured back into his soul, protecting others became his new high. He boldly walked into a bank and requested that leaders listen to a presentation he had prepared—free of charge, unless the information provided to them was useful.

After that day, his name spread like wildfire throughout corporate America—this time, in a positive way. Companies were reaching out left and right to get a piece of Abagnale’s wisdom. Providing simple solutions to serious issues, Abagnale touted education as the best tool for fighting crime. He taught to ways prevent crimes in the first place to avoid desperately trying to pick up the pieces when the scam fell apart.

Of course, he hasn’t been able to completely rehabilitate his image. Many only know him from the Catch Me If You Can antics of his late teen years. Even with a half-century of distance between him and his misdeeds, he finds that white-collar crimes and major fraud still evoke the name Frank Abagnale.

He’s OK with this. He has something greater than his reputation to worry about.

“What is most amazing to me—well, I say to myself, ‘I am a former criminal,’ but I did these things when I was 16 years old,” he said. “Now I’ve spent an entire career working with my government. I have worked with the biggest companies in the world. I brought three great sons in the world and have been married to my one and only wife for over 40 years.”

What will determine his legacy, he said, is how his wife, children and grandchildren see him—and the way they navigate their own worlds with integrity.

Which is why, on that day so many years ago, as he drove off from the Wendy’s drive-thru, he seized the opportunity to teach his children a lesson it had taken him a long time to learn.

He told his sons exactly why he didn’t keep money that didn’t belong to him.

“I pulled the car over and explained to them that, one, that would be wrong. And two, that young girl, who is probably in high school, would have probably lost her job when the register didn’t check up at the end of the day—and was it worth the 10 bucks I might have made at the end of the day?”

We’re told life is short, Abagnale said, but it can be remarkably long. Bad decisions early can leave a lifetime of regret. He counsels young people to make sound decisions early in life—to put yourself in the best position to be your most authentic, honest self.

Frank Abagnale found the strength to shed his disguises—will you?

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