But their off-the-field friendship will be left there when the Spartans face the Buckeyes this Saturday.

“Every week I’m rooting for Mark Dantonio,” Tressel said. “So you’ve got to change who you’re rooting for this weekend.”

As the Buckeyes’ defensive coordinator in 2002, Dantonio led the team to the second best scoring defense in the country, en route to an undefeated national championship season.

Ohio State once again has one of the top defenses in the country, and it can be traced back to Dantonio’s days with the team, Tressel said.

“Mark Dantonio came in and set the blueprint for our current regime’s defense,” Tressel said. “It was a blueprint of toughness, and it was a blueprint of preparation, effort and speed.”

While Tressel has great respect for Dantonio as a coach, it’s possible his respect for him as a person is even greater.

Tressel went out of his way to take a personal interest in Dantonio’s life while the two coached together at Ohio State.

They would meet at the end of the football season for what Dantonio thought would be a coaching critique, and the conversation would stray a completely different direction.

“I’m thinking I’m going to be in there for a half hour, we’re in there for two and a half hours,” Dantonio said. “But it’s not talking about things to critique me, it’s talking about my life and where I’m going.”

Tressel not only took a personal interest in his coaches, but his players too, and that is something Dantonio wishes to bring to his MSU team.

“A lot of the things we do are patterned after what experiences I’ve had with him,” Dantonio said.

“I really believed he had found a way to harness the human spirit. His players always play hard, they believe in themselves and play with confidence.”

When Dantonio first arrived at MSU, the players joked that they had never seen him smile, senior tight end Kellen Davis said.

Then one day at a team meeting, coach came in and broke the ice by cracking a joke.

“He’s trying to work on his humor because he’s not too funny, but he tries to make some jokes every once and awhile,” Davis said.

“It’s just trying to get him to open up as well. It goes both ways.”

Off the field, Dantonio is quiet, and has a “little pissed off mood sometimes, but he’s a cool guy,” Davis said.

“He’s not overbearing or anything like that,” Davis said. “He really tries to encourage the players and make sure nobody gets down on themselves.”

While Dantonio credits Tressel with showing him the importance of having meaningful relationships with his players, Tressel said it is something Dantonio has always brought to the table.

“I think perhaps that innate value of caring for people has always been a part of who he is,” Tressel said. “It was confirmed as we worked at Youngstown and back here, and then as he’s had a chance to go out and test it on his own.”

Dantonio makes sure his players know it’s all about football, and executing and making plays, but he shows them it’s all about everything else as well, Tressel said.

“When a person knows that’s the way he feels, they’re going to have a chance to perform at their best,” he said.

If there isn’t already enough familiarity between the teams in Dantonio and Tressel’s past, then consider the fact that Tressel’s nephew is part of the Spartans coaching staff.

Mike Tressel is a first-year linebackers and special teams coach, and he’s spent time coaching under both his uncle at Ohio State and Dantonio at Cincinnati.

Dantonio and Jim Tressel’s football philosophies is very similar — they both like to establish the run and play stellar defense, Mike Tressel said.

But Dantonio gets more animated on the sidelines.

“On game day, Mark’s still more outwardly emotional, and coach Tressel is even-keeled,” Mike Tressel said. “You wouldn’t know if they were winning by 40 or losing by 40.”

While the two coaches have an uncanny amount of similarities in the way they coach football, Dantonio refuses to adhere to Jim Tressel’s trademark fashion sense.

“I’m not a sweater vest kind of guy,” Dantonio said.