Tressel said starting linebacker Ross Homan should return Saturday after missing two games with a foot injury.
Notes from Jim Tressel's news conference today:
* Tressel expects starting weakside linebacker Ross Homan to be ready after missing the last two games with a foot injury. Homan had been making good progress, but Tressel confirmed what had seemed like the plan.
"Just like the trainer said, the key will be how does he do two days in a row to see if there's any issues, but based upon after Sunday, I would say no doubt," Tressel said.
* On his 2-4 record after bye weeks, Tressel said there's no common theme he can other find other than playing good teams. The Buckeyes lost to UCLA in 2001, Wisconsin in 2003, Northwestern in 2004 and Penn State in 2005. Ohio State's only bye week in the last four years was in 2008, and the Buckeyes beat Northwestern the next week.
"(The bye week record is) probably irrelevant if we become 3-4. It becomes a big deal if we become 2-5 like most things," Tressel said. "Probably the most impactful thing about bye weeks is who you play after the bye. And I know we played Penn State after the bye in '05 and we were going to end up with a good team in '05, we felt, we weren't great yet, we felt. And that was a September bye, which is probably not a great time for a young team to have a bye.
"We came back and we didn't beat Penn State, so that's obviously one of those four. If there was a formula as to how to do your bye week, we'd all use it, but it's according to where you are health-wise, where you are development-wise, but it's probably most impacted by who are you playing after the bye and so we're playing a pretty good team after the bye."
* After studying the Buckeyes' own offense through the first nine games during the time off, Tressel said there wasn't anything that surprised him.
"I think we affirmed some of the things we were thinking, that we were improving running the ball. The thing that we all know is that we throw the ball pretty well when we have good protection, that we're a good football team when we don't turn it over and when we can come up with takeaways, all of the things that you'd think," Tressel said. "There was nothing that really popped up and said, oh, my gosh, you know, I thought we'd be better than this at that or we've got to stop doing this, start doing more of that.
"We need to be balanced. In this day and age, balance is so critical and we've gotten to the point, I think, where we've got probably better balance right now than maybe since Troy (Smith) was a senior (in 2006). So now we've got some real challenges to find out how well we can do with that balance coming up, but nothing alarming."
* Saturday's game will match the two winningest active coaches in major college football, with Joe Paterno's 400 wins at Penn State against Tressel's 237 wins at Ohio State and Youngstown State.
"It means there's a huge disparity between one and two. That's the biggest thing it means to me," Tressel said. "Where did all those guys go in between us two, or am I that close to there? I don't know."
* Tressel and OSU staff member Bob Tucker where honored with the Patrick Henry Award from the National Guard Association of the United States for their support of the guard over the years.
"Patrick Henry said 'Give me liberty or give me death.' I say, 'Give me no turnovers or give me death,'" Tressel said after being given the award.
Maj. Gen. Gregory L. Wayt, Ohio adjutant general, handed out the awards today, and told a story about visiting Iraq soon after Tressel was there on a college football coaches tour in 2009. He said the soldiers he spoke with said Tressel was the most popular coach among the military personnel.
Maj. Gen. Wayt makes the presentation to Tucker and Tressel in this video