It's a bit of an understatement to say that Ohio State head coach Jim Tressel and Michigan State head coach Mark Dantonio know each other well.

The two have been friends for years, have coached with and against each other on several occasions, and will meet again this Saturday when Ohio State travels to East Lansing, Michigan to face the Michigan State Spartans.

The fans might be looking forward to it, but the coaches? That's another matter. 

"I don't enjoy playing him; I don't mind telling you that because it's like playing a family member," Tressel said. "But on the other hand, I respect playing him because you know what you're going to get, you're going to get it for four quarters, and you know it's going to be a battle."

Dantonio, who is in his second season at Michigan State after spending three years as the head coach at Cincinnati (2004-2006) after three seasons as Ohio State's defensive coordinator (2001-2003), feels the same.

"I'm not thrilled about playing against coach Tressel," Dantonio said. "I do get excited playing against Ohio State or competing against them because that's where I was a graduate assistant at."

The coaches don't have much of a choice in the matter though, and with each team checking in ranked in the national top 25 with a 6-1 overall record and a 3-0 record in the Big Ten, this weekend's game has plenty of implications for both teams. To add to the importance, Michigan State has several members of their roster who come from the state of Ohio, and they will be itching to knock off their former home-state school.

"I was here at Michigan State for six years and we had the opportunity to play them four years," Dantonio said. "So I think it's a natural thing for a person when you have an opportunity to go back and compete in your home state or compete with that school from your home state, you have a little bit more attention to detail if that's possible and you're a little bit more excited about it. I would say the same thing is true if you're from Oklahoma and you're playing Texas, or you're from Georgia and you're playing South Carolina, so I think that's just sort of hand-in-hand. We have a lot of players from Ohio and a lot of coaches from Ohio, and it sort of makes it exciting because most of your friends and family that you grew up with are sort of centered around that home state team.

"All your friends, all your family, they'll be glued to what you're doing against Ohio State, and I think that's what makes it exciting and an unforgettable experience. That's what life should be about."

One of those players is senior running back Javon Ringer. A graduate of Chaminade-Julienne High School in Dayton, Ringer was rated as one of Ohio's top prospects coming out of high school. Ohio State wanted Ringer, but things didn't work out.

One legend has Tressel going to then-university president Karen Holbrook and personally asking for Ringer to be let into OSU, but Tressel shot down that story. 

"I'm not sure that's exactly accurate, no," Tressel said. "We definitely wanted him to come here and it didn't work out, but I don't remember any conversation. You know sometimes how stories grow? I think that one grew a little bit. But there's no question about it -- we would have loved to have him come here and it didn't work out. Like most things in life, they work out for the best, and he's having a tremendous career at Michigan State. He's with a great coaching staff at a great school, and he's a difference maker."

Tressel talked more about what made Ringer such an appealing prospect.

"I think the first thing that you notice about Javon Ringer is the character, the person that he is," Tressel said. "He's just a quality guy. He lights up a room when he walks in. He lights up a huddle when he walks in it, and he lights up the field when he takes the ball. He's just a quality person and a tremendously hard worker. He's handled the adversity of having a couple injuries early in his career and came back bigger and stronger and tougher. He's everything you would dream of having in a back.

"Ringer is a special guy. He lifts up the entire football team. He runs with such power and quickness and does anything you want.... He's just a great leader, a tough guy. You better keep him in check or he can run wild. The difficult part about that is you have to keep such an eye on him that Brian Hoyer does a good job with his passing game, and they've shown, especially these past couple weeks, that if you get too overboard with trying to stop Javon Ringer, they're going to burn you."

Dantonio also shed some light on what makes Ringer a unique individual.

"I think the thing that you notice about him is he never has a down day," Dantonio said. "He's not the kind of guy that's going to come out and be salty or anything like that. He's going to always be very positive. He's always going to have a smile on his face. He's not going to allow things to dampen his spirit. I think his faith as a person gives him great strength in that area, and he always sees the good in people. He makes everybody around him have a little bit better day, not just as a player, being the player he is, but he's uplifting in terms of the way he handles people."

With 1,112 yards and 14 touchdowns through the first seven games, Ringer is mentioned by many analysts as one of the top contenders for the Heisman Trophy. But Dantonio says that wins need to come first, then the rest will take care of itself.

"We think here that first of all, Javon is not out for individual honors," he said. "When we have success as a team, we'll receive more media exposure. When we receive more media exposure, obviously he's going to get more because he's going to be very instrumental in us winning football games. I think the two will sort of feed off each other. I think that realistically for him, we're going to have to have a football team that's going to have to go to a New Year's Day bowl game. I think that's realistic in the way we have to approach things, but he's doing an outstanding job, and if he has the numbers, then we'll probably have the wins."

Ringer has accumulated the numbers on a very heavy workload, averaging 35 carries a game. Some observers have wondered if Ringer will wear down as a result.

"As we've worked through the season, it seems like he's become stronger in the fourth quarter, so many of his yards have come in the fourth quarter," Dantonio said. "He's an extremely well-conditioned athlete; he's extremely durable and is very tough, so we've used him when we've needed him, and we've needed him a lot. So I guess the answer to your question is, we go through it and we start to say, 'Okay, who do we want to carry the ball?' It's Javon.

"Last year, we had Jehuu Caulcrick to sort of take a little stress off of him in terms of that way, but this year, we sort of went the duration with him. Whether we we'll continue to do that or not remains to be seen. It just depends on how tired he gets and where he would be at from a durability standpoint. Thus far, he's not the kind of guy who wants to stand on the sideline. He wants to be in the thick of it."

Ohio State of course has a big-time running back of their own in Chris Wells. Dantonio praised Wells and discussed the similarities between Wells and Ringer.

"(Wells is) a very powerful runner, great explosiveness, big strong back, stiff-arms people, a stiff-arm runner," Dantonio said. "I think that he is everything that he is touted to be. He's an outstanding running back and a future guy that will play on the next level. He's a guy that we've got to  be able to -- I don't want to say stop, but be able to control on Saturday to be successful.

"I think that they both have the ability that when they get into the secondary that they're difficult to tackle, in a different way a little bit. I think the thing that you see is they both attack the line of scrimmage, and they both have a lot of confidence in themselves, which is a key ingredient. And they've both got toughness."

Another player sure to get plenty of attention in Saturday's game is Ohio State quarterback Terrelle Pryor. Dantonio talked about just how impressive it is for Pryor (and fellow freshman Mike Brewster) to be running the show on offense this early in their career.

"I think it's extremely difficult," Dantonio said. "I don't think you see that very often. You look at a team like Notre Dame and (Jimmy) Clausen starting last year as a true freshman and see the problems he experienced as a true freshman. Terrelle as a freshman is asked to do a lot of things back there. He sees a lot of coverages and a lot of pressures, a lot of different things. He's working with a true freshman center as well in (Mike) Brewster, so right up the middle of their offense, two of the more important people -- probably the most important person on the offensive line and the most important person on your offense is your quarterback and your center.

"It talks about a tremendous amount of maturity I think when you have young people that can do that at a high level in an environment such as the Big Ten conference when you have to go on the road or play at home for that matter in front of 100,000 people every weekend and on national TV and with the media exposure. That young man has to have an outstanding work ethic, and he has to have a large amount of patience and maturity. It's not done very often. You can look around the country; there's not many people able to do it."

Tressel says that despite the attention and success, Pryor still remains well-grounded.

"The neat thing about it is, Terrelle has been the same all along," Tressel said. "He was a humble guy when he was being recruited. One of the first things he did after he made a decision to go to Ohio State was to connect with Todd Boeckman, our quarterback, and let him know that he wanted to learn from him and he was there for him and develop a relationship with him. He did the same thing when he came on campus with the rest of our team. He's just a very engaging guy, a humble guy, a hard-working guy, and he hasn't changed a bit as he's gotten in the lineup. Obviously it's a lot to ask of a young freshman who didn't have spring ball and all he had was sparse reps in the preseason, but he's a great learner, and every game, every snap he gets, he learns a lot more."

Pryor's test against Michigan State will be another tough one. The Spartans were a heavy underdog in last year's game against Ohio State in Columbus but still managed to give the Buckeyes a scare, falling short 24-17.

"The thing about Michigan State is they're not going to beat themselves," Tressel said. "They're going to force you into errors, whether it's overcommitting the run and they're going to kill you with the pass, or they do a great job of testing your pass protections. I know they caused one interception and one fumble against us last year with pass protection problems that were both taken back for touchdowns. So they're not going to beat themselves, but yet they put the kind of pressure on you that they cause you beat yourself."

With Michigan sputtering out of the gates to a 2-4 record, Michigan State has taken over as the state's top program, at least for the time being. Dantonio has received plenty of praise for his team's success, and Tressel explained the mind-set Dantonio brought with him to make that possible. 

"The thing about Mark is that he has a plan," Tressel said. "He's not going to waver from the plan. It starts with having great character amongst his players and coaches, doing things the right way, making sure that the whole picture is a part of it and not just the football picture. He's going to demand toughness. He's going to demand tough work ethic. He had great familiarity with Michigan State having been an assistant there for six years, so he knew the nuances and the history and the things that make Michigan State click. So as he took the job there, he could just hit the job running because that was like going back to a home that he had in the past.

"He's done a great job of methodically demanding things from his staff and players. Now they've seen the proof that if you do things right, good things are going to happen."

Not surprisingly, Dantonio credits Tressel with helping to mold him into the coach that he is. 

"I've tried to take a little bit from everybody I've worked with and for and played for," Dantonio said. "Certainly Jim Tressel is one of those people, Nick Sabin is one, Glen Mason is one, Dom Capers. I think the thing I take from Jim Tressel is to believe in your players, patience --he has an extremely large amount of patience -- and to believe in your people, and build it slowly and build it the right way, and build it so that it will last. It's not something that happens in one or two years. We're in our second year here, but it's something that's got to be built over the long haul because you do want it to last. He's done it the right way, with belief in his people, and the intangibles and the patience he reflects as a person is critical."

Tressel has been thrilled with Dantonio's success after moving on from his position as Ohio State defensive coordinator.

"I felt great pride when he went over to Cincinnati and did such a great job," Tressel said. "Obviously we got to hear about it every day since it's right here in state. Now that he's in our league, we get to see it first hand, watch it on film and watch it in the standings in the Big Ten statistics or whatever. So you do take great pride. I knew what kind of person he was and we hated to lose him, but on the other hand, I enjoyed losing him because I knew he would go and represent. The thing about Mark is Mark's good for the game of football, and anything that's good football is good for all of us."

The two coaches still occasionally find a chance to talk, although being the head coach of a major college football program has cut into the amount of time available for conversation.

"It's probably less now because we're both busy as you could possibly be, but any chance we get, we sit and commiserate at times or scheme at times or whatever," Tressel said. "He's a guy that I grew up with in coaching. I was a young assistant coach at Ohio State when he was a young graduate assistant. We kept our relationship for five years. We worked together at Youngstown and always kept in contact between the time we separated there and the time we came back together at Ohio State in 2001 and spent three years building the program here in the direction we wanted it to go, then he had his chance to go on. I was certainly pushing that and applauding it and suggesting it to the Cincinnati brass. We've been able to keep our relationship."

Notes:

Tressel provided an injury update today, naming the status of several players. "We will have Dane (Sanzenbacher) back," Tressel said. "Dan Herron, we probably won't know the answer to that until after Wednesday's practice. He's a little bit further behind than Dane. I think his was a little bit more significant of a concussion than Dane's, but Dane will be back for certain. Danny we hope will be back. Rory Nicol will be back for us. Austin Spitler will be back, who we've been missing. Lawrence Wilson, who went out during the Purdue game with an injury, will not be back this week."