On homecoming, students and fans alike will come to see who gets crowned king and queen. 

Youngstown State will bring their own royalty with them.

Both Youngstown’s university president and head football coach have made names for themselves at top levels of the game.

University president Jim Tressel won a Bowl Championship Series championship in his second year as coach of Ohio State University. His Buckeyes teams attended a BCS bowl game eight out of ten years and competed for a national championship three times. 

Tressel began his head coaching career at Youngstown State, where he won four national championships in a seven years span — 1991, 1993, 1994, 1997 — and accrued an overall record of 135-57-2 in his 15 years at the university. 

After resigning from Ohio State because of NCAA violations, he then accepted positions with the Indianapolis Colts of the NFL as a game-day consultant and Univeristy of Akron as vice president of student success before being hired to replace current SIU System President Randy Dunn as Youngstown State’s president.

During his time at Ohio State, he coached NFL players such as A.J. Hawk, Donte Whitner, Brian Hartline and Ted Ginn Jr.

Current YSU coach Bo Pelini coached at Nebraska for the past seven years. 

Pelini won at least nine games and attended a bowl game every year of his tenure at Nebraska.

A Youngstown native, Pelini was hired at the university in December last year.

Current NFL players Ndamukong Suh, Prince Amukamara and Ameer Abdullah were coached by Pelini at Nebraska.

Sean Carley can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @SCarleyDE