Former Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel stood next to Ted Ginn Sr. outside a Public Square restaurant Saturday afternoon, Aug. 27.

It seemed fitting that Tressel, making his first public appearance in Cleveland since he resigned in May as Ohio State University’s football coach, would be downtown with Ginn for a weekend that honored the Glenville football coach.

Why? Because no high-school coach in Ohio sent Tressel more talent than Ginn.

Since 1997, his Tarblooders have been the gold standard for athletics in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District. But building a down-on-its-fortunes program into a statewide powerhouse didn’t happen easily.

“I use to go to St. Clair and down to Superior – all over the city – and tell kids to get on the bus because we’re going to a football camp,” he said. “These were kids I didn’t even know. And they’d get on the bus and I’d take them to Erie [Pa.], and the people out there would give them a T-shirt and a Bible.”

He took his football players so far away from their neighborhoods that they couldn’t even dream about getting back home until camp had ended.

“The first two or three days were pretty rough,” said Ginn, whose program has sent Heisman Trophy winner Troy Smith and eight other district students to the National Football League. “They’d call their parents. The kids didn’t want to do anything.”

Yet, he had long believed in a principle that guided his coaching philosophy: Kids don’t care what you know until they know you care.

To Ginn, this philosophy extends beyond the football field. For as proud as Ginn is of his football program, he’s even prouder of the all-boys academy, a Continuous Improvement school that bears his name.

Ginn Academy opened in the Collinwood neighborhood four years ago.

With 230 students, the academy has become one of the district’s most successful schools, taking at-risk teenagers and instilling in them a heavy dose of discipline and plenty of love.

“I did so many things different,’ Ginn once said in an interview for CBS News. “I did what other people didn’t do. I’m going left because, if you’re going right and it’s not working, you gotta do something different.”

But the weekend wasn’t specifically about the academy or Tarblooders football.

The red-carpet weekend was about Ginn and what he has meant to education, to district students, to district athletes and to Cleveland.

Dozens of people showed up for “Coach Ted Ginn Weekend,” which included Saturday’s fundraiser brunch for the Ginn Foundation and Endowment Fund.

“It’s always nice to be recognized for the work that you do for young people and for what you do for your community,” Ginn said. “So any time you can get that, it’s an honor.”