By Tom Archdeacon

COLUMBUS — His family was driving down to Cincinnati from their Centerville home almost four years ago when Tom Ingham shared his against-all-odds plan with his parents.

He was a University of Dayton football player then — a redshirt freshman who was sure to get plenty of playing time in the coming years — but he told his folks he wanted more. He said he was going to try to transfer to Ohio State and walk onto the football team.

Never mind that no Division I college had recruited him out of Centerville High School, that OSU likely didn’t even know he existed or that at 6 feet and 225 pounds, he was woefully undersized to play on the Buckeyes offensive line.

Joyce Ingham remembers her husband, John, then a U.S. Air Force colonel, giving their son support: “He told Tommy, ‘You don’t ever want to end up some 40-year-old guy looking back with regret.’ ”

And while Tom Ingham has ended up with a lot of things — bruises, disappointing setbacks, some recent football seasons spent in the shadows — one thing he won’t have is regret.

“I’ve always wanted to do something that’s really hard so afterward you can be proud that you accomplished it,” he said.

So what tops his hard-to-do list?

• Is it, after just one previous season of organized football, becoming the starting center at Centerville as a sophomore and ending up, as Elks coach Ron Ullery puts it, being “the best center we’ve ever had in my 33 years at the school”?

Nope.

• How about showing up for walk-on tryouts at OSU three years ago and becoming one of just three guys from a pool of 100 to be kept? Or enduring a serious foot injury that required surgery, then facing another tryout, switching from offensive to defensive line — a position he knew little about — and going against Alex Boone and Kirk Barton, who outweighed him by 80 and 70 pounds, respectively, every day in practice?

Aaah, nope.

• Maybe it’s handling the rigors of big-time football while maintaining a 3.0 grade-point average in mechanical engineering.

Once again, no.

His most ambitious plan is a little less than a year off.

Immediately after graduation this spring — and the shedding of some 50 pounds from the 250 at which he now plays — the fifth-year senior defensive end hopes to grind his way through a year of intensive physical and mental training so he can become a Navy SEAL and be proficient in everything from hand-to-hand combat to high-altitude parachuting and underwater demolition.

“I feel like I owe it to do something like that for my family, my friends and my teammates,” he said as he sat in the Woody Hayes Athletic Complex after football practice.

“For everybody to enjoy the kind of life we have here in this country, somebody has to be willing to do some of these jobs. You can’t always just look to somebody else to do it for you.”

These aren’t just over-hyped but hollow thoughts coming from her son, Joyce said: “One thing about Tommy, he doesn’t just talk it, he lives it.”

‘Kid you root for’

That’s why Ullery — once Ingham told him he was planning to leave UD after a season — sent game films, made phone calls and hammered home one thought with OSU coaches: “I remember telling (defensive coordinator) Jim Heacock, “Whether (Ingham) makes the team or not, you’re going to be dealing with a great kid. He’s smart, he’s got character and integrity, and I think he’s got a tremendous future.

“He’s one kid you can really root for.”

All that said, it hasn’t been easy for Ingham since he got to OSU in the fall of 2006. He contacted the coaches only to be told the team’s roster was set for the season and he’d have to wait for the next walk-on tryouts — in January.

He spent that fall as a regular student, and since he had no tickets to the games — and no connections — he watched the Bucks’ home games on television.

Then a few weeks after surviving the January tryouts, he suffered a compartment syndrome injury on his foot — a medical problem from excessive muscle use that cut off the blood supply and required emergency surgery.

At the time, his dad was in the middle of a two-year stint at the U.S. embassy in Romania.

“(Tom) told me he was going to the doctor to have his foot checked, but he didn’t say anything about surgery and didn’t call me until it was over,” Joyce said. “He told me he knew I was home alone and he didn’t want me to worry.”

That incident tells you plenty about Tom Ingham, who doesn’t seek the limelight, doesn’t like talking about himself and basically just goes about his job without high drama.

After missing spring drills to heal and surviving another tryout, he finally made the team in 2007 as a nonscholarship walk-on.

That season — as a scout team player — he dressed for home games though he never got on the field and didn’t make the traveling squad.

Undaunted — and still paying his own way to school — he returned last season and finally got into four games. After another injury knocked him out of drills this past spring, he’s become a backup special teams player and third-string defensive end, and has played in two games, Illinois and Toledo.

Scout team demon

In a vote by the entire Buckeye team earlier this season, Ingham — along with sophomore quarterback Joe Bauserman, junior long snapper Jake McQuaide and junior receiver Ryan Schuck — was named one of the hardest-working, but most under-appreciated (by the outside world) players on the team.

Unrecognized by many fans, Ingham — No. 57 — is a favorite among his teammates.

“I remember Coach (Jim) Tressel telling me how the offensive line came to him two years ago and lobbied for Tom to be named the scout player of the week because of how hard he went against them in practice every day,” Ullery said. “(Tressel) said that had never happened before. And I think he’s won the award three times now.”

Ingham’s efforts were acknowledged early this season when he was told he’d finally won a scholarship for the winter and spring quarters.

“It felt good when they announced it, but for me it really wasn’t about the financial help finally coming,” he said quietly. “It was about the respect you’ve earned.”

Then again, those who truly know Tom Ingham realize he didn’t need a scholarship for that.

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