Thom McDaniels, Jim Tressel kept trying to tell him. Tim Jackson admits he should have listened.

Tim Jackson came to understand he shouldn't have been so impulsive.

He should have played football at McKinley High School.

He should have thought hard about where he was going to college.

He should have listened to Jim Tressel before it was too late.

Jackson has spent his adult life away from Ohio, but he has written a book rooted in his Canton past. "Understanding College Athletics Through the Eyes of College Athletes" comes from a 52-year-old man who remembers what it was like to be 18.

Jackson was in grade school at a momentous time for Canton sports. He watched Ron Stokes and Troy Taylor play basketball for McKinley on their way to being Ohio State teammates. He saw McKinley's football team stand up to the Cincinnati Moeller dynasty and win the 1981 state championship.

He was a freshman when McKinley won the 1984 state basketball title on a team starring Gary Grant, who went on to a long NBA career, and Anthony Robinson, who starred in college and whose son Dominique was picked in the recent NFL draft.

"McKinley's basketball coach, Mike Riley told, me that if I came in in shape, I would start the next year," Jackson recalls. "I believe I was a better football player than I was a basketball player. I loved football. But my football dream died at that moment.

"The idea of starting for McKinley as a sophomore was incredible to me. The entire summer, all I did was work out and run to get ready for basketball. I gave up football."

He was a junior when McKinley's football team returned to the state finals. Thom McDaniels, the football coach, had not forgotten about him.

"Every day, Coach McDaniels reminded me I was a tight end," Jackson said.

Jackson was strong, athletic and tall, at 6-foot-4.

"Tim had great hands and athletic skills," McDaniels says now. "I was certain his talent could translate into a great high school football career.

"He was also likable and willing to work. When our conversations about football concluded each offseason, I was certain he was going to play.

"Someone after my conversation with him thought otherwise. I should have put him in quarantine. My bad."

Under Dave Cady, who replaced Riley as basketball coach for the 1985-86 season, Jackson continued to be a one-sport high schooler. In retrospect, he wonders whether he should have insisted on playing football, too. He relates to Bill Robinson, a 7-foot McKinley center who wound up at Ohio State.

Robinson wanted to put his huge wingspan to work as a goalie on the soccer team.

"Coach Cady is like ... you're not playing soccer," Jackson said. "I'd like to ask Bill how serious he was about being a goalie."

Robinson, now an eighth-grade English/language arts teacher for Canton City Schools, confirms he was serious about being a goalie, in addition to playing basketball.

Cady, an 80-year-old Canton Lehman alumnus, has kept up dual residences in Stark County and Arizona in recent years. He and Jackson have looked up each other in Arizona numerous times.

"I grew up in the era when it was common to letter in three sports," Cady said. "Kent Smith was a Lehman guy who lettered in four.

"Yes, Tim might have been a very good basketball and football player. Yes, Bill talked to me about wanting to be a soccer goaltender. I can't imagine what it would have looked like for people trying to get a soccer ball past him. But I told Bill, 'I'm not going to tell you you can't, but basketball is the sport that's going to get you to college.'"

There was something to be said for working year-round on hoops. McKinley reached the 1987 state championship game. Jackson, Robinson and Terry Jackson combined for 47 points in a 70-65 loss to Dayton Dunbar.

Jackson went on to a four-year run as a basketball starter at Youngstown State, the root of another story.

"I was never recruited by Youngstown, and I never considered Youngstown, before Dave Greer was hired as an assistant coach," he said.

Greer had been an All-Ohio guard at McKinley before playing at Bowling Green.

"Dave told me I was going to Youngstown," Jackson said. "I'm like ... that's your pitch? He said, 'Yeah, I already talked to your parents. You're committing to Youngstown.' It was like, if Dave Greer says I'm going to Youngstown, I'm going to Youngstown.'

"Dave is a family friend and a mentor and a friend, but I didn't know anything about Youngstown. Everything worked out, but it was never a conversation.

"It's a great, funny story now, but ..."

Jackson's book is full of themes inspired by his own experience. Think things through. Talk to as many trusted people as possible. Assume nothing. Practice at game speed. Work.

The book is driven by interviews with players, coaches, trainers and families addressing perception vs. reality. It warns against seeing college athletics as pure fun. It offers tips on making the best of the grind.

As Jackson dug in as a college player, losing was a curveball he didn't see coming.

He started 122 consecutive games across four seasons. He is in Youngstown State's athletic hall of fame. During his four years, though, the Penguins went 7-21 and 5-23 under head coach Jim Cleamons, and then 8-20 and 12-16 under head coach John Stroia.

The football program, on the other hand, made noise under head coach Jim Tressel.

"I heard the same thing from Coach Tressel that I heard from Coach McDaniels," said Jackson, whose body type was along the lines of Antonio Gates. "Every day Coach Tressel reminded me that I was a tight end.

"My biggest regret is not joining the football team in my fifth year. Instead I went on to semi-pro and pro basketball. That was the year Tressel won his first national championship at Youngstown.

"Every day, he would look at me and say, 'You had the chance. You blew it.'"

Over time, Jackson scratched his itch for football by officiating high school and college games.

After YSU, he spent 10 years as an elementary school teacher in the Baltimore and Philadelphia areas. He lived in Arizona for 20 years and left education for a while before moving back east and returning to his original profession. Lately, he has taught at the Norfolk Juvenile Detention Center in Virginia.

In Arizona, he became a workout buddy of former Pro Bowl quarterback Donovan McNabb, comparing notes.

"Donovan might have been a better basketball player than he was a football player," Jackson said.

Jackson came home to Canton recently to address students at Hartford Middle School, where he renewed acquaintances with his old friend Robinson, and McKinley High School.

What made him want to write a book?

"I was officiating a junior college football game several years ago," he said. "There was a break in the action, and I was talking to a stud linebacker. I asked him, 'Is this what you thought it would be?' He said, 'No. I thought it was going to be fun. I appreciate it, but it's not fun.'

"I said, 'What? Nobody told you college athletics is not fun?' He said, 'Nobody did.'

"A few weeks later I was working an Arizona State practice. There was a kid who was injured. I asked him the same question. 'Is this what you thought it would be?' I made the comment that once you're hurt, you're invisible. He laughed and said, 'I don't even exist. No one pays any attention to me.'

"Another time, friends who knew my son, who is 21 now, asked if I could help their son with the process of choosing a college. I thought, you know what, I should write a pamphlet. The message from my wife and others was, you should write a book."

Thus began a five-year project that resulted in his book.

"I put together a questionnaire," he said. "I reached out to friends and former teammates and various people who had been through college sports.

"Before long it became a series of conversations ... people who had kids who went through the process, people whose job it is to help college students.

"There are stories of struggles, of hardship, of joy, of pain ... all these things we wish someone had told us."

Another inspiration was his father.

"With dad," Jackson said, "everything was a lesson."

Jackson hopes the book becomes a staple among schools and coaches. Retired Coach Cady says he has a copy and is proud of the author.

"(Cady) has a granddaughter who is playing soccer at Dublin Coffman," Jackson said. "He told me, 'I'm going to pass the book along to her, because this is stuff she should know.'"

Reach Steve at steve.doerschuk@cantonrep.com

On Twitter: @sdoerschukREP

This article originally appeared on The Repository: McKinley grad Tim Jackson's book helps athletes choose colleges