| 30 May 2011
I remember watching the Ohio State-Iowa game last November and thinking to myself, “Someday, I’m going to write a column about Jim Tressel.”
At the time, the guy was the most underrated thing going in college football. His teams were drab and predictable, yet always precisely prepared and never seemed to lose games they shouldn’t. They dominated the Big Ten the way Rex Ryan would dominate a hot dog eating contest. And for the most part, their guys stayed out of trouble. Sure there were the Maurice Clarrett and Troy Smith situations. But couldn’t you write Clarrett off as a renegade player, and Smith as getting involved with a renegade booster? Really, couldn’t you blame everyone but the coach in those situations?
No college football program is perfect, but from the outside, Ohio State seemed to be about as close as they came. There were no major NCAA violations. No sketchy recruiting practices. Just a whole lot of 10-win seasons and all those victories against Michigan. Not to mention that the guy had a higher winning percentage (.828) than Woody Hayes. Not too shabby huh?
Either way, I guess it’s safe to say that eight months makes quite a difference. I’m writing my column about Tressel alright, only now it’s because he has resigned as the head football coach at Ohio State, apparently late Sunday night. It was one of those rare stories that was inevitable, yet shocking at the same time.And for the record, that’s exactly what this was: Inevitable. At least if Ohio State wanted to have any semblance of a football program in a year or two from now.
The move was inevitable, because as we’ve learned over the last few years, the programs who comply, get by. Those who don’t? Well that’s another story all together.
Take North Carolina for example. From Day 1, Hour 1, Minute 1 of the first Marvin Austin news breaking last summer, the school did everything short of send the NCAA a gift basket and an apology card with a frowning dog on the front, to show their remorse. They suspended pretty much everyone but their water boy immediately after the news broke, only reinstating guys like Bruce Carter and Quan Sturdivant for their opener after it was egregiously clear that they’d done nothing wrong. Then they went ahead and fired John Blake, and eventually suspended Austin, Greg Little and Robert Quinn for the entire season, with several others missing games along the way too. And you know what? Butch Davis has lived to tell about it. While the sanctions have yet to come out, it does appear that for all intents and purposes, he will keep his job.
Then there’s USC. With an apples-to-apples comparison, what happened at USC wasn’t as bad as what went down at North Carolina. There was only one rouge player at ‘SC (Reggie Bush) and the same number of cheating coaches (Just one. In USC’s case, Todd McNair) trying to cover things up. But from the jump, USC also had an administration that didn’t seem all that diligent in monitoring things, nor all that remorseful when those things were made public. I believe former AD Mike Garrett even said something to the effect of, “They’re just jealous of us.” Sure, they were Mike.
Either way it didn’t help when the NCAA came calling. They hit USC with that two-year postseason ban you’ve likely heard about by now, and scholarship reductions that will pretty much be in place until I don’t know, something like 2030. It happened when USC got slammed with the dreaded, "Lack of Institutional Control," something you never want to hear if you're involved in college athletics.
Another thing that we’ve learned from previous NCAA investigations is that if you lie to the NCAA, the hammer will come down on you. End of story. You…will…not…win. Ever.
Bruce Pearl lied to the NCAA a few months back, and they ended up badgering him and Tennessee until the Vols administration had no choice but to give him the guillotine. On the field, Dez Bryant lied to investigators, and missed most of his junior year. Again, the NCAA is like the strictest group of church parents you’ll ever meet. Lie and you’re not getting a slap on the wrist. You’re getting a belt across the ass.
So in the end, this wasn’t going to end well for either Tressel or Ohio State. Not only did he lie, but he did so egregiously and undeniably, and as we found out, there are even a whole bunch of e-mails to prove it. This wasn’t getting caught with your hand in the cookie jar, as much as it was getting caught with your hand in a bear trap.
Either way, once Tressel played dumb with the whole tattoo situation in December, then got caught lying a few months later, it seemed like right there he was done for. It’s one thing for your players to accept illegal gifts. Plenty of coaches have survived that. It’s another to know about those benefits for eight months, not tell anyone, lie to the NCAA when asked, then get caught in that web of lies. Not too many have survived there (Then again, not too many were dumb enough to put themselves in that situation).
In the end though, you know what else really did Tressel in? The city of Columbus. It literally ate him from the inside out.
And I’m not just talking about the tattoo artists and car dealers that gave his players free stuff, although they certainly didn’t help. Instead, I’m talking about the Columbus media.
Quick side story: Did any of you watch the ESPN “30 for 30,” on SMU? “The Pony Excess”? It was one of my favorites, for the sole reason that if there wasn’t video and photographic evidence to prove what ESPN was telling us, I wouldn’t have believed it was true. Looking back the scene wasn’t just absurd, it was straight unbelievable. Not only was the school paying its players, they were literally signing them to binding contracts. And not only did the coach and a few boosters know what was going on, but it trickled all the way up to the Governor of Texas, who was on the board at the school. Again, you can’t say SMU’s story was like a movie, because no screenwriter could ever come up with something so absurd.
Anyway, one interesting thing about that SMU documentary was the way the local media were described in it. I believe one guy called chasing the SMU stories, “The Wild, Wild, West,” and I believe another said that it “Made a lot of people’s careers,” in the media industry. Basically every reporter in Dallas in the 1980’s was digging and snooping, and asking questions, hoping to break the big one. Again, it made a lot of people’s careers.
Well that was always my take with this Tressel situation: Essentially, that the Columbus and Ohio media were all killing themselves, breaking their backs, busting their butts, whatever term you want to use, to get the big story. It first started with the excellent work of Ken Gordon and the other writers at the Columbus Dispatch, then advanced to Cleveland and the entire state of Ohio. Hell, the Ohio State student newspaper The Lantern even broke a story involving Ray Small last week that set the news cycle for the entire day. You mean to tell me this story didn’t have legs?
And that’s when it became clear that Tressel wasn’t going to live this down. No matter what you thought, one thing was becoming abundantly clear: The longer he stayed, the longer reporters were going to dig. And the longer reporters dug, the more that the Ray Small’s of the world, people with nothing to lose and looking for a bit of notoriety were going to keep talking. Between the cars, tattoos and sold rings and jerseys, this thing had been at Code Red for a while. But if it kept going, it would’ve literally broken the meter.
What will be interesting now, is to see how Ohio State handles things going forward.
As Adam Jacobi and I discussed on my podcast a few weeks ago, the play for Ohio State was always to paint Tressel as a rogue, a one man band of deceit and lies. To say that he acted alone. That he was a mad man that couldn’t be stopped. But with everything that’s come out (including the latest car allegations), can we really say that he was the only one who knew anything?
Either way, now the fun part begins. Because if anything, the Tressel resignation opens up a whole other can of worms.
For starters, it’s going to be a fun year watching and waiting to see what happens with the coaching search.
Simply put, as exciting as an Urban Meyer hire might be, he ain’t signing up anywhere until he knows quite this will all play out with the NCAA. If his old friend from the SEC East, Lane Kiffin taught him anything, it’s that you don’t ever want to take a job at a school under investigation, at least until you know what the sanctions will be. Kiffin was so quick to flee Rocky Top for “The best job in America,” at USC, that he couldn’t see the forest through the trees.
Of course, who knows? Maybe Kiffin would’ve stayed at Tennessee if he’d known what was coming at USC, and maybe he wouldn’t have. But in the midst of this scholarship reduction, it’s very likely that USC will never actually be “USC,” again, at least the way we knew it. In the process, his career will likely never be the same either. So with that said, do you really think Urban Meyer- and the reputation that he comes with- is hopping aboard the next flight to Columbus? I’m not buying it. He may coach at Ohio State someday. Just not until the dust settles with the NCAA.
You know what else I couldn’t help but think about when this news broke? The irony that is Terrelle Pryor.
Now understand, I’m hardly blaming this whole thing on Pryor. That’s not who I am. Plus, from what we know, all the free tattoos and jersey sales were going on well before he got to campus, and would’ve happened whether he went to school there or not. And oh by the way, Pryor never forced his coach to lie or hide e-mails either.
Still, from jump street Pryor seemed to fit in about as well at Ohio State as Charlie Sheen at a church picnic. He was never what Tressel seemed to be about as a coach, a guy who was flashy with substance, who- it seemed like in his own mind- thought he was bigger than the team or the program.
At the very least you can’t deny that both athletically and scheme-wise he never seemed to fit, and would’ve been better off going to another school. Michigan and Oregon both recruited him, and from the beginning, each place made more sense than Ohio State.
Instead, he chose Columbus, and it back-fired.
Yes, Pryor has won a lot of games in Scarlet and Gray. But his NFL stock has never been lower, and it’s hard to see it getting better as he prepares to miss the first five games of next season too. I think it’s safe to say this isn’t what he envisioned when he signed up to come to campus a few years back.
The truth is, we’ll never know how all this would’ve played out if Pryor hadn’t gone to Columbus. The tattoo stuff would’ve come out eventually, but maybe Tressel would’ve reacted differently if his star quarterback, the franchise (for lack of a better term), hadn’t been involved. Maybe he’d still have his job.
Now that’s not to say that I’m not blaming Tressel’s resignation on Pryor, not one bit. When Tressel looks back on his ending at Ohio State (and most likely in college football), it all comes back to one guy: The man in the mirror. Again, Pryor didn’t make Tressel lie, hide e-mails or hold himself a lower level of accountability than his players. Still, it is a little ironic that the best recruit of the Tressel era ended up working out so disastrously, huh?
Either way, I finally got the chance to write my column on Jim Tressel.
Only instead of praising Tressel for his coaching on the field and for the discipline his players showed every Saturday, I’m writing about the exact opposite. I’m writing about the wild lack of discipline the coach showed in handling himself.
Jim Tressel won a lot of games at Ohio State, only unfortunately we’ll never remember him for that.
What a difference eight months makes, huh?
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