Depending on who you listen to, recently dismissed Ohio State coach Jim Tressel is either a snake who ran a dirty program that still couldn’t keep up with the SEC, or a decent man who went to great lengths to maintain the blissful ignorance needed to run a major college sports program. As with most debates involving two extremes, the truth likely lies somewhere in the middle, a place today’s media rarely shows in interest in exploring.
Throughout the day on the Monday that Tressel and the university announced his resignation, the running theory across Ohio’s sports-talk radio stations was that the Sports Illustrated piece penned by George Dohrmann & David Epstein contained damning evidence which would force the university’s hand in the matter. In an effort to get in front of the story, and possibly even help push the SI piece into the background, the University acted, and requested the coach’s resignation.
Yet, the SI piece, for all of its criss-crossing lines that attempt to connect graft and wrong-doing back to the coach, is strangely sparse on reliable sources or original reporting. No fewer than four of the individuals named as rules violators in and around Tressel’s OSU and Youngstown State programs are also convicted criminals: Former OSU tailback Maurice Clarett, former YSU quarterback Ray Isaac, former Phar-Mor CEO Micky Monus, and a Columbus-area tattoo artist named Dustin Halko. It’s not exactly a group that a reasonable person would view as impeccable.
Beyond that, Dohrmann & Epstein rely primarily on unnamed sources, mainly folks who are or once were connected to the program who ‘fear retribution from Buckeyes fans’. The only other named sources are former OSU wide receiver Ray Small, who Tressel suspended and ultimately kicked off the team for his constant rule-breaking, and a young woman who lived across the street from the Columbus tattoo parlor where many of the memorabilia-for-tats trades are alleged to have occurred. Her length of residence at that address? Six months.
In reality, the two ‘bombshells’ within the story are of questionable severity. The authors indicate that they have confirmation of 28 players who traded gear for tattoos over a period of time dating back to 2002. Considering that last year’s Buckeyes roster numbered 114 (85 scholarship+ walk-ons), and, like most D-I teams, roughly 20-25 scholarship players join the team each year as others graduate, are injured, or transfer, the number seems less a pervasive pattern of corruption than something that would be a concern that needs to be addressed with a handful of suspensions and possibly dismissals from the team.
The other item the authors go into detail about is the purported hang-out above the tattoo parlor. Here, it’s alleged that many Buckeye players would go to hang out with the shop’s owner, play video games, drink, and smoke marijuana and generally be catered to. The mere inclusion of this item in the article indicates that the SI writers want us to be shocked and appalled by the thought that college aged athletes would have access to, and take advantage of, a place like this. Please. Anyone who’s attended even a decent sized school in the past 25 years shouldn’t be the least bit shocked by this revelation. Had the authors been able to tie this to failed drug tests covered up by the University, this would be noteworthy. Yet, nothing of that nature currently exists. The inclusion of this fact is there merely to increase the salaciousness factor.
Those are the major allegations in this story. There are no envelopes of cash delivered to recruits’ mailboxes, no sex parties while on the road, nor any allegations of grade fixing. Any of these would be more damaging than what actually happened at Ohio State.
None of this is to dismiss the fact that there are clearly problems at Ohio State. Despite robust compliance efforts, players under Tressel’s watch stepped outside the lines. Anyone who thinks this doesn’t happen at every top program in the country is lying to themselves. Compounding matters, Tressel hid his knowledge of these incidences, and then lied about that. Ultimately, his biggest mistake may have been thinking that he could protect his players, that they were isolated occurrences that could be dealt with in a vacuum. As the events of the last two days prove, none of that is true. There is no such thing as a vacuum once the NCAA is involved.
No, the point is that once the SI authors sensed an opportunity to bring down a big name college coach, they ran with it. Ultimately, it’s the lying about his knowledge of the memorabilia-for-tattoos transactions that cost Tressel his job. As the investigation went on, Tressel would have likely been forced to resign within the next few months. The facts wrapped into the Sports Illustrated story do little to further the case against Tressel as the mastermind of a corrupt program. However, that wouldn’t serve the effort that these authors put into their piece, which is why we’re presented with stories of crooked boosters loosely connected to his programs and stories of off-campus hangouts owned by sketchy characters. The authors need you to be shocked and appalled, and if the mere facts won’t do it, perhaps a bit of story telling will.
