So today the news came that Jim Tressel had resigned. I lead with this picture of him because, well, it's like he posed so that it could be used for this moment. A few months ago, when the news broke that Tressel would be suspended for two games (later five) due to NCAA violations, I wasn't surprised. In fact, nobody was surprised, short of the few friends I have who are Ohio State apologists. Even St. Tressel, it seems, wasn't beyond the shred of doubt in this day and age. Anyway, I loudly proclaimed to my Ohio State friends that this would undoubtedly lead to Tressel being dismissed, and I pointed to Tennessee's dismissal of Bruce Pearl as evidence. This prediction was dismissed by my friends, who said there was no way that Ohio State would part ways with Tressel, not after all the championships. And yet here we are, on Memorial Day, with those same Ohio State supporters now having to come to grips with Tressel's departure. How did we get here? What does this mean?I'll answer that, but before I delve to deeply into my thoughts on this, a story. Close your eyes (well, you can't, because you can't read, but you get the picture) and imagine a warm fall day in Indiana's most lovely city: Bloomington. I wake up, shake out the cobwebs, and head over to a friends house. It's my sophomore year, and I live right across the street from our athletic complex, which includes our basketball arena (the legendary Assembly Hall) and our football arena (the significantly less legendary Memorial Stadium). We head over to Memorial stadium, where a friend has been inside for hours saving seats in the first row of the student section.
You see, Indiana University isn't exactly a football powerhouse. In fact, the only time that IU won the Big Ten title outright in Football was 1945. That was also the last time that the Chicago Cubs made it to the World Series. We also won a little skirmish called World War II that year. You get the picture. Anyway, because of this lack of football legacy, the student tickets to our games are cheap, and the seating is general admission. First come first serve. Normally, this means that you come late to the game and still end up with great seats about half way up the grandstand. But not on this morning. On this morning we needed to have a gung-ho friend save us a row of seats, right at the front. And the place was packed by the time we made our way across the street. You see, on this fall morning the number one team in the nation, THE Ohio State Buckeyes, were coming to Bloomington. And we were going to upset them. So we wanted prime seats, so we could rush the field and celebrate the biggest football win in the history of our beloved Indiana University.
Anyway, watch this video (22 seconds only, thank goodness) and you tell me if our fantasy became reality:
Fun Hoosier Fact: we take our football stadium pictures for our brochures when Ohio State comes to town. You know, because we have the same colors, so it makes us look like we pack the house. Needless to say, Ohio State stomped us. But I remember that day for a different reason. On that day a young wide receiver by the name of Ted Ginn Jr. was sitting on Ohio State's bench, as the game spun out of control (about one minute in, if memory serves me correctly). So, being the good natured sports fan you all know me to be, I began a friendly dialogue with Mr. Ginn Jr. It went a little something like this:
Me: Hey Ted, up here. (I pull two twenty dollar bills out of my wallet). I've got forty dollars here for you. Is that enough to get you to come to IU?
Ted Ginn Jr.: Mother****er, that's nowhere near enough to buy me. You *****s have no idea how much they pay me to play here.
At that point an Ohio State coach came over, pulled Mr. Ginn Jr. away, and my impromptu interview was ended. I laughed about it, and then laughed more when Ohio State played Florida in the national title game the next year and got stomped, but nonetheless I will never forget that moment. And I never failed to let my friends who root for Ohio State know about it. So, let's just say I wasn't too shocked that St. Tressel was caught up in something. And I also wasn't shocked that it lead to his ouster.
You see, Ohio State is doing what it has to in an attempt to not be slapped by the NCAA so hard that Woody Hayes entire family feels it. They know they are in trouble, and that decades of cheating is about to be uncovered, so they are throwing Tressel under the bus in an attempt to make the NCAA think, as many sports writers have already put it, that it is a "Jim Tressel problem" and not "an Ohio State problem." This last ditch effort works some times, and it will ultimately come down to how deep the NCAA wants to dig.
But the bigger issue is this: you can't compete in division one major collegiate athletics without doing this. Look at Jim Calapari. The man has had to vacate final four appearances at UMass and Memphis ... the two schools he coached at before Kentucky. It won't shock me in the least if last year's final four appearance by Kentucky is vacated before the decade is up (in fact, it will shock me if it isn't vacated). Calapari is a crook; everyone knows this. But Calapari is a smart crook, and doesn't get caught. And so people keep giving him millions to cheat, because that cheating makes the school tens of millions. Tressel got caught, and so he had to go. This is the deal with the devil you make: you do what everyone else is doing, and you get glory for it if you slide by, and if you get caught ... maybe you're lucky like Calipari, and maybe you have to fall on the sword like Jim Tressel.
But in the big picture, this stuff has been going on for decades at least. Alumni boosters pay players big money, and then they come and play basketball or football for the school. The SEC is the best at it, but it happens at all levels of major (read basketball and football) college sports. The question has become much the same as steroids in baseball. It's not if you will be shocked if someone gets caught, it's who would shock you the most if they got caught. This change in culture is why Indiana University, after being a basketball powerhouse, became an also-ran. Bobby Knight was a lot of things, but cheating wasn't in him. He played by the rules, and so by the 1990s he lost most of the top in state recruits to other schools, because he wouldn't pay to play. IU's trustees finally got tired of losing the right way, and so they brought in Kelvin Sampson ... and the school is still paying for it. Sampson wasn't slick like Calipari, even though he wasn't nearly as corrupt. He was just not smart about it.
So, among active coaches, who would shock me if they got caught? The list is really short, but if I had to combine the sports it would look something like this:
1. Coach K
2. Coach K
3. Coach K
You get the picture? Among major schools, only Duke would shock me, and that's because somehow Coach K manages to win with lesser talent, in a way that football also-ran Notre Dame can't seem to do. I'm 93% sure that Butler will retroactively win last year's NCAA Men's Basketball championship after UConn has to vacate the title for violations under Calhoun (another creep), but who knows. Like Randy Moss said, "if you ain't cheating, you ain't trying."
And like Randy Moss said:
