Institutional control? Ohio State has it

On Friday, 10 Investigates, who has been killing it with news about the Ohio State NCAA investigation, dropped a bombshell: Tressel had alerted the Ohio State administration in December--before the school reported he admitted to knowing--that he had a tip about the NCAA violations. In essence, the report said that the athletic department also lied to the NCAA. Twitter exploded and the internets rejoiced until a full five minutes later when the Columbus Dispatch said, "Remember all that stuff from five minutes ago? Yeah, nevermind." Then they affirmed that the NCAA found no new infractions and OSU wouldn't face a lack of institutional control or failure to monitor.

This made sense, because there's no way OSU lost institutional control. All that happened was the head coach of the most profitable and visible athletic program for their university openly lied to the NCAA and school administrators about knowledge he had of student athletes committing major NCAA infractions while associating with a drug trafficker who was under investigation from the FBI. Institutional control? They have it.

But I'm just a simpleton. Maybe I don't understand what the NCAA considers a lack of institutional control. So what say ye, NCAA?

In determining whether there has been a lack of institutional control when a violation of NCAA rules has been found it is necessary to ascertain what formal institutional policies and procedures were in place at the time the violation of NCAA rules occurred and whether those policies and procedures, if adequate, were being monitored and enforced. It is important that policies and procedures be established so as to deter violations and not merely to discover their existence after they have taken place. In a case where proper procedures exist and are appropriately enforced, especially when they result in the prompt detection, investigation and reporting of the violations in question, there may be no lack of institutional control although the individual or individuals directly involved may be held responsible.

In a situation in which adequate institutional procedures exist, at least on paper, a practical, common-sense approach is appropriate in determining whether they are adequately monitored and enforced by a person in "control." Obviously, general institutional control is exercised by the chief executive officer of a member institution. However, it is rare that the chief executive officer will make decisions specifically affecting the operations of the institution's athletics program. Instead, the day-to-day duties of operation, including compliance with NCAA rules, will have been delegated to subordinates either by specific action or by the creation of appropriate job descriptions. Moreover, it is usually left to senior subordinates, such as the director of athletics, further to delegate various duties regarding compliance with NCAA rules.

In most institutions, especially those with large and varied athletics programs, such delegations are made to a number of individuals who are expected to exercise control over compliance with regard to specific aspects of the program. The specific obligations of such individuals should be in writing, and not merely an understanding among the senior officials of the university and the athletics department. Not only the director of athletics, but other officials in the athletics department, the faculty athletics representative, the head coaches and the other institutional administrators outside of the athletics department responsible for such matters as the certification of athletes for financial aid, practice and competition, are expected to assume a primary role in ensuring compliance. Even though specific action has been taken to place responsibility elsewhere, these individuals will be assumed to be operating on behalf of the institution with respect to those responsibilities that are logically within the scope of their positions. Their failure to control those matters so as to prevent violations of NCAA rules will be considered the result of a lack of institutional control.

So ah...

Emphasis mine for important parts, but isn't this precisely what happened at OSU? Tressel a head coach--a position explicitly stated represents the institution--broke basically every rule outlined here with regards to institutional control. But Ohio State, they have institutional control.

There's a caveat: "In a case where proper procedures exist and are appropriately enforced, especially when they result in the prompt detection, investigation and reporting of the violations in question, there may be no lack of institutional control although the individual or individuals directly involved may be held responsible." This is what the NCAA is going to hide behind. They're already saying that Tressel was a lone ranger who spearheaded this violation machine. Except the NCAA even argues that there need to be measures to promptly detect, investigate, and report the violations. Aside from the fact that Tressel didn't report the violations (hence the inability to report to the NCAA), the idea that this was investigated properly is comical. Not only did the compliance staff eventually learn that he received e-mails and decide "nothing to see here", but they also assured the public that there weren't any other NCAA violations other than those that initially surfaced with regards to Tatgate, which obviously was false.

None of this dismisses the fact that I'm still a simpleton, though. I'm probably just misinterpreting all of this. Maybe the NCAA has a section entitled something like ACTS THAT ARE LIKELY TO DEMONSTRATE A LACK OF INSTITUT... oh...

ACTS THAT ARE LIKELY TO DEMONSTRATE A LACK OF INSTITUTIONAL CONTROL.

A director of athletics or any other individual with compliance responsibilities fails to investigate or direct an investigation of a possible significant violation of NCAA rules or fails to report a violation properly.

When a director of athletics or any other individual with compliance responsibilities has been informed of, or learns that there exists a possible significant violation of NCAA rules, and then fails to ensure that the matter is properly investigated, there is a lack of institutional control. Similarly, if an actual violation of NCAA rules comes to the attention of the director of athletics or a person with compliance responsibilities and there is a failure to report the violation through appropriate institutional channels to a conference to which the institution belongs and to the NCAA, such failure constitutes a lack of institutional control.

......

Among other things, the above section is a word-for-word description of what would constitute a lack of institutional control. Without a doubt, Tressel represents "an individual with compliance responsibilities". He learned of possible significant violations of NCAA rules. He failed to report that violation properly. It's like the NCAA wrote a rulebook specifically for this situation, and when it arose, they just said, "Eh, maybe next time."

In the same section, the NCAA even makes concessions for a university that's been the victim of one malicious employee, but notes that if that happens, the university needs to take action to punish or discharge the individual:

The institution fails to make clear, by its words and its actions, that those personnel who willfully violate NCAA rules, or who are grossly negligent in applying those rules, will be disciplined and made subject to discharge.

Any operating compliance system may be thwarted by an individual who acts secretly in violation of the rules or who fails to ascertain whether a questionable action is or is not permissible. If an institution does not make clear that individual violations of NCAA rules will result in disciplinary action against the involved individual, and if it does not actually discipline those who are found to have violated such rules, it has opened the door to permitting further violations. In such a case, future violations of an individual nature will constitute failures of institutional control.

You almost feel bad for OSU reading that. Poor OSU, being duped by the malicious malcontent Jim Tressel who is so widely heralded for his public service, good deeds, and religious leanings. It's a good thing that they suspended him indefinitely and then fired him immediately upon further investigation. What's that? They initially only suspended him for two games against rollover opponents the following year and the athletic director was worried that Tressel would take punitive action against him?

I mean, how much more blatantly can you exemplify a lack of institutional control than what Ohio State has done throughout this entire process? Worse still is that the $250,000 fine that Tressel was required to pay is now being covered by Ohio State to make him go away quietly.

In years past, you could say that the Ohio State football program was the dirtiest in college football, but you could be tossed off as a hater or part of the witch hunt or just another Michigan fan who is bitter about not beating Ohio State in three decades. But now, with all of this on the table and the NCAA inexplicably looking the other way, we know (we know) that Ohio State is in to epic amounts of dirt. More embarrassingly for Ohio State, we know the athletic department and school president are implicit in the scam. What a fucking mockery.