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.

How Deep [The Delusion] Went

My dad runs a soup kitchen in Detroit. Of the various good deeds that the kitchen does--handing out food, clothes, toys for children, furniture, etc.--they hand out turkeys during major holidays. Often, professional athletes will come by to hand out food to the needy. My dad said Joey Harrington was one of the nicest people he's met there, and he has a fairly derogatory story about Rip Hamilton's near no-show and subsequent skeeze, but that's for another day.

Rich Rodriguez spent significant time at the U of M Children's hospital, as did a number players from the team. Brock Mealer can nearly walk now because of Rodriguez's generosity. The now-annual Spring Game has become a massive fundraiser for Mott's Children's Hospital.

The NBA has The NBA Cares program. Professional football and hockey players find themselves doing charity work frequently. With stature, money, and influence comes significant responsibilities, one of which is to give back to the community. And given their position as role models--despite what Charles Barkley will have you believe--that means going to hospitals, soup kitchens, and helping the less fortunate. Jim Tressel, in this regard, is not remarkable. He's not unprecedented or special. He's someone doing what he's supposed to do with the influence and money he's earned.

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I've recently spent a lot of time dedicated to reading and commenting on Eleven Warriors, and if anything stands out, it's the writers' utter lack of clarity and delusion about Tressel and the NCAA violations. Even in the face of widespread allegations, the site spent more time writing feel-good missives about why it might not be as bad as it seems and defending Tressel, rather than looking at the facts, investigating the situation, and checking precedent to discover where this might all end up. That's an editorial decision they've made, but their site is also significantly more successful than mine, so what does that say about me?

Regardless, Ramzy's latest might be the most ham-fisted defense I've read of Tressel. When all else fails, why not play to people's emotions to get them behind your argument? Ramzy waxes poetic about Tressel & Co. helping out at the hospital before the 2006 The Game, and tries to make you really understand just what a Good Guy Jim Tressel is. The problem is that frankly, no one could give two shits about whether or not he's a God-fearing man who gives to charity and helps the community. We care that he's a lying, deceitful, priggish coach that has cheated his way to major college football dominance.

Even Ramzy's defenses of Tressel admit the problem but shrug it off like, "Well no big deal because he says hi to children who idolize him":

He put his own standards ahead of the NCAA's.  He wrote The Winner's Manual and played by his own rules.  Tressel never had eminent domain over college football; the NCAA does.  It's not his game, it's theirs.  They have their own manual, and as far as they're concerned, it's the only manual.  Plausible deniability and willful ignorance have successfully maneuvered around that manual for years.  Tressel operated like this for years, up until last April.

As an Ohio State fan, you stop writing after that first sentence, right? Isn't that the whole point? That for years and years, Tressel has done things outside of the rules that everyone was playing under? Tressel doesn't even feign compliance with the NCAA. He has blatantly skirted any rule that would hinder his team's on-field success. Is that indicative of a quality, stand-up guy, even one that--as is likely mandated of him by the school--gives back to the community?

So now he's gone.  Ohio State's next head coach will not graduate more players at the same rate that Tressel did.  He won't send more two or three-star recruits to the NFL like Tressel did.  He won't positively alter the lives of more men than Tressel did.  He will not raise more money for more good causes than Tressel did.  He won't win more games than Tressel did.

This is the crux of Ramzy's argument though he doesn't realize it: Dude idolizes Tressel above all rational perspectives. To Ramzy, and much of the Ohio State community, Tressel is all there is. Years ago, it stopped being the Ohio State football team and became the Jim Tressel football team. Players, fans, and even the administration followed him blindly, and the loss of Tressel feels like the loss of the program. Because Tressel beat Michigan and because he brought them a national championship and because he frequently won the Big Ten; all of this adds to the Golden God legend of Jim Tressel, in spite of overwhelming evidence that all of those accolades were achieved with the assistance of widespread, massive rule breaking that he undertook because he felt more important than Ohio State or the NCAA.

Speaking of the next OSU coach,

He might police players more closely than Tressel did, but at what cost?  College kids shouldn't have bad choices removed from their list of options.  That might help with NCAA compliance, but it doesn't help anyone become a useful adult.  Players should be taught to make better decisions and face tougher consequences.

It's like Ramzy didn't learn anything from this entire situation. It's not the mistakes of student athletes that are problematic here, it's the wanton disregard for NCAA rules and the harboring of a culture that promotes lawlessness. Policing players is probably 50% of a coach's job (sad as that is to say). More to the point, Tressel did police players, he just had no moral compass. Despite arguments significantly to the contrary, it takes a special kind of malice to disregard your employer and governing body with the aggressiveness that Tressel did. Because while it's not proven, Tressel actively participated in the corrupt culture that has manifested in Columbus during his tenure.

The funny part is that Ramzy thinks it's all over, that the war has been lost and they're left to lick their wounds...

They turned over every rock in Columbus, Youngstown and everywhere in between to find every last molecule of dirt that they could to further bury a man who unleashed an avalanche on himself by committing what will go down as the sloppiest beguiling in Ohio history: A cover-up undone by he who started it.

...which, sorry, but it's about to get a lot worse. The Sports Illustrated article nary upturned a single stone. With the NCAA looking into Terrelle Pryor and his brazen car violations and the potential ring of illicit car deals that were being given out like candy to players and their families, the SI article did little more than scratch the surface. Hell, why do you think OSU is still withholding information shared between booster Ted Sarniak and Pryor? If you believe what the athletic department is slinging, then there's no rationalizing this situation for you.

Eleven Warriors has been of the impression, from the beginning, that this happens at every school and that the media is out to get Ohio State but, is it? Michigan was recently invaded by NCAA folk and found nothing but a few minutes of over practicing. There's a reason that Ohio State has self-reported significantly more secondary violations than any other school in the last 9 years: they commit far more than anyone else. More importantly, Ohio State has been the media darling for years and years. They were even able to convince the NCAA to allow Pryor & Co. to play in a game that they were ineligible for. This is not a conspiracy. This is shining a light on the dirtiest program in college football and the ousting of a corrupt head coach that had become the forebearer for a culture of cheating.

Hopefully Ohio State fans can come back to reality and start supporting a program and a coach that's not constructed on lies, cheating, and a disregard for the NCAA. Then again, this is pretty fun.

Tressel and the bombshell that never dropped

The last few days have been anxious times. As Michigan fans, or simply fans of college football, news of Sports Illustrated's bombshell against Ohio State's football program and head coach Jim Tressel couldn't come sooner. When the article finally came out, though, it read more like a rehashing of what everyone already knew, and failed to make the real point that the magazine's investigation hinted at: That since 2002, there has been at least one widespread illegal benefits institution in Columbus that Jim Tressel knew about, in addition to hints of complementary ones that rounded out a lavish life of excess and disregard for NCAA rules by the players and coaches.

Regardless of the SI article, Tressel was a dead man walking at Ohio State. If it weren't the administration that did him in, the NCAA was likely to hit the coach with a show-cause penalty that would've effectively ended his career at Ohio State--that penalty is a guarantee now. With rumors beginning to swirl that SI was about to drop a bombshell on Tressel and the program, the board of trustees had to act swiftly and, in spite of the terminology the university is slinging about "resignation", fire Tressel. Make no mistake, his firing was inevitable.

In the face of the rumors and Tressel's resignation, SI's epic, program-implicating story reads like a whiff of massive proportions. Of the many words in the piece, only a few were of immediate importance to the NCAA. In particular, the article accused up to 28 players of receiving improper benefits since 2002, mostly consisting of the tattoos several of the team's current players are already serving punishment for. There were other allegations (that the players also smoked marijuana bought with traded, NCAA-violation goods), but much of the article was fluff or regurgitated information we already knew or had assumed.

There was a big song-and-dance to rehash all of the violations and improprieties of Tressel's career, dragging his name and reputation mercilessly through the mud; a reputation that was, admittedly, built on lies, ignorance, and cheating. But the cars OSU players are driving around campus? Just more hearsay, albeit believable hearsay. Pay for play schemes? Nowhere to be found. Implications of cooperation by the AD or Tressel? Nonexistent.

But in that last potential allegation was the meat of the SI article and where they missed their greatest opportunity. Authors George Dohrmann and David Epstein dug around and uncovered a bunch of information that most people had assumed already existed. But they also found connections between boosters, companies, Tressel, and the Ohio State program but never made the bold statement or argument that everyone was looking for: That Tressel knew about, encouraged, and harbored a culture of cheating and recklessly flaunting NCAA rules, including massive improper benefits by big-time program boosters. Instead, they basically assembled an NCAA report on violations with a few reporterly bits added in. But it's not SI's job to report to the NCAA. It's their job to find the facts and report a narrative. Their narrative is missing a climax, even if it's one that is pieced together through abounding circumstantial evidence and common sense.

The story's impact should not be disregarded. Despite it amounting to little more than "more players got tattoos", the article points out that, well, "more players got tattoos". This might seem minor in the face of all the other allegations facing the program--and those rumored to be included in the SI article--but there are now 22 new major NCAA infractions that have been levied against the school; violations that most familiar with the program claim a coach would be negligent to ignore. If all or many of them are viable cases against the program, this investigation more or less assures a "Lack of Institutional Control" penalty be added to the school's punishment.

Meanwhile, the NCAA is reportedly launching the real investigation, the one that looks at Terrelle Pryor and his plethora of new cars, that, in addition to the ongoing improper car deals that the NCAA is currently investigating. Unfortunately for SI's sake, the shock and awe everyone was anticipating seemed to dissipate with little in the way of new discoveries. But then again, this might not have been the final crescendo, rather a key scene in the decline of the Ohio State football program.

Woooooooo

I have no other sentiments for the time being, just wooooooooooo.

Dragged through the mud: The Ray Small edition

I don't know Ray Small. Not in a personal sense or any other. If you had said "Ray Small" to me three days ago, I'd recognize the name, but I wouldn't think blinding hatred and rage. Because I don't know who Ray Small is. The internet tells me he's a former Ohio State wide receiver that made 61 career catches and was frequently in Jim Tressel's dog house.

But Ray Small is a terrible person. I know that because every Ohio State fan, blogger, and player (current or former) is going out of their way to drag his name through the mud and make him sound like a pedophile that just happened to have the ball skills to suit up for the most successful college football program of the last decade.

I'd feel bad for him if he wasn't such a crappy human.

What did Small do to draw such ire? He told a newspaper that he committed the same NCAA infractions that the Tatgate crew did, and that most other Ohio State football players did the same. Nevermind that the NCAA has already caught five players taking part in this scandal, or that Small would have intimate knowledge of what he did while at Ohio State, or that the FBI and NCAA are currently investigating countless cases of misdeeds by a local car dealership which may or may not have sold Ohio State players cars at unreasonable prices, or the amount of circumstantial evidence that says Ray Small was just truthfully answering questions asked of him. He's full of shit, at least according to all of his former teammates:

There are a lot more where that comes from and Ramzy at Eleven Warriors took great satisfaction in compiling all of them. Which makes you wonder: What is this brotherhood that Ohio State fans and players keep clammoring about and why is it so pissy? You might remember Kirk Herbstreit who went through a similar onslaught just a few months ago after criticizing how Tressel runs the program. It appears that the undying bond of Ohio State football players is unbreakable, at least until you stop falling in line behind Jim Tressel. But isn't that what got the school in this predicament in the first place?

This reminds me of when Toney Clemons spoke to the Detroit Free Press about Practicegate. A similar situation: a "disgruntled" player speaks about the improprieties of his former program. Except Clemons left Michigan in search of greener pastures, and even he rescinded his comments, saying they were taken out of context. Small, despite his low stature on the Tressel Hierarchy stuck with the program throughout his college career. Small isn't Clemons, obviously, but sorry if I find trouble seeing the Disgruntled Pissy Former Player angle that the Ohio State internets are selling like Girl Scout Cookies.

But maybe he is a bad dude. Maybe he had a bone to pick and he's lying through his teeth. It's a quality you might expect from someone coming out of Tressel's program. Then again, I tend to think that people are mostly trustworthy, and if we've learned anything over the last few months, it's that Ohio State football players always tell the truth on the internet.

Tressel's singular demonstration of deceit

Now that the NCAA Notice of Allegations has finally dropped on Ohio State and Tressel, we have actual, concrete evidence that this is going to be bad for the Senator. How bad is yet to be determined, and nearly everyone is throwing out his opinion as to what the university should do with its maligned leader. Popular opinion is that Tressel should be fired yesterday, and the school should lick its wounds and try to recover in the coming NCAA-sanctioned years. One place you won't find that is the delirious Eleven Warriors, which I usually really like but has been off its rocker with Tressel coverage. Basically every day, we're treated to a new diatribe about the wonders of Jim Tressel and the idea that this is all some giant ESPN conspiracy to destroy the university because Look, even Kirk Herbstreit has been poisoned by that well.

Even though Michigan recently went through this NCAA violation process itself, it pales in comparison to what Ohio State is about to endure (though the media scrutiny was probably stronger in Michigan's case given the widespread hatred of Rodriguez). I imagine that for Eleven Warriors, Tatgate is a bit like an 8-year-old watching his parents divorce: denial, crippling fear, and the desire to find a way to fix all of this. Unfortunately, what's done is done, and when they stumble out missives like this...

As you sit at your computer, bleary eyed and fuzzy headed, you might have fleeting thoughts that the inanity of yesterday might've just been a dream. Maybe, just maybe, the avalanche of opinions and commentary about what was essentially a non-story continuation of what we already knew didn't really happen. Maybe for once people took a reasoned approach to what was nothing more than a letter from the NCAA saying "Okay fine. See you in August." Maybe instead of reading fatuous articles by people with no real knowledge of the situation, Batman gave you the keys to his cave, and you and Alfred hosted the best Spring Break party Bill Bellamy ever saw.

But I am here to tell you that you're wrong. All of those articles and interviews happened. People really did go nuts. And Alfred is way too old to party (so is Bill Bellamy, for that matter).

... it's almost depressing to read their paranoia and delusion.

The arguments in favor of Tressel have changed. A month ago, Tressel was a Good Guy with a good track record, but now that the other shoe has finally dropped, the argument has become, "Well, this happens at every school." The problem is, I don't think it does, and if you do, your view of college football is far more pessimistic than mine.

The argument that this happens everywhere is missing the point: sure, players sell memorabilia at schools--this, I bet, happens almost universally at major institutions--but a coach with actual proof of it that lies to the NCAA? That doesn't happen everywhere. So while coaches might "know"/assume that the sale of jerseys et al happens under their watch, they know in the same sense that high school teachers know that their students are probably copying each others' homework; so long as it doesn't come to anyone's attention, they're not going to take the initiative to dig it up. And frankly, turning the other cheek for something so erroneous doesn't bother me.

However, what doesn't happen at every school, is a coach with full knowledge of these transgressions willfully and repeatedly lying to the NCAA and school administrators while divulging information that he said was confidential to a bunch of boosters. Over the last 12 months, Tressel has dug his own grave, on his own accord. This doesn't happen at every school because there aren't many coaches that are this conniving. Bite the bullet, admit your players did wrong, and live to fight another day. Tressel decided he was better than that and because of it, he's going to lose his job.

Frankly, there's no real argument that he shouldn't. Tressel has repeatedly skirted NCAA sanctions for improper benefits, and when the case finally got big enough that it would seriously harm his program's on-field production, he did everything in his power to make sure it never saw the light of day. Tressel spent hours calculating and mitigating this risk, and in doing so, committed the cardinal sin in the NCAA. And for a man who has so frequently avoided the NCAA's punishment, comeuppance is going to be severe, and most importantly, deserved.

The media and Jim Tressel

There's not a whole lot that I can say regarding the Jim Tressel TatGate/LieGate situation that you don't already know: Tressel, after receiving e-mails in April that said several of his players may be ineligible for selling memorabilia in exchange for goods, failed to notify his supervisors or the NCAA, and on three separate occasions, either withheld information or lied about what he knew. The school eventually uncovered the e-mails and, after a leak in the athletic department, the public got a hold of the information. In response, Ohio State, seemingly without acknowledging the gravity of the situation or taking note of precedent, thought a two-game suspension (against cupcakey cupcakes) and a $250,000 fine was sufficient punishment.

To say that the media has fallen in two groups regarding the punishment isn't even accurate. It's nearly unanimous that these penalties are a gross miscalculation. But the two sides of the argument fall on either side of the "Tressel is a good guy" line. Count me on the side that's currently lined up outside Torch and Pitchfork'R'Us like it's Black Friday, anticipating the NCAA's eventual ruling on the matter.

After living in Ohio for two years, I have a fair amount of friends that are both Ohio State sympathizers or worse, fans. When these allegations broke, I suggested that this is going to be very bad for the school, to which they all responded "h8r" and laughed when OSU announced their self-imposed penalties. My best guess as to the NCAA's punishment--3-5 years probation, vacating 2010's wins, a show-cause penalty on Tressel, and, depending on whether or not the Lack of Institutional Control, Failure to Promote an Atmosphere of compliance, and Failure to Monitor charges stick, possibly also scholarship reductions--appeared far fetched at best. But as the media snowball continues to grow, those feel ever likely.

The strangest part of all of this has been the response of the media. Some people are already calling for Tressel's head and others are saying that stronger penalties are in order but Tressel should keep his job. Those in defense of The Senator, however, seem to rely on only one piece of "evidence" as means for dismissal of these charges: "B...but he's such a good guy." This, however, is also a crock.

As MGoBlog laid out on Wednesday, throughout Tressel's entire career, he's had multiple high-profile players declared ineligible because of improper benefits but somehow managed to skate by without any penalties whatsoever. And that's not to mention the 375 secondary violations that Tressel's program has self-reported between 2000 and 2009. Six: the number of secondary infractions that "sleazeball" Lane Kiffin committed at Tennesse. Thirty-seven: the average number of secondary infractions that Tressel's program commits every year for the last decade. Because Tressel is generally reserved and speaks Lloyd Carr levels of cryptic gibberish when he's asked anything specific, he's avoided being thrown under the bus the way media whore Kiffin was*.

Have you read a single defense of Tressel in this whole mess that didn't try to justify Ohio State's lenient penalties with anything other than "But he's such a stand-up guy"? Tressel and Ohio State don't have a leg to stand on here. Your reputation as a quality coach and good guy--however tenuous that actually is--don't hold up when you commit a flagrant violation of the rules** that took a near inquisition to unwillingly uncover.

The NCAA will make a mockery of itself if it doesn't come down hard on Ohio State and Tressel. I'm not sure if the show-cause penalty, which would essentially terminate Tressel, will come to pass, but if it doesn't, significant scholarship reductions and a long probation will be necessary, as will other serious penalties when/if the NCAA finds more infractions during their ongoing investigation of the school. Tressel finally got caught with his hand in the cookie jar he's so frequently dipped into. This was bound to happen, which makes it all the more enjoyable.

*I'm not standing up for Kiffin here. That idiot deserved everything that he received. But when you hold compare the two's relative adherence to NCAA law, Kiffin comes out ahead.
**Aside from the massive penalties that the NCAA should levy against Ohio State, Tressel's violations did one very important thing for Michigan fans: it ostensibly stopped Michigan State from winning an outright Big Ten title. Even if OSU has to vacate its 2010 record, it doesn't forfeit the games it won leaving MSU and Wisconsin to share the title. This is funny.