Back to the future - Michigan Basketball in the 90's and OSU football today
From Wikepedia:
The University of Michigan basketball Ohio State Football scandal or Ed Martin Ed Rife scandal was a six-year investigation of the relationship between the University of Michigan, its men's basketball teams and basketball team booster Ed Martin. Ohio State Football and Ed Rife. As a result of the investigation, the Wolverine men's basketball Ohio State football program was punished for numerous National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) rules violations, principally involving payments booster Martin Rife made to several players to launder money from an illegal gambling drug operation. It is one of the largest incidents involving payments to college athletes in American collegiate history. An initial investigation by the school was joined by the NCAA, Big Ten Conference, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and the United States Department of Justice (DOJ).
The case began when the investigation of an automobile accident during Mateen Cleaves' 1996 recruiting trip Terrelle Prior's tatoo's revealed a curious relationship between Martin Ed Rife and the Wolverine basketball program Ohio State football program dating back to the 1980s 2000. Several Michigan basketball players Ohio State football players were implicated over the next few years and by 1999 2012 some were called before a federal grand jury. Four eventual professional basketball football players—Chris Webber, Maurice Taylor, Robert Traylor and Louis Bullock—Troy Smith, James Laurinaitis, Quinn Pitcock and Chris Wells were discovered to have borrowed a total of $616,000 from Martin. Reves.
In 1997, 2012 coach Steve Fisher Jim Tressel was fired for his involvement in violations relating to the scandal. By the fall of 2002 2012 , it was obvious that the four players were in fact guilty of taking money from Martin, and had thus compromised their amateur status. In response, Michigan Ohio State placed the basketball football program on two years' probation. It also withdrew from postseason consideration for the 2002–03 2012-2013 season, vacated all or part of five past seasons and removed the players' names and achievements from its record book
The question is, will the quality of their football team post incident mirror the quality of our basketball team post incident? I'd guess no, unfortunately. FB is the bigger money maker, and also the more storied program.
Clever post, though. It's nice to have a reminder that we've been there before as well.
on Travis Conlan...
When it's all said and done, I believe the violations will be far greater in the osu case but the long term damage will be far less. The potential for violations involving cars, vacations, cash, and drugs on top of tatgate are far more damning than Ed Martin's transgressions but osu lacks the integrity to send their football program back to the stoneage like we did to our basketball program.
You mean that OSU is unlikely to hire the football equivalent of Brian Ellerbe as their new coach?
Ellerbe and Amaker hindered the bball program's turnaround.
Also, we did next to nothing to upgrade our basketball facilities for a long time. They were outdated even in Fisher's time, but we were winning so it didn't matter. After the program fell apart, it became a significant recruiting issue. I don't think this is problem for OSU football.
In a roundabout way, Yes. They won't hire the squeaky clean option who is unwilling to bend the rules and accept the losses that come with such a coach. They will not hire the Ellerbee equivalent to sanitize the program.
Ellerbe was far from a "squeeky clean option." The Ed Martin scandal continued under his watch and there were a ton of embarassing run-ins with the law. Ellerbe was an absolute failure at everything - winning, staying out of NCAA trouble, recruiting/developing good kids, and so on. We should have realized this might be a possibility when Loyola of Maryland fired him.
TSIO will continue to play the "Scarlet Wall of Denial" card, while Michigan came clean. TSIO won't accept any responsibility for anything they did, spin it so it's somehow the fault of "that school up north," and continue to pay both players and recruits like an SEC school.
in the 7th line from the bottom you need to change martin to rife. but otherwise this is very awesome.
awesome