Eleven Warriors take on Tresselgate
http://www.elevenwarriors.com/2011/04/mr-clean#more
Interesting take on the yesterdays announcement of the NOA that Ohio State recieved last Friday from the writers at elevenwarriors. While I am not surprised that the consensus opinion among buckeyes is in favor of Tressel I am surprised at the depths to which they will go to justify that McCheatypants love.
Every tragedy has a well-intentioned idiot, and this one is no different. From the moment that Columbus attorney Christopher Cicero created a paper trail to Tatgate, Tressel had his work cut out for him. While he had options and could have acted more covertly, it's now abundantly clear that Tressel tried to abort Tatgate before it gestated into Tatgate. Immediately notifying the compliance department would have effectively birthed Tatgate last April. While he failed in the noble endeavor to ultimately make it go away, he kept it obscured until the Feds finally shot their publicity ray at it.
You know how many other FBS coaches would have hoped or tried for this episode to erase itself rather than give a glimpse of it to their compliance departments? All of them. This isn't the cop out of "it happens everywhere." This is the fundamental principle of risk mitigation that says if you think you can make trouble disappear rather than deal with its consequences, you make it disappear.
So basically the argument is that everyone would have done the same thing and we were simply unlucky enough to get caught. Hmmm.... sounds familiar. There is more about this article that is just so very wrong but try telling them that. Just thought it might give the mgoboard a good laugh.
You know how goofy their whole arguement is? How many teams suspend players from games or practice for the generic Violation of team rules...He didn't have to lie about it. How concerned can he be about the confidentuality of the investigation when he forwards the e-mails to someone A. outside of the investigation and B. outside of the program lol.
It doesn't matter that Tressel was perceived to be an honest guy blah blah what matters is the reality that he is not, nor was he ever ( ask youngstown state if he can get his job back there).
I don't get this guy's conclusions at all. This whole issue is incredibly simple.
1. Knowingly withheld information about player eligibility from OSU and the NCAA.
2. Knowlingly played an entire season with ineligible players.
End of story. The rest is rationalization and noise. If you can look at that and say you're ok with that as behavior in your head coach, that is your right, but at least acknowledge the sitauation.
I see his point that anyone would try to cover it up, and normally I wouldn't disagree, but there is a catch here that makes me wonder what was going through Tressel's head.
So you catch wind a couple of your best players might be ineligible. A lot of coaches, admittadely, would try and cover that up. He knew in advanace that this was uncovered by an FBI investigation, which means it was almost certain to get out eventually. Knowing that there is no way you can cover it up indefinitely, why would you cover it up knowing its going to lead to bad things down the road? What makes him think that a run at a national title that would be likely taken away later is better than just taking the hit, trying to weather the first 4-5 games of 2010, and living to fight another day?
he's a lot dumber than any of us ever thought
He's rumored to only have five or so years left and had a stacked team. He let a title run cloud his vision. I normally like Eleven Warriors, but I think the potential for a program crippling set of sanctions has blinded them. If Tressel reports early, the players probably lose a couple of games, OSU maybe loses to Miami, and everyone is back for a title run. Now, it looks like the Emperor has no clothes.
April 26th, 2011 at 10:33 PM ^
My god, he's so gone. But that 11W post is symbolic of the total meltdown rippling through all things Buckeye. It's embarassing, and glorious, and it needs to end soon.
<br>Your head coach can't be publicly exposed as a Liar. Someone down there has to understand that.
April 26th, 2011 at 10:40 PM ^
I've thought Tressel was done ever since the allegations came out. There's no way OSU can retain him, especially as the story continues to get worse.
April 27th, 2011 at 12:05 AM ^
One hypothesis:
Because he knew he had lawyer friends and buddies at the FBI. Tressel thought he was so well-connected that he could make this go away ... on his own ... quietly.
I find this hypothesis plausible because so many Columbians (is that what you call them?) have been blowing sunshine up Tressel's ass for so long that he began to consider himself a demi-god. He was "the man" in Columbus. He could make things happen, or in this case, un-happen.
Recent history showcases Tressel's hubris. We have the bullshit "confidentiality" excuse. Tressel thought the media would eat it up like they did his countless other "gee, shucks" press conferences. We have the non-apology apology, which he thought the media would swallow because he fancies himself a slick wordsmith. Not so.
Tressel inhabits another planet. It's got grey turf and a scarlet sky. The media lapdogs sit and await the morsels of brilliance he generously tosses them. Inane bucknuts quote his book of self-help cliches. Walk a mile in his shoes, and I guarantee you will stroll right into a mental health clinic.
Tressel simply flew too close to the sun and then his waxen wings melted.
That's not what I USUALLY call them....
sucking all integrity and credibility out of anyone or anything associated with Columbus.
Doesn't that assume they had integrity and credibility at some point?
April 26th, 2011 at 10:05 PM ^
but that's a good blog. Spielman's a good man (who seemed to back off his defense of T yesterday). Nicklaus is a good man, etc. All falling like flies
They used to. Woody had...issues...but integrity wasn't one. And I think Bruce was somewhat similar. It really took a downturn under Cooper, then fell through a hole with Tressel and the "we need to beat Michigan" mentality.
UCF is actually bigger than Ohio State is now, but if its coach (it's George O'Leary - don't look it up) failed to notify the NCAA of some players who should have been ineligible the hammer that would come down on him would be ball-peen to Ohio State's sledge.Yeah, OK, the NCAA always punishes the big important schools the hardest. That's not a claim anyone will agree with. I believe it was Jerry Tarkanian that said "the NCAA is so mad at Kentucky they're going to put Cleveland State on probation." Or:
This used to be a Tressel specialty: From none of the things that Maurice Clarett claimed ever being proven to Troy Smith's $500 payment from Robert Q. Baker (the only cash handshake ever!) Donald Washington's mysterious status changes toward the end of 2007, how drug test results are handled, the "punishments" for DUIs, players receiving discounted furniture and driving more rental cars while in college than you'll drive in 20 years, Tressel and his staff have handled all of the particulars in a manner that has kept Ohio State football relatively unscathed, up until now.News flash to Ohio State fans: Nobody outside the SEC and Ohio thinks it's a good thing that your coach is so damn good at sweeping your pooped-in laundry under the rug. I mean, don't hold back on why the NCAA should've bombed your program back to Division III ages ago.
Top RB Bri'onte Dunn tells me he's re-opening his recruitment.
I just read this on Tom's Twitter and didn't feel the need to make a new thread
According to a retweet by Tomvh, Brionte Dunn has reopened his recruitment. He also said he will visit Michigan among others
why the NCAA shoul drop the hammer on OSU--so their stupid ass logic isn't rewarded.
Link to TomVH's twitter
Just because he cheats... Doesn't make him a bad person.
What a terrible writer. Rambling with no conclusion, but readers will think it's well-articulated because it's long and the spell-checker came back ok.
Tresel knowingly played ineligible players for an entire season because he wanted to win. He then signed a written affidavit to the NCAA stating he had no knowledge of such violations. The third strike will come out soon, then he's out.
He knows the FBI is surrounding this thing and they think it's risk mitigation to cover it up the way he did?
I knew that was a big word for one of those cretins.
April 26th, 2011 at 10:08 PM ^
Good risk management policy would have been to come clean as early as possible and take a lighter penalty. The writer has no idea what risk management is about. Cover ups are by nature more risky. Hilarious stuff by the blinded.
April 26th, 2011 at 10:46 PM ^
Not only are coverups risky, but if he reports the violations immediately it's, relatively speaking, NBD. 5 game suspension if that. Now he's in way more trouble for the coverup and it was almost certain to come out as it was part of AN FBI INVESTIGATION. That has to have a very, very, very high probability of coming out.
Never mind the potential (god please please please please) collateral document of FOIA etc requests.....
The only possible way this makes sense from a risk management perspective is if I'm wrong and this will blow over without any significant penalties. That seems unlikely.
They are in so much denial it is hilarious. I'm glad we had Brian and inputs from the guy from bylawblog so that we could be up to date with what happened to us.
you sneak up on a mirror, your reflection always looks you straight in the eye.
This calls for a fisking of the first order, but I don't have time.
DAMNIT ALL.
April 26th, 2011 at 10:05 PM ^
I'm not so much as interested in Ohio State football being clean as I am in Ohio State football operating a safe distance from the NCAA's autumn-ruining machine. They've been pretty good at that; one of Baker's colleagues reported his $500 handshake after Baker gloated about it. Cicero created the Tatgate paper trail. The technical term for those things is "loose ends."
So, 11W is revoking their right to ever complain about the SEC ever again.
April 26th, 2011 at 10:14 PM ^
I live in Kansas City and one of the morning sports talk radio stations discussed Tressel this morning. They went on and on about how this wasn't that big of a deal. They completely missed and never mentioned that Tressel knew about the players actions and did nothing about it. All they could talk about was the tats. Sports talk radio sucks everywhere. They didn't even bother to research the situation and defended the guy. Sad.
April 26th, 2011 at 10:19 PM ^
Oh, I hope the timetable discussed on Sam and Ira's show is right. August hearring. October report. This story just gives and gives. Is it possible to cackle and have your hate grow at the same time? Let me confess a sin: Anything that gives pain to Buckeye fans, I enjoy.
I think people are missing the author's point. He's bemoaning the fact that OSU used to be better at covering stuff up. And of course, he doesn't get worked up about NCAA vioations. OSU is the king of the secondary faux pas. He doesn't want the basketball coach giving 6K to "shitty players", and of course, what he really cares about is not getting caught. Do you need to know anything more about the place?
Immorality aside, he's absolutely delusional if he thinks OSU's stature means it attracts more NCAA attention. We'll see what happens, but I bet OSU gets off lightly. And that would mean that Mark May was right when he suggested that a Big Ten team wouldn't get punished like other teams. He's wrong that any Big Ten team would get the light touch, but OSU does. And, Michigan would too, if it actually asked for it instead of unzipping its kimono.
And that's why we're better.
April 26th, 2011 at 11:47 PM ^
April 26th, 2011 at 11:50 PM ^
Incidentnaminggate?
April 27th, 2011 at 10:29 AM ^
It's a good thing Tennessee or whoever didn't get in a whole shit-ton of trouble for providing their recruits with female companionship (or that that was overshadowed by the other stuff they were doing) or we'd have had to deal with Tailgate and had to come up with a new word for hanging out before games.
April 27th, 2011 at 12:12 AM ^
until the NCAA ruling comes down, as OSU appears to be suggesting.
It will really help the morale of the OSU football team to be coached by a dead man walking, much like Bruce Pearl was effective in coaching up his team for the NCAA tournament game against Michigan.
April 27th, 2011 at 12:13 AM ^
I have to say this actually reflects on U of M in one way. Ohio State values beating Michigan in football so highly that they are literally willing to forgive what has been historically an automatically fireable offense at every other major institution. That is how much beating Michigan means to OSU - they are happy to be viewed as an insitution with no integrity, no self control, that is willing to place athletics above ethics, and one where the football coach can dictate to the UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT whether he should even be punished. If this sounds like Adams College from Revenge of the Nerds, you would be right.
We can argue about Michigan and sanctions and whether we are squeaky clean but when it became known that the Fab Five infractions happened Steve Fisher was gone. He had gone to TWO consecutive NCAA championship games, had won an NCAA Championship in basketball. If ever there was a sacred cow, Steve Fisher was it. He was gone in sixty seconds. There wasn't any sham press conference where Mary Sue Coleman came out hoping that Steve Fisher wouldn't fire her. If MSC could have sprouted wings and flown to the top of the rafters at Crisler and lit the banners on fire, she probably would have. Because at the end of the day these are college institutions built on learning and driven to educate their students.
If a student plagarizes a paper at Michigan do you know what happens to said student? THEY GET EXPELLED (though I'm sure there is due process and discovery and etc). At the very least they are failed in that course. If a teacher knows a student cheated but didn't punish them because they were sleeping with each other, what would happen to that teacher? They would be fired - why? Because they are held to a higher standard as they should be.
Tressel knew exactly what he was doing. He was lying to the NCAA hoping not to get caught, and everything he did behind the scenes was an attempt to generate plausible deniability (albeit poorly). This is a good football coach, but a bad human being. Guess what - bad human beings who lie to the NCAA get fired. If Ohio State doesn't fire Jim Tressel, then beating Michigan is worth more than the integrity of OSU itself. Which in the grand scheme of things is ironic, as the players sold the gold pants from beating Michigan as if they were trivial yet it is basically the single most fundamental reason their coach is even employed.
OSU is a great football program but not a great school. That is my conclusion so far....
April 27th, 2011 at 12:24 AM ^
http://www.lvrj.com/sports/honestly-other-coaches-can-beat-michigan-too…
This is national news, and everyone is saying, except for those delusional ones in Columbus, he needs to go. This was in our paper today. Surprising to see really.
April 27th, 2011 at 12:27 AM ^
I also think something deeper is going on. I remember I posted when Brady Hoke was initially hired and said that I believe Michigan will become what we remember it to be because two things would happen:
1) Hoke would recruit the local talent base aggressively again
2) Tresell would trip up and actually get caught opening the door for Michigan to take Ohio recruits again
Both needed to happen for Michigan to become on par with OSU again. We had fallen that far in my eyes. This is what happen to Michigan and Michigan State in the nineties - Izzo recruited Flint and Detroit aggressively and then scandal hit the team. This opened the door for MSU and they haven't looked back.
I didn't expect this and I feel the full story has yet to be revealed. It just seems odd that none of the players said anything to anyone after they got suspended. You would have thought that they would have revealed that the coach knew to somebody. So I feel as if they stayed silent and took their punishment because it could have been a lot worse. Which makes me wonder what a lot worse is exactly?
April 27th, 2011 at 12:57 AM ^
...murders, every coach mitigates, every coach lies about knowledge of NCAA infractions and knowingly plays ineligible players.
Typical Ohio State trash base in Cbus backing a liar and a cheater. What else can you expect by one of college football's most arrogant team. He lied and wasn't protecting his players he was saving his own ass from being fired.
you're suggesting that if OSU lost, say 2 of the 4-5 games the Tat5 would have been suspended in 2010, Tressel would have lost his job?
OK...that makes perfect sense.
the Buckeye football program to a very high standard.
How many secondary violations has Ohio State reported under Tressel?
http://www.elevenwarriors.com/2011/04/tuesday-skull-session-2#more
This is another piece from a different author then the original post emphasised that is, again, all about defending Tressel. According to this article Tressel "the man" must be taken into consideration when discussing Tressel "the coach". Not sure how the two are any different from each other but apparently Tressel has developed some sort of mutant ability to split his body and mind into two unique and seperate individuals. One wears a halo and a long white robe. He smiles sweetly at everyone he meets and spreads kisses and joy among the children of the world. The other side wears a red sweatervest and chomps on galvanized steel like chewing gum. He is relentless and will do anything to win.
" But Jim Tressel the person helps to mitigate a lot of the damage that Jim Tressel the coach has done "
This is completely nonsensical.
The term "—gate" originated with the "Watergate" scandal under Nixon. Watergate was the name of the hotel where the original burglary of the Democratic Party office by the low-level punks hired by Nixon's subordinates occurred. The "Watergate" scandal, as it came be known, was not the original burglary, but Nixon's efforts to cover it up, and also his efforts to cover up his cover-up.
"Tatgate" was created by the refusal to notify compliance, and all the subsequent efforts—otherwise known as "lies"—by Tressel to cover up the consequences of his initial decision. IF Tressel had simply notified OSU compliance right away upon being informed of what was going on, the situation would have followed an opposite path. Yes, the players would have been declared ineligible and OSU's hopes for a BCS game and maybe a NC would have been severely weakened, but Tressel wouldn't be in the hot water he is now. On the contrary, he would be praised from Los Angeles to New York for "doing the right thing even at the cost of his team's prospects for success."
OSU fans are delusional to the point of being certifiably insane.
assumes that you believe him when he "infers" that he didn't.
I believe this cover-up (as in Watergate) does go higher up ... at least to the AD (Smith) and maybe all the way to the President (Gee).
To reiterarate - since tressel arrived in c-bus, the "school" has more self-reported violations of NCAA rules than any other university in the country ( this means they know the rules AND they know how to use their compliance department ).
So here's a known violation that tressel is imformed about .... are you seriously going to believe that tressel (on his own) decides the best way to handle this is to send the e-mail to TP's "handler" in PA, and to not let Smith know that their "star" player has ties to a known criminal and has committed an NCAA violation ? Seriously ?
No, someone made the decision to lie about it and then to continue to lie about it. And then told tressel to indict himself by signing a false report to the NCAA.
It's all coming home to roost for tsio - zero standards. Remember they are still under probation for the BB issues, the NCAA has no choice but to determine that tsio has created and utilized a system designed to be non-compliant with NCAA rules and guidelines. In fact all the self reported violations may indeed be smoke intended to cover up the big issues, while all along purporting to be very strict on compliance (now I get it !!!!) giving the NCAA the belief they reported everything .... oh ... how clever !!!
Go Blue !
April 27th, 2011 at 10:55 AM ^
I agree that it's perfectly plausible that the scandal goes way beyond Tressel himself; certainly the OSU athletic dept. has not set high standards in the recent past for doing things the right way. However, right now (correct me if I'm wrong, I'm no expert on the thing) there isn't any hard evidence that the coverup extends to OSU higher-ups. Nothing would surprise me, though.
April 27th, 2011 at 12:23 PM ^
Therein lies the rub ... it doesn't exist, and they know it. As Ramzy pointed out, it only matters what can be proved.
Basically, right now, the NOA focuses only on Tressel, not the OSU compliance department. Sure, conspiracy theories abound regarding "is Tressel taking blame for others" but the fact remains that the allegations center solely on him. If OSU fired him tomorrow, no (or none of consequence) institutional penalties would likely follow. I think that the whole framing of this issue is designed to center the blame on Tressel to minimize program punishment. If you were the AD, looking at this situation in the beginning and you wanted to keep the coach but mitigate the damage to the program, this is the best solution. Crazy, I know but for anyone thinking that the athletic department and university at large are "clueless" or unaware of what is going on are themselves naive. Gene Smith was the president of the bball committee and has long been rumored to be the next president of the NCAA itself (though, I doubt that following this little dust up). They have a very good idea of what is going to happen and are OK with it.
I'm not saying I personally know what will happen but from the school's actions to date, you have to believe that they do and if program damning punishments were oncoming, Tressel would be gone already to mitigate the damage. Since he's not, you have to believe it will be token, games vacated, probation.
So, basically the author is O.K. with cheating; it's just the getting caught part that really burns his onion.
Read it in his own words:
I'm not so much as interested in Ohio State football being clean as I am in Ohio State football operating a safe distance from the NCAA's autumn-ruining machine. They've been pretty good at that; one of Baker's colleagues reported his $500 handshake after Baker gloated about it. Cicero created the Tatgate paper trail. The technical term for those things is "loose ends."
Illegal recruiting, lousy recruiting, point-shaving and bad coaching get my attention. Playing illegal players like Tressel did gets my attention. But being "clean?" Ask any NBA player from the last three decades if John Stockton was the game's best point guard because he played clean. Dirtiest player, possibly ever. Watch Wisconsin's offensive line block - they're coached to do that. I want that offensive line.
It's very difficult to get all sanctimonious about a coach not being clean. Tressel's eight-month lie wouldn't have bothered me at all had it not extended into and through the season, yet his coverup was cheating in the eyes of the NCAA from the moment he failed to report what he knew. His coverup was cheating in my eyes the moment the Marshall game kicked off. Operate a safe distance from the NCAA's long arms and the media's endless shame loop. Figuring out a way to quietly dispose of Tatgate last July would have satisfied that, and none of us would have had the pleasure of knowing just how satisfied we should be.
April 27th, 2011 at 11:25 AM ^
Yes, the author is okay with lying and cheating.