Gene Smith would like to...
THANK YOU for showing up
THANK the NCAA for bending him over a table
THANK Tressel for fucking this whole thing up
THANK Gordon Gee for not opening up his mouth and getting us in more trouble.
THANK T. Pryor for being a gigantic douchebag
How many times did that guy use "thanks" when I'm guessing he really didn't mean it?
You and I do this all the time.
"Boy Fred I really need to send the IRS a thank you for coming in and auditing the hell out of me. That IRS agent needs a special thanks for fining me thousands of dollars."
Could be some serious horizontal sh*t in that wind.....
How happy is OSU that T. Pryor pulled that hat a few years ago. I know I am sure glad he did.
I feel like if Tressel stepped down tonight Pryor would have been murdered by any OSU fan older than say...50.
OSU knows how to play the game. Any self-imposed sanctions are a starting point for the NCAA. The NCAA will never tell a school to reduce its own penalty, but it may add on to it. So a school may as well impose a laughably weak penalty (like suspending the coach for two cupcake games) and hope that what the NCAA adds isn't too much more.
If this turns out right, TSIO could go down the shitter and take the rest of the decade to make it back. Since the NCAA did show at least a minature set of cojones in their treatment of USC, maybe justice will be done this time.
To me, there seem to be three instances in which the rules are actually enforced:
1. The program is weak.
2. The program is a great program, but in a down cycle.
3. The program did something with proof that has been made so public and irrefutable that being one of the top five cash cows in the BCS can't save its ass.
I am thinking "door number three" might apply here.
Yup, this is OSU carefully admitting guilt, knowing they are fucked, and really hoping that this light self-sentence flies. Fuck them.