NCAA Inquiry Fully Underway/SI Article Release Open Thread
(HT: BryanDFischer)
Reports emerging that the SI article will hit the internets around 7:30-8 pm tonight. Multiple threads with great comments/pictures are accumulating and are Welcome Reposts as we build towards The Story.
Further, Twitter is abuzz that the NCAA is well on its way of investigating OSU for violations (http://bit.ly/kpz4qA).
From what I've heard, the SI report involves the fact Tressel may have had direct knowledge that, specifically, Pryor was involved in car issues and chose not to escalate matter or look further (Youngstown much?). This is the source of the "Pryor is Done" stories, AFAIK, and may lead to an epic level of Lack of Institutional Control when paired with "I Hope He Doesn't Fire Me" comments. Still don't think it's going to be the Bomb that everyone's hoping for that connects all the dots - this might be left for the NCAA to complete. (Edit: 11Warriors post reflects same info as I mentioned).
Anyways... for now... Worst State Ever... (HT: WFNY)
They've already gotten about 10 refreshes from me.
I'll wait here and send the refresh money to the good folks at MGoBlog.
And it looks like the mobile version of SI.com has crashed
Last post from 11 Warriors is a gem:
"Didn't the Lantern post a tape of what Small said and it turned out he said every bit of it? And then he tried to back out of it? I hate Mark May as much as anyone. He always sounds like an idiot. But geez, the three most prominent players of the Tressel era -- Clarett, Troy Smith, Pryor -- all implicated as getting money, cars, whatever. I'm willing to see what the NCAA concludes before condemning Tressel, but this may be just the first dark day. If the NCAA finds cheating has been going on for years -- and they can go back up to seven years -- this could be beyond bad. Stripped titles, forfeited games, complete disgrace. Look what happened to USC, and that was after the NCAA proved its case against only one player, Reggie Bush, who got money, cars and a house for his family. I am sickened by this and I'm just not willing to blame the media because it hurts to hear it. We don't need to cheat to win, we don't need to cheat to recruit, and we don't need people the character of Terrelle Pryor at all. They are never worth it."
Amazingly lucid for an Ohio State fan.
Too little too late though.
Regarding the OP's choice of images, I only take offense to the image showing the Indians have lost 4 out of the last 5. Despite that we are still best in the AL and almost best in all of baseball, which just shows how killer awsome our season has been if we hit a cold streak and are still one of the best.
But I fully support the Tressel/OSU football bashing. Now when is this article coming out? My F5 would appreciate it being soon.
Okay, it's 8.
7:30-8 CT time?
is now doing a special Tressel program in prime time, preempting How I Met Your Mother and Mad Love reruns
I hope the NCAA incorporates the destruction of the internet into OSU's punishment, since our excitement seems to be taking down the entire web.
aaaaand MGoBlog is down.
Heard somewhere that SI is trying to see if they can throw together a pay wall before they release the article.
/unsubstantiatedinternetrumor
i heard dohrmann sold it for new tattoos
A major site doesn't usually just randomly throw up a paywall during a holiday weekend. If they were going to do something like that, they would have had to plan it in advance.
Now, I'd believe that they have been working on a paywall for a while and they are having trouble with it.
Saw the same on George Dohrmann's twitter. I can't be sure, but I read that as a joke/sarcasm. Difficult to magine they're actually attempting to make an ad hoc change in their business plan over one story, regardless of its magnitude.
A major site doesn't usually just randomly throw up a paywall during a holiday weekend. If they were going to do something like that, they would have had to plan it in advance.
Now, I'd believe that they have been working on a paywall for a while and they are having trouble with it.
http://twitter.com/edsbs/statuses/75356525719322625
"The SI piece is late because you have to use just the right font for LOL written under a pic if Tressel strangling Bigfoot. #RIPbigfoot"
They will spend 30 minutes thinking of using a font other than helvetica, then use helvetica
This story needs to post for the sake of the Mgoblog server.
Not to mention our collective sanity.
At this point, I fully expect Tressel to have personally paid for the girls sleeping with recruits, been operating a large scale drug operation out of Gene Smith's office whilst funneling the leftover cash to unseemly organizations that may or may not have been related to terrorist activities.
Also, that Pryor was entering demolition derbies with brand new Phantoms, "on loan" from local dealerships after Tressel "coerced" them into giving Pryor new cars.
A drug operation would certainly explain some of the comments coming out of Smith's office this year.
according to this shipnuck guy, it'll be posted with the weekly mag - does that mean its paywalled?
I read that as that the story will be posted once the print magazine is "closed" for the week, meaning sometime later tonight. Love that the author o the story doesn't even get told when it will hit the interwebs.
Come on, release it already!
Not a bad time to start looking at Twitter...
times I'm grateful for twitter.
I'm so tired of you. Now show me the story and make me a sandwich!
This whole situation is like the jackass driver who passes you going 85 and then you see him being pulled over by a cop. Does not happen much, but when it does.....mmmmmmm.....
You got some good taste in music there.
Love that kind of triumphant tune.
Has anyone hit the dumb Jo-Jo Reyes article while refreshing? I keep on thinking about it, but I just hit F5 again....
This is taking longer than the Illinois game last year.
LOL! I was at that game and that was obviously more stressful than this.
Come on, SI. Get moving.
Bodog has odds out for the next OSU coach.
I'd bet the field. Who in their right mind would want to coach there after the armageddon?
YEah BABY LET US GET TO IT~
its out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111
its up
Bombshell.
"SI learned that the memorabilia-for-tattoos violations actually stretched back to 2002, Tressel's second season at Ohio State, and involved at least 28 players -- 22 more than the university has acknowledged. Those numbers include, beyond the six suspended players, an additional nine current players as well as nine former players whose alleged wrongdoing might fall within the NCAA's four-year statute of limitations on violations.
One former Buckeye, defensive end Robert Rose, whose career ended in 2009, told SI that he had swapped memorabilia for tattoos and that "at least 20 others" on the team had done so as well. SI's investigation also uncovered allegations that Ohio State players had traded memorabilia for marijuana and that Tressel had potentially broken NCAA rules when he was a Buckeyes assistant coach in the mid-1980s.
Last Friday, SI informed Ohio State spokesman Jim Lynch of the new allegations and asked that Tressel be made aware of them. Lynch said the school would have some comment by the end of the day. No comment came, and on Saturday, Lynch told SI to contact Tressel's lawyer, Gene Marsh, for any response from the coach; Lynch also said he could not confirm that Tressel had been apprised of the new allegations. The implication was clear: Ohio State was distancing itself from Tressel. (E-mails from SI to Tressel and to Marsh and multiple phone messages for Marsh went unanswered.)"
Bombshell 2.
"
Now NCAA investigators and Ohio State are both looking into the use of cars by several current Buckeyes, including Pryor, who, a source close to one of the investigations told SI, might have driven as many as eight cars in his three years in Columbus. (Ohio State declined to make Pryor available for comment.) Former Buckeyes basketball player Mark Titus posted on his blog on May 24 that it was common knowledge among students that football players were driving cars too pricey for their means. "You'd have to be blind to not notice it," he wrote. Former wide receiver Ray Small confirmed last week to The Lantern, the Ohio State student newspaper, that he got a "deal" on a car from a Columbus dealer, but he did not provide the terms."
Wow,
For more than a decade, Ohioans have viewed Tressel as a pillar of rectitude, and have disregarded or made excuses for the allegations and scandal that have quietly followed him throughout his career. His integrity was one of the great myths of college football. Like a disgraced politician who preaches probity but is caught in lies, the Senator was not the person he purported to be
Read more: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/magazine/05/30/jim.tressel/index.html#ixzz1Nt5D4YbG
I see Tress as more like this guy: