Ohio State: the most blindly loyal and recklessly protective culture in college sports
Matt Hayes of the Sporting News (whose wife went to OSU) just destroys Ohio in his column today:
Considering what happened at Penn State, those are some strong words.
Talking about rivals is part of a rivalry and will inevitably be part of discussion. I thought it was an interesting column. You don't have to click on the thread or read it, but it does seem relevant seeing they are our rival.
Hayes doesn't know what the hell he's talking about.
Nobody at OSU was begging Pryor to stay. They were suspending Pryor and the others. The suspensions were all going to be directly in line with what the NCAA recommends for such cases.
The OSU fanbase, as I know them, is pretty thoroughly disgusted with Pryor and company.
The OSU fanbase was also rightly pissed off at a lot of the coverage of their scandal. As for Tressel, he didn't sell any memorabilia. He didn't get any tattoos, and he didn't smoke any weed. Tressel was less than candid in his NCAA interview. It was a terrible mistake, for which he paid a terrible price. I found nothing satisfying about how it all turned out. Tressel, fired for being too casual about handling his players' dumb mistakes.
As for President Gee, can anybody name a single thing other than the few verbal gaffes that he's done wrong? To the best of my knowledge, he's one of the greatest presidents the Ohio State University has ever had. He's liked by students, with whom he regularly interacts. He's a terrific fundraiser and administrator.
His mistakes have been confined to statements to the press; or even private statements belatedly picked up by the press. Not any official policymaking.
For my money, I'd personally rather have a funny and personable president like Gordon Gee, than a programmed politically-correct automaton like Mary Sue Coleman. Gee was horsewhipped in the media for his defense of Tressel. I'd have liked some of that from mary Sue when Rich Rodriguez was being pilloried by that same press.
Sportswriters like Matt Hayes make me a fan of the Ohio State University at times like this.
Are you Tressel's lawyer? "Less than candid?" I guess that means flat-out lied. Tressell did more than that over the years, but the NCAA just couldn't prove it. He even cheated at Youngstown State.
Thanks for reminding us that this, too, relates to Rich Rodriguez.
But the remarkable thing to me is that Gordon Gee is not accused of any official wrongdoing, and not a single serious policy mistake on behalf of the university. At least not as far as I know.
But in dealing with Michigan's previous head football coach, Mary Sue Coleman (along with Bill Martin) apparently promised the candidate that the university would take care of negotiating his buyout from the University of West Virginia. She then attempted to renege under the pressure of having apparently failed to advise the Regents of her promise. And later, under fear of a civil deposition for Coleman, the university wormed its way out of the problem. And never faced any publilc criticism for any of that. God forbid, if instead of that mess, Mary Sue had made a crack about the damned Catholics at Notre Dame at a private Athletic Counsel meeting.
I'd much prefer a President like Gee, who wouldn't have hesitated to defend a university employee against a really unfair attack.
I was waiting for you to say "April Fools" or maybe just drop a "/s", but you were serious. I mean, not that you're a serious person, but that you were not kidding.
"Tressel was less than candid"? You write that yet complain endlessly about the writings of others??? The guy lied over and over again to cover up things he knew to be violations. He played players he knew to be ineligible. He was the problem. Not Pryor or any of the other knuckleheads on the team.
And now you wish MSC were more like Gee so that she would have taken a stand for RichRod? Dude, Gee stood up for his coach because the coach won games. What do you think he would have done for a coach who lost a ton of games, helmed the ship during the first violations ever on the program and lost every game to his main rival?
Frankly, with this latest bit of wackiness, I'm surprised you aren't ranting against the writers who broke the OSU story. After all, it wasn't a big deal...just a coach who was less than candid. They should call it "Candidgate".
when the buyout mudslinging happened. From that standpoint, it should have been easily justifiable to reduce negative press towards the head coach, especially since it was Mary Sue that was an important catalyst in his hiring.
Oh boy. Where do I start?
First, you'd seriously prefer a president like Gee over Mary Sue? Seriously?
I haven't gone out of my way to attack Mary Sue Coleman, by the way, although she's done much good ($3.2 B fundraising, standing up to the Democrat Regents on the GA union) and much bad (the Rodriguez buyout debacle).
With Gordon Gee, what exactly is his offense? Making a joke at a private athletic gathering about "the damn Catholics" at Notre Dame? Making an offhand joke about "the Polish army"?
Mary Sue Coleman is a highly competent drone. Gordon Gee is a highly competent character.
Agree to disagree.
I don't care how competent a person is, if they go out and make themselves and their employer look stupid they're an idiot in my book and I don't want them at the helm of my company/school (regardless of the good). Offhand comments like he made are often worse than substantive offenses, especially repeated ones because they reveal the true character of a person which, in Gee's case, is not very appealing IMO. I'm as up for a good joke as anyone in the proper setting. Public displays of stupid are stupid.
On the other hand, Mary Sue may have done some bad but I don't find the buyout issue to rise anywhere near the level of "debacle" as you do. Embarrassing? Maybe. But it was with respect to one individual and one instance, not repeated idiocity like Gee.
Anyway, like I said, agree to disagree.
I see your true colors, shining through...
You left the "ic" off of the end of "Democrat, Rush. And, no politics.
my Wife is an OSU alum. She also knows a few Trustees of Ohio State (as in, she knows them on a first name basis). They are tired of him being an embarrassment in the national media. His job is not to be a lightning rod for the University. However, his job description does require him to have good enough discretion to know when NOT to say something that could potentially lead to negative publicity for the university. He has failed to do so on a number of occassions.
I really cannot fathom how in the world this relates to Rich Rodriguez.
I really cannot fathom how in the world this relates to Rich Rodriguez.
I explained, in a very few words. Mary Sue's involvement in the Rodriguez-buyout debacle is arguably more serious, and more inexplicable, than Gordon Gee's much-publicized ethnic-joke gaffes.
at Ohio State would probably disagree with you. See my sig line
I think it would be interesting to put all of the Trustees on the record and subject them to questions about the Gee resignation.
Just like it would be interesting to subject the Michigan Regents to detailed questions about union contracts for GA's, the extension of union contracts in the wake of Right to Work, and oh yeah about that thing with the Rodriguez buyout.
Look, I'm not an alumnus of either institution and I don't particularly care whose president is more awesomer and whose is just the worst ever.
I know to some people Gee's remarks might just seem like good old fashioned old boys club religious and ethnic insensitivity. So funny making fun of Polish people and Catholics. Long live the 1950s!
Set aside the fact that comments like these make me think he's probably genuinely an asshole.
He's the head of a major public institution and a person in that position just can't be that tineared to what will offend people, even if you're being jokey jokey. It's a PR problem on a much bigger scale than any football contract bullshit. The two are only remotely equivalent in your mind.
Number of Catholics in the US (as of 2010): over 75M (see here).
Number of Americans of Polish descent: around 9.5M (see here).
Number of people who still give two shits about the Rich Rodriguez buyout situation: Section 1 (see here).
I wasn't saying what Gee did was worse than the buyout stuff by some absolute standard. I don't know enough about the buyout to make that judgment (and no, I'm not going to read Three and Out).
My point was (or was trying to be) that from a PR perspective there's simply no comparison. I didn't follow the buyout stuff. Maybe Coleman botched it. Maybe she should have been fired. I don't know. The point is, I don't care, because I don't have ties to the university besides being a fan of the sports team. If I did, I might.
The buyout situation is insider stuff. Outsiders don't care. But Gee's comments had the potential to damage OSU's reputation well beyond its network of alumni and donors. It goes to public perception, to the ability to recruit students, etc. If I were a person who took religion seriously (as many Americans do) I might be concerned that an institution that tolerates its leader poking fun at a particular religion might not demonstrate the respect for religious belief I was looking for in an institution. I think it's a much bigger deal than the way you're talking about it.
(And as an aside, I personally don't think the measure of the inappropriateness of the comments is his intention; to me the measure has to be the reception by the offended parties. Whether he intended malice is beside the point. The fact is, he called a whole religion untrustworthy and a whole ethnic group incompetent. Folks in those groups have justifiable reason to be offended, whether he intended offense or not.)
but when you characterize Tressel's actions with language like "less than candid," my reaction boils down to this:
LOLWUT
Tressel lied to the NCAA. This by the way was very hypocritical when you consider The Senator's book on ethical behavior. He could have simply told the truth, and sat Terrell and crew for the first few games of the upcoming 2010 season and he would still be in charge of firing Gee in Columbus - and everyone would be saying what a great man he is.
I agree, the charges against the players were relatively minor (and pretty stewpid), and Tressel was probably exercising his own judgement on what he thought was fair (which many fathers have done). In doing so he crossed the line though - and was tarred and feathered by the press.
I tried to follow the case pretty closely, albeit from afar.
Tressel did several things wrong. On a compliance form at the beginning of 2010, he signed off saying he knew of no violations. That appears to be a dubious contention, since emails showed that he was aware of OSU football players' involvement with Rife. But do we really know the depth of Tressel's knowledge of violations at that point? Has Tressel made a declaration on that beyond the form?
I have a copy of Tressel's much-ballyhooed interview with the NCAA; it's the one with all of the player names redacted. It's a pretty jumbled interivew. Tressel doesn't look good. He appears casual about compliance, inattentive at times and lost on some key issues. The questioners also weren't very good. But I can't recall any howling lies in it. It's been a while since I read it all.
There is the chain of emails between Tressel, Chris Cicero, and Pryor's mentor in Pennsylvania. All of which makes it look like Tressel knew something and was trying to manage it (best case) or was trying to cover it all up (worst case), with the truth somewhere in between.
Maybe one of the hardline JimTresselIsALiar partisans here in the state up north can tell us in 25 words or less what Tressel's most evil lie was. I honestly can't.
I bought not one but two copies of The Winner's Manual and enjoyed reading the book.
I'm not Tressel's lead defender. Tressel had the best in the business as his attorney -- Gene Marsh, who was Michigan's attorney in Stretchgate. And Marsh couldn't do much to rescue Tressel. So yeah, it was bad.
I just get a kick out of the Michgan fanboyz going nuts over Ohio State.
You can leave Rich Rodriguez out of it, personally. I could have written it as the story of Mary Sue Coleman and "Michigan's previous head football coach." But that would have been a bit awkward.
And, as usual, you've twisted the context almost beyond recognition. My point has little to do with the unfair treatment Rodriguez experienced (a fact, but beside the present point); rather, the point that I think I rather clearly made was that it was all about Mary Sue Coleman's apparent malfeasance and mismanagement. Compared the the apparent lack of any serious malfeasance or mismanagment on the part of Gordon Gee.
But thanks for asking and giving me a chance to hammer this point. Again.
beautiful
Very telling that the four most famous faces (Gee, Tressel, Pryor, Meyer) of ohio in the past half decade are all scoundrels, liars, cheats, and crooks. If Urban Meyer is the most righteousof your figureheads... you're not an institution who values honesty and doing things the right way. Okay, I won't throw Gee into that hotbed, he just seems like a quaint, likeable buffoon (who can make the dollas).
Nothing like Herm calling someone else a liar
Nothing like some dude named David from Wyoming that loves MST3000 finding out long after it was obvious (some old dude posting at 11 PM? COME ON MAN).
That's enough.
Look, David's Herm's fixation might be a little much, but given that your highlighted/italicized/oversized signature is an oh-so-subtle shot at Magnus, your moral high ground is severely compromised in calling people out.
By the way, the "old guys are in bed by 11" joke isn't really funny in this context given your general negative tone.
This is the first time I've ever responded negatively to any poster, but you pissed me off this time, son.
... and nobody gets away with pissing off Wilford Brimley. Not even his wife.
who, despite being a good coach, I consider a total scumbag. Hayes showed what a classless thug and a sore loser he was when he punched an opposing player in the throat because he got angry at the player for intercepting his QB.
Hayes continued to show his classless self when he told the press "Nobody despises to lose more than I do. That's got me into trouble over the years, but it also made a man of mediocre ability into a pretty good coach." instead of apologizing to the player whom he assaulted in such a low way.
Allegedly in the 60s there was also an incident where Hayes instructed a player to take off his helmet during practice and then proceeded to hit him in the head.
Tressel was sneaky and did not fess up when he should have (about tat-gate) but at least, according to all accounts, he treated his players well. A cousin of one of my friends (who is a Michigan grad) played under Tressel at Youngstown State and from what he told me Tressel's players really cared for him because he treated everyone fairly and had a very warm/fatherly personality. On the other hand, from all the accounts I've heard of Hayes, he seemed like a total self-absorbed jackass who cared more about winning than about the players in the game.
I've heard apologist for Hayes spewing bs like, "Ohh, he just one of those old school tough coaches." That is BS. Bo was an old school coach who demanded discipline and hard work but he also cared about each an every player and, from what I know of him, he would never put a player in harm's way or mistreat a player. That is why he was so revered by his players and had so much respect. He was a hard but fair coach who cared about every one of his players like they were members of his own family, and certainly always showed respect to other teams and their respective players.
You obviously do not value Bo's judgment of people, since he loved and respected Woody greatly. Woody did care and gave much time and effort to Children's Hospital. Did he stay too long, yes. But you are so wrong.
I worked with a guy who played for Bo when Bo was at Miami of Ohio. He said that Bo was the meanest son of a bitch he ever met. Bo would grab players by the facemask and kick them, among other things.
But so would coaches like Bear Bryant. It was a different era.
While I do not condone violence towards players or people, I do think that our society as a whole could use some more people like Bo. I'd personally like Bo to come to my company and grab some facemasks, scream at some people, and give me a kick in the ass to sell more. It was a different era, and in many ways it was worse, but in many ways it was better.
You don't judge how people acted 40 or 50 years ago by the norms of today. Things change. What was once commonplace and not considered inappropriate becomes unacceptable and vice versa. Look at gay rights. Look at children born to unmarried women. Society views those things far differently than 40 or 50 years ago, and in another 40 or 50 who knows where we will be. Bo was a great coach and a great man.
That coached well withought being physically abusive. Second, as for Hayes, his level of abuse was extreme.That was my point of the original post. He went beyond the gruff, in-our-face coach. This was a guy who asked (more likely screamed at) a player to take off his helmet and the proceeded to hit him in the head.....100, 80, 10 years ago, it still does not excuse this type of behavior and make him any less of jerk, even if the kid in question loafed on a play. And then there was the magnum opus which, finally, got him canned. He punched an opposing player in the throat. I understand that it was a in-the-heat-of-the-moment thing, still disgusting nonetheless, but it what made Hayes a true scumbag, in my eyes, is how he behaved afterwards, the fact that he was not man enough to issue a public apology (or a private one) to the player when given an opportunity to do so. He was such a prick that when the athletic director offered him to resign he replied by saying: "That would make it too easy for you."
And these were not the only incidents showing his volatile nature. Examples of other public incidents by Hayes include:
In 1956, following a 17−0 loss to USC, Hayes threw a punch at a sportwriter, but missed and punched the brother of Pasadena Independent sports editor Bob Shafer in the back
In a May 1965 meeting of Big Ten Conference athletic directors and coaches, Hayes nearly started a fight with Iowa's athletic director, before being restrained.
Prior to the 73 Rose Bowl, accosted a sports photographer because he was having a bad day. Hayes was suspended for three games, fined $2,000, and left California with a subpoena.
In 1977, after a late fumble at Michigan, he lost his cool and attacked an ABC cameraman Mike Freedman. He was ejected, put on probation by the Big Ten Conference, and fined $2,000.
Late in the 1971 rivalry game against Michigan, furious over what he thought was a missed defensive pass interference foul, Hayes stormed onto the field, launched a profanity-laced tirade at the referee, and tore up the sideline markers.
Things like this, especially the physical abuse by a coach against his players, opposing players/coaches, refs, etc. does not belong in any sport. I understand that uber competitive people, occasionally, can lose their cool but, with Hayes, it was more than occassionally, and the fact that he was not able to man up and apologize, made him less of a person in my eyes. Sometimes you have to admit to being wrong, man up, and do the right thing. You punch a 19 year old kid in the throat because you are angry that he intercepted your QB, and you can't put aside your pride/ego for even a second, admit publicily that what you did was wrong, and apologize to him? Poor reflection on who you are as a person.
I didn't say a word about Hayes. I was talking about Bo, and your comments about him. Hayes was over the top, and I actually blame him for much of the insanity ohio state fans spew about UM. But you took a shot at Bo, which was totally unwarranted. Let's see your litany of Bo transgressions that matches your Woody list?
Late in the 1971 rivalry game against Michigan, furious over what he thought was a missed defensive pass interference foul, Hayes stormed onto the field, launched a profanity-laced tirade at the referee, and tore up the sideline markers.
I was there, with a perfect view midfield behind the OSU bench. Woody was right. Thom Darden got away with a wonderful bit of pass interference on that play. There's a great still photo of the play. Darden has nearly knocked Dick Wakefield's helmet off as the ball is hitting his hands and forearms. Behold.
I wasn't too far out of the frame of that picture. The good thing for Darden is that he made the interception. And I think it is a lot harder to call interference on a d-back who goes for a ball in the air and makes the catch himself. But dang.
but that Clemson player Woody punched totally had it coming. I'm pretty sure Section 1 now holds the new record (besting his own, no doubt) for most points missed in a single thread.
BOOM
"Ohio State has become bellwether in college sports; the powerful, prosperous program you follow to just watch it trip up—and then revel in its misery."
Stopped reading.
he finished the article by saying "nobody does crazy like Ohio State." That was hilarious! Saved the best for last.
Love the avatar of the article's first commenter. A true believer.
Ah. Damn it. It was a MACK Truck logo...
The guy standing with Gordon Gee. May have moved as Ohio State fans rush to defend him, and themselves.
OSU could have kept Gee if they wanted. There was really no outcry for his firing...and most everyone he offened accepted his aplogy.