SVJ: OSU Player Appears to Have Paid for Vehicle

It was a used car.  It had something close to 14k miles on it.  It was probably a repossessed vehicle, purchased at auction by the dealership and resold.  We don't even know what kind of shape it was in.

And one other thing -- this was originally a Columbus Dispatch story, where they looked at a later-issued title that had a "zero" payment on it.  They had not seen the original title, which included the payment amount.  Credit, I say, goes to the Dispatch, for correcting its error with a big, headlined story, and not with some buried "correction." 

Throughout this affair with Tressel, it has been remarkable to watch how the Dispatch has operated, as a newspaper that is interested in carefully reporting the story by asking the most important questions in a fair way.  As opposed to being on a Jihad against a coach who is disliked by the columnists.

 300C in 2007 with normal usage, should have sold for around 24-28K.  That's a good deal.

Edit: Just found out the car was a 2007 300C sold in 2007.  So . . . that's a really good deal. 

Your logic is flawed.  Who knows where these cars came from.  Maybe they had a very low trade in value from a stupid buyer.  Maybe they were repossesed.  My uncle ran a dealership and he would often buy cars for less than 1k, and turn around those cars and sell them for 8-10k.  It did not hurt him financially to buy one of those cars and sell it to family for sigificantly less than the Blue Book Value.

This being said, none of this looks good for ohio.  Although there may be zero violations with the cars...ohio will already burn for tat-a-gate.  It just fuels the already burning fire.

Example:

Man arrested for rape, pending trial.

While awaiting trial, man arrested for a second rape.

All charges on second rape dropped, found out the victim was lying to cover up cheating on her boyfriend.

The jury is not going to hear anything pertaining to the second arrest, but they still heard about it and it will factor into their decision no matter how hard they try to ignore it.

thing about taxes.  Would it be an NCAA violation if the player paid fair market price for the car, but the dealer did some creative accounting to avoid taxes?

you are required to pay sales tax on a vehicle, based upon the county the vehicle will be titled in. Most counties in Ohio are between 5.5% and 8%, so theres some tax evasion going on there as well.  While it may be a small amount, its probably not a good idea to give the IRS reason to start looking around

I know the bank had the correct price, but if it was reported as a zero dollar sale to the state the sales tax would not be charged.  This would lower the price of the car for the athlete and also help the seller avoid paying taxes.  If there is one organization in this country that will get a conviction it is the IRS.  That  is why you see scores of drug dealers/bookies going to jail on income tax fraud.

Uh don't you know that just like regular college students, football players come from a variety of backgrounds? Andrew Luck probably isn't hurting for cash (his father is the WVU AD), but the kids from Pahokee probably are.

Probably the same alternative banking universe that existed everywhere else in the country in 2007.  

Heck, giving $13k to a potential NFL player is infinitely better than most mortgages that were handed out in 2007.

With a parent as a cosigner, sure he would qualify. I bought a car like that in college. Shit, how many credit cards debt could a student accumulate just by signing up at on campus booths?

You could probably accumulate enough debt to declare bankruptcy before graduating.

Agreed. One of my best friends comes from a lower-half-of-the-upper-middle-class background, his parents saved up to put him through college, he went to the Naval Academy and drives a 2012 Cadillac CTS that his parents just got him for graduation. When you have all that money saved up and end up not paying, even families that aren't especially wealthy can "make it rain" for their kids at a fraction of the cost of tuition, room and board.

Pryor himself said he needed to sell his memorabilia to help support his family.  It doesn't quite compute that his family could turn around and buy two cars in Columbus (unless they were real beaters).  I'll leave it up to others to determine which part was the lie, his family needed the support, or that's why he sold the memorabilia, or both?

boosters cannot provide free meals cooked in their homes but for a handful of times. any deal even coming close to multi-thousand discount is more than enough for a violation

Honest question, would it really be that surprising to see a compliance officer at a major university doing his best to keep certain violations under wraps?  Isn't it possible that somewhere along the way, a huge fan with connections to boosters gets an AD job in compliance.  Maybe he's slipped slipped a little spending money of his own to make sure that boosters can do their thing and get everything covered up?