Whitlock on Tressel - good for a laugh
For those interested, take a look at Jason Whitlock's recent article re: Jim Tressel. This is as close to a defense of what Tressel did as I have seen, and it is laughable. Basically, JT didn't "really" do anything wrong - it is all the NCAA's fault for basically having rules, and so what that JT lied to the NCAA.
For those who are not familiar with his writing, he is a typical media blowhard, who likes to take strong positions and hear himelf speak (on paper). He did write a great piece on Hoke being the right guy for Michigan a few days before Hoke was hired, but that was just about the only good thing that he has ever written.
EDIT: The "Whitcock" reference was an honest to goodness typo - freudian, perhaps, but still a typo. I never do the 12-year-old MLive thing, so my apologies.
The NCAA already leaves a truck-sized hole through the pretense of amateurism, they just cover their eyes.
Look - I was an athlete at Michigan (non-revenue) and I can bet you that the % of kids who gamed the system to, at the very least, get more free stuff borders around 100%. "Whoops, I lost those new Nikes. Can I get another pair?"
When "the system" allows Pryor to come to "school", get a cavalcade of free cars, then skate out when he's suspended, because, whatever - he's got an NFL career (like Cam Newton!), isn't it already a sham?
Yes, but not for the vast majority of players.
But don't the 40-50 "Pryor's" we get a year (the one-and-done hoops players, the guys in Pryor's/Newton's shoes) show the stupidity of the system?
It is absolutely pathetic. The NCAA is horsecrap and I can't believe as many people are making money/careers off of the whole college football structure, and yet Div 1 programs are going under and kids can lose their scholarships if they don't live up to the recruiting hype. The NCAA doesn't want to turn over too many rocks and show the public what anyone who follows the system closely can at least reasonably tell others. The amatuerism of the system is laughable, and no one who runs it seems to care as long as the cash flows keep coming in.
The NCAA could do so much more to help college athletes rather than just wait til the USC or TSIO of the world get caught red-handed. Maybe have programs which organize legal and decent jobs for kids to work a few hours during the school year or more importantly the summer. Maybe try and establish a program which collects money from alumni at different schools to distribute to athletes familys. Stipulate certain amounts of the profits from jerseys and the NCAA video games goes towards helping struggling athletic programs stay afloat. This would be better than a minor league I believe.
And it's fair game for you, me, or Jason Whitlock to say it's a sham, point out the hypocrisy of the NCAA, etc. The problem is, all of that has virtually nothing to do with what Tressel did wrong here, and it's a square peg in a round hole for Whitlock to use this as ammunition in his attack on the NCAA. It's just like the USC president complaining about the NCAA appeal process after USC lost its appeal -- the NCAA system was designed and implemented by the schools, wasn't it? If Tressel can't even stay within the rules and system he has figured out how to excel in (and that exploits the athletes, according to Whitlock), isn't he deserving of criticism?
Who said he's not deserving of criticism? The guy who called him a "pimp" in his column?
Tressel apparently is no more worthy of criticism than any other college football coach -- they all seem to be "pimps" in Whitlock's eyes. To quote, "Jim Tressel is not special," and his only sin was to "pretend[] to have virtue when all he cared about was winning football games," which according to Whitlock is a "requirement for all college coaches." I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that some college coaches think they're doing something better with their lives than "hop[ing] they help more kids than they hurt while they're winning and earning." The whole article is an excuse for college coaches to do whatever they want and blame it on the NCAA.
While the rules may be a big problem, most coaches/programs try to adhere to them. Those who don't have a blatant advantage over those who do (i.e., Recruiting Pitch = "Come to my school. You will be treated like royalty."). Until the rules are changed, what Tressel did was cheating.
And players aren't Michigan, or any big time program. That's our society, "celebrities" get perks.
And it repeats the "logic" I've heard so often over the past couple of days -- "How can we expect a college coach to monitor what 80-90 kids are doing in their free time?"
Um, can we please save that argument for a case where the coach didn't get e-mails telling him exactly what his players were up to? Is it too much to ask that a coach follow up on that information, look into it, impose the appropriate discipline, and put an end to any further rule violations -- as opposed to, say, sweeping it under the rug so that otherwise-ineligible rule violators can play for you next season, thereby improving your W-L record and your reputation (not to mention fattening your wallet)? Is it really that hard to understand what Tressel did wrong here?
Where does he say "how can he monitor 80 kids"?
He's not denying that Tressel broke rules. If you read Whitlock, "The NCAA is bullshit" is a hobby-horse of his - he's just using this an an example to make the same argument.
Are coaches really supposed to interrupt the moneymaking machine by monitoring how their players are paying for tattoos, weed and cars? If coaches took the time to hunt down what their players were really doing away from the field or court, the coaches would never have time to coach, feed the media hype machines and make sure players occasionally attend classes.
I'm pretty sure that Tressel was free to opt out of this system if he felt that the benefits accruing to him were outweighed by the harm done to the student-athletes.
I don't see why you think Whitlock is excusing Tressel. He called him a "pimp". What he's saying is that Tressel's level of non-monitoring is par for the course in NCAA football - which is why he thinks the NCAA is a sham.
Pimps are bad, right?
That's Whitlock's whole career. Rarely does the man beat anything other than a hobby-horse topic, even if those horses are dead.
If you're going to play around with Whitlock's name in childish ways, wouldn't "Shitcock" be the bigger flame?
I mean, it's right there for you. Rhymes and everything.
Every once in a while I remember that I no longer follow Jason Whitlock on Twitter and it makes me smile.
He's useless.
Whitlock's arguments aren't original and they aren't even recent. Rick Telander wrote a book in the late eighties called the 100 Yard Lie. I remember reading it in middle school; I never looked at amateur sports the same. Of course, Telander didn't call it "shamateur" because he wanted to attract a slightly more, shall we say, sophisticated audience.
Unfortunately, just pointing out that the NCAA is a hypocritical sham doesn't mean much (and shouldn't be an excuse for anyone to break the rules that they have agreed to play by); people have been doing it for literally decades and there is no sign that it will change any time soon.
At the end. Not even worth a link.
Jason Whitlock has some charisma, but he's hampered by being an idiot and not very good at writing.
"OKAY, NOW FURTHER TRESSELATION. Mmm, the reverse troll by Scarbinsky gets an 8.3 from the judges. Off Tackle Empire runs the numbers, and they are thorough and thoroughly inconclusive. Ramzy's piece mentions all the nice things Tressel did as the guy who encouraged his players to serve in the community, a role we don't see as being incompatible with someone who was also a marginal liar at times. Craggs is fiyah as usual, and Jason Whitlock wrote some total bullshit which says many of the same things, but badly."
That must be a common trait among fat former Ball State football players.
1) If you get paid millions to run a program you had better keep a close eye on everyone.
I don't buy the "80 kids are too many to watch". A small $50M company has 80 employees and you bet everyone is watched by a superior. The CEO is ultimately responsible for every employee being monitored.
The team leaders are supposed to monitor the others. The coach monitors the leaders. If the head coach cannot monitor the behavior of his starting quarterback then the coach is not doing his job.
2) If you recruit bad eggs and these bad eggs are then promoted to your team leaders, the whole self monitoring network collapses.
Tressel recruited and placed players of questionable character and placed them into team leadership positions. This is solely his fault just as RR hiring GERG was RR's fault.
3) Players: you get free R&B, tuition, equipment, books and medical. You get no other compensation. Deal with it.
These are the rules. The $50M company has warehouse people and receptionists that get $250 a week. The CEO might be making $500k and the company profits $2-5M a year. The profit of the company and the pay of the CEO has nothing to do with the $250 a week. If the person doesn't like $250 a week he can get a different job. But he cannot sell company property, palm cash out of the till. These are the rules.
The business anaologies are horrible. They don't fit with the current situation at all and greatly weaken the argument you're trying to make. The dynamics of running and managing an office of professionals is nothing like the dynamics of running and manging a college football team. You're comparing apples to oranges.
I will tell you that you are wrong.
Running a business with an eclectic mix of people of different backgrounds is more challenging than a football team. The NCAA is a business. As is the university, the tosu athletic department and the football team.
The excuse that running a football team is somehow really exceptionally difficult and a man with a staff of 35 people can't be asked to monitor 80 20 year olds is a lame excuse.
Where did you prove me wrong again? Simply saying that the NCAA, OSU, OSU'S AD, and OSU'S Football Team are "businesses" doesn't prove anything, and doesn't suddenly make your comparison any more valid.
You're still comparing two drastically different situations with very, very little in common.
Jason: At the core of virtually all of the NCAA-actionable allegations now weighing on The Ohio State University, are the amazingly stupid and selfish activities of a few of the members of the OSU football team. You didn't mention them.
Jim Tressel paid for his cars; he didn't smoke any weed; he doesn't have any tattoos. There is a truly excellent chance, that whenever someone might have found Pryor, and Posey and Jamaal Berry at Fine Line Tattoos trading jerseys and getting high, that Jim Tressel might have been found at Nationwide Children's Hospital.
Let's review, shall we. Put faces with names. Because there are some seriously stupid and arrogant young men in Columbus, who need to be outed with considerable precision. And Jason Whitlock didn't even mention them.
Terrelle Pryor:
Dan Herron:
DeVier Posey:
Mike Adams:
Solomon Thomas:
Was this necessary Section1? We all know who these 18-22 year old kids are. Why do we have to post pictures of them as well?
Jason Whitlock wouldn't do that; he implied that we shouldn't do that. He said blame the system.
Blame the system? What's wrong with the system? Who forced any of these athletes to do any of this?
And by the way, there are more than a hundred other players and coaches at Ohio State, to whom all of these allegations and lurid stories have no meaning. So let's get another picture, shall we? Of the mostly-good, mostly-compliant OSU football team. Guys who have no problem complying with NCAA rules as they were written and intended, and for whom the current rules work just fine, thank you very little.:
And up to 22 accused on the current team (who have been "proven" just as much as the one's you showed), so you're going to need a lot more pictures.
I'll believe the numbers as soon as the NCAA and/or the Buckeyes issue a Notice. I'd prefer not to take it on faith from George Dohrmann or Sports Illustrated.
Because the NCAA hasn't met with OSU and come down with a final verdict, so you're just assuming the current accusations against the Tat 5 are accurate. It's either all of them or none of them.
For the first five games. What they did, earned them a four game suspension, plus a fifth game, because none of them self-reported. And, they have all publicly apologized.
SI, for their part, says there are more kids who were involved with the scene at Fine Line. SI might be right. It's not a terribly remarkable allegation. Instead of five underclassmen doing stupid things, it may ahve been nine or ten or twelve or however many stupid underclassmen. But I really don't care to take SI's word for it.
I continue to say; there was clearly some very dumb and low-level NCAA violations by the Tat 5. And Tressel himself made some grave errors in the ways that he handled the information. Beyond that, I think there has been a lot of hysteria. And I think I'll be cautious about rumors and allegations going forward. Tressel has resigned, and that gives me no pleasure. The kids who were invovled in the dumb stuff are being pursued and punished and I'm okay with that.
I just don't agree with Jason Whitlock, who sometimes seems to have an aversion to personal responsibility, that the NCAA and its system of rules are to be blamed and condemned for all of this. He's been beating that drum for years, and I think Whitlock is just angry that this time the college athletes whom he thinks should somehwo be paid, have acted in a way that sort of tells us they wouldn't know how to handle some spending money if indeed it was given to them.
Then 5, and now he's fired. So they must have found more along the way since players were suspended 5 games.
DeVier Posey has weird ears. Almost like a martian meets gollum.
There's an argument to be made about the NCAA as a whole and its potential for exploitation in high-revenue sports (South Park made that argument brilliantly a week or so ago). But Whitlock's columns have an almost Mad-Libs predictability to them.
1. Take controversial situation in which most people are leaning a certain way on the culpability of those involved;
2. Take the counter-argument, defend the guilty and/or point out to some broader socio-economic concept that we have all "missed";
3. Add a healthy dose of sarcasm and "Wow-I'm-smart!" seasoning.
Voila! New column. Back to nap.
South Park has never made any argument "brilliantly." I believe the phrase you were looking for was "in an inane, immature way made to appeal to 12 year olds with Group Think."
I wish people would take the "logic" they apply to sports issues and apply it anywhere else in the world; I think they would see how asinine their argument is.
"I think cocaine should be legal, therefore, I think its a crime to arrest the local drug dealer, because America's laws are stupid. America is the problem."
"LeBron James is an awful person for choosing which of several job offers he wanted. Therefore, everyone should have to work for the company that hired them for their first job for the rest of their lives!!"
To announce you were leaving a job before you even told your company you were leaving, people would think that's your right, but they'd still think you were a dick.
Q: What's next for ousted coach Jim Tressel?
A: Can you say politics? A columnist for The Vindicator in Youngstown, Ohio, seems to think Tressel, who resigned under an ethics cloud, would be a good choice to challenge Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown.
"In politics, Tressel would be a natural. He's a gifted speaker, he knows the state of Ohio well and would have little trouble raising money," Bertram de Souza writes. (Tressel, whose nickname is "The Senator," coached at Youngstown State before Ohio State.)
DeSouza writes that what the coach did "does not rise to political high crimes and misdemeanors."
Whitlock and many others in the media make a living by picturing everyone as a victim, including athletes playing big time football. Coming from someone who played D-2 football in college, I would have given my right you know what, to be good enough to run out under the Go-Blue banner. These athletes are fortunate for having the ability to do what they do.
This whole notion that these players are some how victims is a joke. You are only a victim when you allow yourself to be. To me guys like Whitlock just add to the self-entitlement society that we have now and they breed the Terrelle Pryors of the world.
The facts are that the majority of athletic programs are not rolling in dough and are actually cutting sports. Start cutting the Title 9 sports and all the others that do not bring in a dime to pay the players of the couple of sports that do make money, then you would really hear the howling from the Whitlocks of the world.
I thought this piece did a good job of capturing the essence of the vest's hypocrisy.
Wait so these guys are self entitled because they generate millions, if not billions of dollars, for other companies? Who makes money when we buy an Addidas #16 jersey? There's a reason the NCAA is getting sued by former players for continuing to use their likeness. I'm fine with not paying college players....but first let's get rid of the TV contracts, get their faces off ESPN 24/7, stop endorsement deals for schools, stop having the basketball and football players underwrite the NON-REVENUE SPORTS WHOSE PLAYERS STILL ARE ON SCHOLARSHIPS....essentially let's strip college athletics of it's multi-billion dollar status. Until then, it's still a multi-billion dollar/year industry whose main source of revenue isn't entitled to their fair share of the pie.