Dr Saturday on Tressel
Dr Saturday's take:
But the worst part of the story, the moment when one of the most respected men in the profession really begins to look a truly naked, self-interested villain, is the moment he decides to keep going — to bite his tongue, bury his doubts, and join the lobby to defer the offending players' suspensions to the 2011 season to keep them on the field against Arkansas in the Sugar Bowl.
Those of us who read Matt Hinton's work daily will recognize this as perhaps his strongest stance against any accused violator of NCAA rules. It's a measure of how far Tressel has fallen in the eyes of most casual observers and relatively unbiased media members that Matt excoriates him in this manner.
Excellent piece.
The interesting thing is that he is typically pretty neutral other than poking fun at the hypocricy of the system. An equivalent from Skip Bayless would basically have compared Tressel to a combination of Kim Jong Il and Hitler, except accusing him of worse human rights attrocities.
I think the hypocrisy of his public persona is really irritating people. The fact that there is a paper trail to misdeeds that should result in vaccated an entire season has really seemed to shock a lot of journalists, who to be fair, are partly complicit in programs getting away with as much as they do.
Local journalists have always been complicit in hiding the sins of local teams and other favorite sons. It's the price of making friends and gaining access. However, I think the Ohio papers are largely shocked at the blatent stupidity displayed by Tressel. Assuming the same punishment, the players lose games against Marshall, Miami (YTM), Ohio, Easten Michigan, and Illinois. They maybe lose one game. That's a career for one game. Stupid.
Glad he's been exposed for the scumbag he is. Here's to an eight year show-cause penalty.
I hadn't thought about this until I saw the Hinton piece, but if the Arkansas win is vacated, that means that OSU's drought against the SEC continues unabated. That's a nice ancillary outcome of this situation, should the NCAA vacate the 2010 wins from the record book.
I really see no way they keep those wins. I'm actually surprised they didn't announce the forfeits at the press conference. It seems like a no-brainer that it's going to happen anyway, and that would have at least been something serious they could do.
While I've seen it mentioned a few times on posts, Dr. Saturday does a great job of highlighting how the ncaa got hoodwinked into letting the Tat5 play in the Sugar Bowl.
Excellent piece by Dr. Saturday. When you consider all that has transpired this year, I think it is clear that everyone is watching this case very closely. If the NCAA doesn't come down with extreme vengence on the Buckeyes, then they will lose all control and DIvision I (or what ever it's now called) football will become the Wild West.
I think OSU is going to be forced into a huge "about face" and either suspend Tressel for the year, or fire him. If they don't, they could become the modern SMU. Other teams may be worse in their disregard for NCAA rules, but what Tressel did as outlined in Dr. Saturday's article is a pre-meditated act by the head coach (and probably the administration) to cheat.
If this was a Michigan coach, I'm sure we all would demand his removal.