Chris Spielman:ESPN's Outside the lines on Tressel and Pryor...
Screw it! I was on my way to the gym buuuuuuutttt...well!
Chris Spielman just finished up on ESPN:
"I'm not surprised, I mean you hear things and I believe that Coach for whatever reason and it's mysterious to a lot folks who follow this football team why he catered to Terrelle. And why there are a different set of rules for Terrelle Pryor. I have no idea why and that's the big mystery to me."
"More disturbing to me is that there's not a player or senior or leader on that football team that does not hear about the shenanigans that was going on with Terrelle and they didn't step up to stop it..."
He went on to mention the trouble Gene Smith is facing as more information surfaces.
I think we know why TP didn't come to A2. The deal just wasn't good enough!
Thanks to poster Ducatidoc for the motivation and money quote (above) from TP. =)
Added the audio (grab it here)
I agree that it looks bad for him, as it definitely should. But has anyone that ever saw him speak actually came away impressed? Well before this I would hear things he said or watched an interview and think "um, ya..."
One other thing: Spielman has my full respect. He is objective while still being a fully loyal Buckeye, and has perspective.
according to the current set of articles floating around this story, so you would assume he is competent enough to find some of these issues during his watch. This disaster implies he is incompetent or complicit, but you typically don't make incompetent people the highest paid in their industry. I would think the Board of Regents would have more than a few thoughts regarding his ongoing employment since he has allowed this to make a mockery of the university.
than Mike Garrett. If this happens on your watch as AD, you're gone. Period.
"More disturbing to me is that there's not a player or senior or leader on that football team that does not hear about the shenanigans that was going on with Terrelle and they didn't step up to stop it..."
I love Spielman but I think he is still underestimating the extent of the corruption. Nobody stopped it because it was not just a couple of players. They were too busy playing PS3 and smoking weed.
Right? I mean, if it's not just Jim favoring Terrelle, then it's widespread and acknowledged. If that's the case, lack of institutional control is reasonable. But if they can sway the prevailing wisdom to "Coach got caught favoring a star player, but now Coach and player are gone," they might be able to escape. I don't know if Speilman is in denial, hopes for the best or is just misguided in making it only about those two.
There is no way to hide the fact that Tressel has been caught doing something very bad. And that people within the program are breaking the rules. What's the best possible PR strategy? Concentrate on one guy (suggesting that there was just one rule-flaunter) and present it as if Tressel's downfall was due to his failure to recognize the evil of that single guy.
So: Pryor is the Satan, Tressel is just such a noble and fine character that evil is beyond his comprehension: it was impossible for him to see that Pryor wasn't the upstanding young man that every last one of the other OSU players were.
No, rule breaking in the program was an epidemic, and it was that way because Tressel made sure he could never be tagged with knowing anything. A strategy that worked brilliantly until now.
There were too many players involved for this to be anything other than business as usual. For that reason, the approach taken by Spielman is not reasonable or entirely honest. Too many people have been trying to ignore too many incidents for too long. It is interesting that this has now been traced back to the time when he was an assistant at OSU in the 80s cheating kids in raffles and that various malfeasances seem to have occurred continuously from then until now. As to senior leaders, wasn't one of the people in the initial group a senior? And of the balance of the 28 in the article, weren't some of those the seniors who should have been looking out for it? It seems to me as if it is the duty of a head coach, and of the assistant coaches, to know pretty well what is going on in the daily lives of the players. It is inconceivable that Tressel and his staff were not aware of the fact that some of this was going on FOR YEARS.
... I'm busy with PS3 and weed, too.
if you ever meet spielman... tell him he was a sell-out.... he was slated to come to michigan... he loved Bo... and his father blocked it.
They were beating the crap out of us every year. This might have come up sooner if we could have taken them down a peg or two. Winning covers most sins.
From your post is that picture and seeing how much has changed in the 4 years since it was taken. It's hard to believe today that a picture that showed "hope" for some Michigan fans (those who didn't know Pryor would never come to Michigan) had Toney Clemons, Terrelle Pryor, and Rich Rod in it..
here's a collection of several old coaches speaking about tressel and pryor:
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/commentary/news/story?id=6610547
“I don’t know what really happened, but I’ll promise you that Tressel wasn’t the only one that knew what happened,” Jack Nicklaus told the newspaper. “I bet you Gee or Gene and everybody else probably knew what was going on, and Tressel probably took the hit for it."
http://aol.sportingnews.com/ncaa-football/story/2011-04-18/jack-nicklaus-defends-ohio-states-jim-tressel#ixzz1NxhFjgau
More genius from LSU Freek
Perhaps his comments around senior accountability and responsibility were formed by his encounters with Michigan. Specifically, in his sophomore year (1985), Michigan played OSU without Mike Gillette, instead going with backup place kicker Pat Moons. This was because Gillette was suspended for the game. His suspension came about because the senior captains went to the all the bars on the Thursday before the game to make sure no one was partying. Upon finding him, they went to Bo and asked that he be suspended from the game. Moons was two for three on field goals and made all his extra points. Michigan 27-17.
Thats one of my favorite stories about Bo's teams. I started thinking last night... if Woody were still around, would he have stood for this? I always considered him a pretty stand-up guy (aside from the whole Mike Tyson-ing a player thing) and I'd be curious to see how he would have handled this whole situation, or how he would have reacted at least.
Surprised Spielman didnt use his favorite saying "He got caught looking and leaning !"
re: players living within their means, how narcissistic college football has become (thanks to recruiting hype, facebook, etc...), etc...
http://www.detnews.com/article/20110531/SPORTS0203/105310392/Ex-Lion-Ch…