More OSU Schadenfreude: OTL Profiles Dennis Tallbott
ESPN's Outside The Lines profiles Dennis Tallbott.
First a litany of shady dealings with the OSU athletics department and football program:
- Set up paid signing sessions for OSU student-athletes (with eligibility) as early as 2006, including at least one current NFL player.
- Wore the national championship ring of an OSU RB and told relatives he had paid the rent of a WR on the 2003 OSU national championship team.
- Routinely provided Terrelle Pryor with free rounds of golf at his country club during the summer after Pryor's freshman season.
- Brought Pryor and Thaddeus Gibson to his son's birthday party in Dec 2009 and Pryor and DeVier Posey to his son's birthday party in Dec 2010.
- Retained his media pass for the 2009 football season despite OSU's knowledge of the country club issue.
- Tressel was made aware of his sales of underclassman signed memorabilia in Mar 2007 but still received free tickets to OSU games by football players eight times during the 2008 season.
Then a litany of shady dealings in general:
- Falsely claimed to have been a former Chicago White Sox pitching prospect. His stepmother says he didn't even play sports in high school.
- Falsely claimed to be a graduate of Kent State.
- Has caused "some financial problems" for his adoptive father and stepmother.
- Bad debt and back taxes owed in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
- Found in contempt for failure to pay child support.
- Sports memorabilia dealers challenge the authenticity of several items he sold.
To me, Talbott is a frightening reminder of what one shady, selfish, determined fan/booster can do to your program.
Obviously there are things you can and must do to limit the access of someone like this; both directly and indirectly (i.e. making goddamn sure your players know you mean it when you say stay the hell away from folks like Talbott) but ultimately, every program is vulnerable. Including us.
They are out there, greedy for access, for a new trophy for their Fancave, for something to sell, seeking to boast about their relationships with our players-- in short, ready to soil the Block M the first chance they get. Kudos to what our program does to keep the Talbotts outta our hair.