Part two of our week long attempt to reach catharsis. Today’s topic: After reading the Sports Illustrated article, what did you think? Is there a larger problem at Ohio State?
Jim- I thought that I had just read over two pages of fluff with about two paragraphs of actual new information that was worth digesting. With the families Storm Klein and John Simon apparently preparing to fight the allegations leveled against them in the article, it now seems that of those two paragraphs of actual news, only a part of it was (possibly) factual.
Who would have guessed that basing your entire article on hearsay from employees who worked for a drug trafficker would result in a less than accurate final product?
I think SI cashed in on the negative national reputation of Ohio State and the article will certainly add to the negative reputation and have people up in arms for Brutus’ head on a pike, facts and common sense be damned.
People hate Ohio State based on articles like the one SI wrote. People accept articles like the one SI wrote without thinking twice about it because they hate Ohio State. It is a vicious cycle, and I absolutely hate this saying, but… haters gonna hate.
For the more skeptical among us, I think it can be viewed as a fluff piece with little or no hard evidence to support any of its claims.
The truth, as always, is likely somewhere in the middle.
Eric- I’m going to preface this by saying that what follows is based off what we thought when the article came out. I’m going to neglect the comments that have come out recently from Larry James and the football players’ families.
To be honest, I haven’t read it the whole way through in one sitting. I’ve read bits and pieces, and collected whatever I missed from the chatter on the interwebs. There’s just a point where I can’t stand reading horrifically negative tripe – and that’s exactly what that article is. I was never able to read the USC scandal stuff all the way through either; it just makes me physically ill – both that someone would write it, and that people could do these things without a thought for what they signed up for.
After reading the article I had one very clear thought about the current situation, which has borne out strongly over the last several days.
There is not a larger problem at Ohio State.
If anything, I believed that this was a problem that simply escaped the notice of compliance and Jim Tressel. Six compliance staffers and the head coach are not a lot of people to keep track of the goings-on in a football program larger than 85 players strong (scholarship + walkons). That’s particularly true when the compliance guys are being forced to watch 30+ athletic programs. There’s only so much that they’re going to be able to pick up on. We’ve seen that very fact bear out in the Terrelle Pryor car saga. While it’s been demonstrated that nothing was done that violated NCAA rules, clearly Compliance did not know every single detail of what was going on.
That fact is already being remedied, as compliance is hiring 2 new positions. Granted 8 is not a lot better than 6, but it’s an improvement.
The reason I can be so certain that there is not a larger problem at Ohio State is simple. While Jim Tressel lied (and he did, there’s no question about that) his actions were his alone, and not perpetrated by anyone else. What was done with the tattoo parlor was a fairly isolated set of incidences, even if 28 former and current players were involved!
It is clear, even from the audit done in November of the compliance department, that compliance works very very hard to run a clean ship. While they weren’t tracking down every single lead, they still investigated the car situation and (correctly) gave it approval. That is nothing more than a sign that OSU is doing things right overall.
As for the raffle business, I’ll wait to see some hard evidence before I believe it. I cannot believe that Tressel has it in his character to do that. Hurting kids, even if it does gain him a recruiting advantage? Has Tressel ever hurt anyone in his life? Seriously?
We neither know the identity of the person who made that claim, nor do we have any proof that it was done. Until that time, I will take the information with a grain of salt.
Which brings up one last point – I find Dohrman’s choice of interview subjects to be fairly suspect. The best you can do is a guy in prison? Seriously? That sure makes me trust the integrity of what he says.
Robby- I thought it was poor journalism and left a lot of doors open without closing them. Way too many anonymous sources and allegations without concrete evidence. Way too much ‘he said, she said’ quoting and interviewing for a Sports Illustrated investigative piece.
But there definitely is a larger problem that could open up a massive Pandora’s box at Ohio State. Since The Ohio State University is all about football, that affects EVERYTHING in Columbus. If it hurts the football team, it hurts the school and everything around it. That makes it a larger problem for the University.
Jay- Honest answer – I have not read the SI article. However, without having read the article, I would say that I very much doubt there is some widespread problem at Ohio State, or at least any more than there is at most other schools.
Joe- Honestly I don’t think there is a bigger problem at Ohio State. There are many opportunities for these kids to slip up due to the astronomical amount of stupid rules the NCAA puts out. These are 18-22 year olds and they are bound to make mistakes. I think we take our punishment, and move on. There has been a bunch of mud slinging about all these different allocations about cars, tatto0s, money, apartments. Some of them have been true, but at this point it has been a handful of guys and a handful of benefits. That doesn’t seem to constitute a problem.
Joe Dexter– For a while, I felt betrayed by what I though was a good group of players and coaches. As a member of the media (at a very small level, in a small town in Michigan), I think I put my windshield wipers on and cleared any possibility that Dohlman’s work could have flaws in it. I found myself believing that I was mislead by Jim Tressel and his players. But after fully digesting the work of Sports Illustrated, I felt for the players in the middle of this mess that had just lost their coach that have to be so humble and move on from a man that influenced their life so quickly. Is there a larger problem at Ohio State? Maybe. But the real problem lies in college football’s infrastructure and the media’s lack of covering from the inside out. What sells is putting a coach and top notch program on blast. Not proposing a solution to all the mess across the sport that has been commonplace for many years and could be for years to come.
Mali- Like I mentioned yesterday, I was hitting “reload” on the SI front page… the rumors of what this “bombshell” would be were of the magnitude that I was assuming that Ohio State was poised to be the next SMU- particularly with the comments that this article was what “forced Tressel’s decision” or “forced the University’s leadership to fire him”.
And then… nothing. As I initially posted, it felt like a lot of “sound and fury, signifying nothing”-
All if this will be difficult for either side to prove; for the NCAA (who likes paper trails) or for the University (hard to exonerate in the court of public opinion). In spite of speculation that this would be a “bombshell”, it does seem like speculation and circumstantial testimony from (what SI admits are) persons of questionable reliability.
Again, at a surface level, this does not seem to be damning to the level that it would force a resignation, but we may never know what happened behind the scenes at the WHAC leading to this morning’s shocking announcement.
Which brings me to the second question- Is there a larger problem? Well, to be honest, I think the answer is “maybe”.
To clarify, that doesn’t mean that the WHAC is the wild west of lawlessness and debauchery- what I believe is that any time you look closely enough with the level of media scrutiny that’s currently aimed at Columbus, you’re going to find something. I wrote about the stuff that I experienced at a tiny D3 school in the middle of nowhere- I can’t imagine the magnitude of opportunities to go afoul of NCAA guidelines at a school with a program the size of Ohio State, particularly when you start involving the money that’s a reality in top level college athletics. If it’s not “hangers on” looking to be significant in a large town with no major sports but the Buckeyes, then it’s student athletes who see the money made off of their likenesses and wonder “Where’s mine?” Add into this the fact that the NCAA’s guidelines can be interpreted differently across several institutions, and it’s easy to understand how the Athletic Department can find things to report at the levels that have been well documented elsewhere.
Perhaps it would make more sense if I re-framed the question. Do I believe that there’s a larger problem? Not really, for all the reasons that we’ve already said (Eric’s “If money was readily available, then why would you need to sell stuff? argument that he’s made a couple of places is pretty solid). If you give a Pulitzer Prize winning author, one that I have a lot of respect for, six weeks and this is the best he comes up with, it’s possible that compliance is doing their job educating and following up. But do I believe that there may be more things to find? Certainly- when you look as closely as the media and University are in the midst of doing you can’t be surprised what is found. Robby is dead on regarding a potential “Pandora’s Box”.
Any fans of other programs that might believe otherwise about their favorites are more than welcome to invite ESPN and Sports Illustrated to their town for 6 weeks to help prove their point. This isn’t an excuse, just a perspective on the reality of working with young adults.
Your turn– In the comments, join in the conversation: What are/were your thoughts on the SI piece? Is there a larger problem at Ohio State?
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