Report: Tressell Resigns from Ohio State

[Irish2015]

and boom goes the dynamite!

 

[Polish Leppy 22]

that was less than thrilling

 

[Cali_domer]

When I read that it makes me confident OSU will skate through this,

 

[phork]

Wow, what a joke of an article.

 

[Cali_domer]

Wow, what a joke of an article.

ND Alum wrote it.

 

[JadeBrecks]

it didnt help USC when Pete the Cheat bolted for his dream job, Seattle.

True but I have disliked him for as long as I can remember. I have said its a dirty program for years. I have had to listen to a crap load of osu fans tell me I'm full of crap. I am enjoying this as much as I can!

 

[gmnysdad]

I was really hoping for something really bad, those all seem somewhat minor compared to Reggie Bush

 

[phork]

ND Alum wrote it.

I don't care who wrote it. There was nothing earth shattering or even worth 3 pages of fluff to boil out to 1 paragraph. I don't give props to people just because they are affiliated with ND in some respect. It was made to seem like Tressel was dumped because of this coming article and it would break open new doors and a whole ton of stuff was to be revealed, it failed.

 

[Cali_domer]

I don't care who wrote it. There was nothing earth shattering or even worth 3 pages of fluff to boil out to 1 paragraph. I don't give props to people just because they are affiliated with ND in some respect. It was made to seem like Tressel was dumped because of this coming article and it would break open new doors and a whole ton of stuff was to be revealed, it failed.

Calm the f*ck down man. I just pointing out for a point of reference. I was disappointed also. Thought it was interesting. .

 

[Polish Leppy 22]

I don't care if Fr. Jenkins wrote it. It was way overhyped and didn't live up to expectations. I was anticipating multiple fee car deals for players. I think the two biggest ones were

1) player giving 4 rose bowl tix for a chevy tahoe

2) players hanging out in the bacj room of the tattoo joint being given booze and weed for memorabilia

 

[RyCo1983]

Nothing new here...just adds some more players into the mix.

That was a let down.


Where's the housing and vacations scandal that was mentioned a few weeks back?

 

[Polish Leppy 22]

Buckeye fans sound exactly the way USC fans sounded when the Reggie Bush investigation started....denial denial denial

it's sickening, but still laugh worthy over there

 

[phork]

Calm the f*ck down man. I just pointing out for a point of reference. I was disappointed also. Thought it was interesting. .

I am calm. I never go over board. Was just countering your point is all.

 

[Cali_domer]

I am calm. I never go over board. Was just countering your point is all.

What point? You tell me my point? Did I say don't give him a hard time because he is a Alum? Damn I guess I will go re-read my post to see if I did.

 

[RyCo1983]

I am calm. I never go over board. Was just countering your point is all.

I'm calmer than you are dude...

A little Lebowski reference to lighten the mood.

 

[Woneone]

Yea, it was boring. But I think everyone is missing the big picture.

Gene Smith, and I'm paraphrasing here, pretty much said, "Yea, sorry, but this is an isolated incident."

Then the lies.

Then more lies.

Then a few players came out and said they did it too.

Now we have a report of upwards of 26'ish (I read the article, left, and now I'm trying to remember, so someone correct me if I'm wrong) players doing such over several years.

OSU was lucky they avoided the dreaded "Lack of Institutional Control" charge at first, but if this turns out to be true, and it was a plague and not an isolated incident, how do they avoid the charge?

Yea, it would have been cool to read about a player or two getting something like a free car, but an article that shows total ignorance by the entire OSU compliance department since it involves so many players may be just as damning.

 

[IrishLax]

Key quotes capturing all of the violations of Jim Tressel/Ohio State. Worth a full read of the article, but these are the juiciest nuggets:

As coach at Youngstown (Ohio) State in the mid-1990s, he claimed not to know that his star quarterback had received a car and more than $10,000 from a school trustee and his associates -- even though it was later established in court documents that Tressel had told the player to go see the trustee.

In 2003, during Tressel's third season in Columbus, Buckeyes running back Maurice Clarett was found to have received money and other benefits. Even though Tressel said he spent more time with Clarett than with any other player, he also said he did not know that Clarett had been violating the rules.

A year later an internal Ohio State investigation (later corroborated by the NCAA) found that quarterback Troy Smith had taken $500 from a booster. It was the second time the booster had been investigated for allegedly providing improper benefits to a star player, but again Tressel said he had no knowledge of the illicit payment.

When those revelations became public, Tressel said he hadn't known what the players had done and expressed disappointment that they had not listened to what he called the "little sensor" inside them that knew right from wrong. Four of Tressel's highest-profile players were found to have committed major NCAA violations, yet the coach's supporters insisted that those were isolated incidents outside his control.

Rather than alert his superiors, as NCAA regulations require, Tressel said he "couldn't think" whom to tell. It was later reported that he had told one person, a hometown adviser of Pryor's. By ignoring his own "little sensor" and failing to be forthcoming, Tressel protected key players from being ruled ineligible for much of the 2010 season, in which the Buckeyes were a popular pick to reach the BCS championship game.

Tressel was forced out three days after Sports Illustrated alerted Ohio State officials that the wrongdoing by Tressel's players was far more widespread than had been reported. SI learned that the memorabilia-for-tattoos violations actually stretched back to 2002, Tressel's second season at Ohio State, and involved at least 28 players -- 22 more than the university has acknowledged.

In 1988, according to court documents from a jury-tampering trial involving Mickey Monus, a wealthy school trustee and the founder of the Phar-Mor chain of drug stores, Tressel had called Monus about arranging a job for Isaac. The player and the CEO had never met, but Isaac told SI that he had heard of Monus's "philanthropist-type hand" from two basketball players. At his first meeting with Monus, Isaac received $150. According to the court documents, by the time he left Youngstown State, in 1992, Isaac had collected more than $10,000 in cash and checks from Monus and Monus's associates and employees.

In January 1994 the NCAA's director of enforcement sent Cochran an ominous letter. It said that according to an anonymous source, Isaac had been driving a car provided by a local business, which would turn out to be Phar-Mor; 13 Penguins had had jobs with Phar-Mor during the season, in violation of NCAA rules; and nonscholarship student athletes were being illegally paid by the university's director of athletic development.

Three years later Monus was on trial for jury tampering in the government's first prosecution of him, which had ended in a hung jury. During this trial (at which Monus was found not guilty) Monus and Isaac, who had pleaded guilty to attempting to bribe a juror on ­Monus's ­behalf, disclosed their financial dealings while Isaac was a student and alleged that Tressel had set these in motion with that first phone call.

According to NCAA documents, all of Isaac's teammates who were interviewed "except one" knew about the car or had suspicions about it. Even people outside the football family knew. Pauline Saternow, then the school's compliance officer, had such misgivings about the car that she recused herself from the investigation committee because, according to Cochran, she did not feel she could be objective. Everyone raised an eyebrow -- except Tressel.

Tressel was aware of the car. At times, Isaac told SI, he asked the coach for help in getting out of traffic tickets. "He'd slot out two hours to meet and say, 'Ray, I need you to read this book and give me 500 words on why it's important to be a good student-athlete,'" Isaac says. Afterward the ticket would sometimes disappear, which, if Tressel intervened, would be an NCAA infraction.

The first indication of Tressel's choice came in 2003, when the NCAA investigated Clarett for receiving improper benefits. Clarett was evasive, answering "I don't know" to many of the investigators' questions. The NCAA and Ohio State eventually ruled that he had received improper benefits, including taking money from and allowing his cellphone bill to be paid by a man who lived near Youngstown. Ohio State suspended Clarett for the '03 season.
A year later, after he left the university, Clarett told ESPN that he wasn't forthcoming with the NCAA because it would have meant ratting on teammates and coaches. He alleged that Tressel had ­arranged cars for him to use and that the coach's older brother ****, who was then the Buckeyes' director of football operations (he is now the team's running backs coach), arranged lucrative no-show jobs for players. (Jim and **** Tressel have denied the allegations.) Clarett added that coaches connected him with boosters who gave him thousands of dollars.

Former Buckeyes basketball player Mark Titus posted on his blog on May 24 that it was common knowledge among students that football players were driving cars too pricey for their means. "You'd have to be blind to not notice it," he wrote. Former wide receiver Ray Small confirmed last week to The Lantern, the Ohio State student newspaper, that he got a "deal" on a car from a Columbus dealer, but he did not provide the terms.

He says an employee informed him of a phone conversation involving Poly-Care cofounder Robert Q. Baker during which Baker talked of a payment to Smith, the Buckeyes' quarterback, and said, "Now I own him."
Some have portrayed Baker as a rogue booster who committed a single forbidden act. But Tressel and Ohio State had reason to suspect that Baker had violated NCAA rules ­almost a year earlier. The Dayton Daily News reported that Chris Gamble, a cornerback and wide receiver who now plays for the NFL's Panthers, was paid by Baker in the summer of 2003 for a job that consisted of little more than showing up and signing autographs. The Columbus Dispatch wrote that Gamble accompanied Baker on golf outings and even called Baker at halftime of the '04 Fiesta Bowl.

Still, Tressel could have forbidden his players to interact with a die-hard booster such as Baker. Instead, about a year after Gamble's relationship with Baker was brought to Tressel's attention, Smith went to Poly-Care looking for a job and left with $500. After a tip from Webster, the university investigated and suspended Smith for the 2004 Alamo Bowl; the NCAA later banned him for a second game.

According to his fellow assistant, Tressel rigged the raffle so that the elite prospects won -- a potential violation of NCAA rules. Says the former colleague, who asked not to be identified because he still has ties to the Ohio State community, "In the morning he would read the Bible with another coach. Then, in the afternoon, he would go out and cheat kids who had probably saved up money from mowing lawns to buy those raffle tickets. That's Jim Tressel."

In reality, Ohio State players have been trading memorabilia --­ including items bearing Tressel's signature -- since at least the coach's second season, according to multiple ­sources. The number of players ­involved is also much higher than what has previously been disclosed.
Dustin Halko was an artist at Dudley'z from the fall of 2002 until early '04, and he says that players regularly visited the shop and handed over signed jerseys, gloves, magazines and other goods in exchange for tattoos. Halko says he personally inked at least 10 Ohio State players -- he clearly remembers tattooing guard T.J. Downing, tight end Louis Irizarry and wide receiver Chris Vance -- and in return he was given autographed memorabilia.

"What they brought in depended on the kind of tattoo they wanted," says Halko. "If it was just something small, it might be a signed magazine or something like that. If it was a full sleeve, they might bring in a jersey." (Tattoos range in price from less than $100 for simple designs to several thousand dollars for more elaborate ones like the full-sleeve inkings of some Buckeyes.) Halko says those working in the shop preferred receiving items with multiple autographs. His most memorable acquisition was a scarlet-and-gray training jacket with between 10 and 15 signatures on it, including Tressel's. Halko says he also traded tattoo work for a magazine bearing the coach's autograph.

Ohio State has conceded that six current players committed an NCAA violation by trading memorabilia for tattoos or cash at Fine Line Ink: Pryor, tackle Mike Adams, running back Dan Herron, wide receiver DeVier Posey, defensive end Solomon Thomas and linebacker Jordan Whiting. Ellis, who spent time in and around the tattoo parlor for nearly 20 months, says that in addition to those six, he witnessed nine other active players swap memorabilia or give autographs for tattoos or money. Those players were defensive back C.J. Barnett, linebacker Dorian Bell, running back Jaamal Berry, running back Bo DeLande, defensive back Zach Domicone, linebacker Storm Klein, linebacker Etienne Sabino, defensive tackle John Simon and defensive end Nathan Williams.

Ohio State's conclusion that only six players broke the rules is based in part on a list of the items the Department of Justice seized in raids of Fine Line Ink and Rife's home on May 1, 2010. But that list, which mentioned 42 football-related items that Rife bought, received or acquired in trades from players, covered only a small fraction of what he got from the Buckeyes, Ellis says. "Eddie had storage units all over town," he says, "and he also sold some stuff off to people." (Through Palmer, his lawyer, Rife declined to comment on his involvement with Ohio State players.) Ellis estimates that Pryor alone brought in more than 20 items, ­including game-worn shoulder pads, multiple helmets, Nike cleats, jerseys, game pants and more. One day Ellis asked Pryor how he was able to take so much gear from the university's equipment room. Ellis says the quarter­back responded, "I get whatever I want."

The Department of Justice alerted Ohio State to a transaction in which an unnamed player gave Rife a watch and four tickets to the 2010 Rose Bowl in exchange for a Chevy Tahoe. That player, Ellis says, was Martin: "Jermil came in to the shop and said, 'Are we doing this deal on this truck?' They went outside, and Eddie signed the title over and Jermil shook his hand and off he went." Martin did not give Rife anything at that moment, Ellis says, but a short time later Rife said in a telephone call to Ellis that he was in Pasadena and that Martin had gotten him tickets.
Martin was particularly close to Rife, Ellis says; about a year earlier Rife had given Martin a different car, a 2004 Jaguar sedan. "Eddie tossed him the keys, and off Jermil drove," Ellis says.

Ellis also produced a photo of 11 plastic bags filled with what appears to be marijuana; he says the photo was taken at Fine Line Ink. The letter the DOJ sent to Ohio State in December stated, "There is no allegation that any of these players were involved in or had knowledge of Mr. Rife's drug trafficking activities." Ellis says that is true but that he did witness four other Buckeyes trade memorabilia for weed. Three of those transactions involved a small amount of the drug, he says, but in one instance a player departed with what Ellis was told was a pound.

From fall 2002 through last year, first at Dudley'z and then at Fine Line Ink, at least 28 Ohio State players are either known or alleged to have traded or sold memorabilia in violation of NCAA rules. It is a staggering number, a level of wrongdoing that would seem hard to miss for a coach and an entire athletic department -- one that includes an NCAA compliance staff of at least six people. Yet the university trusted the coach, and the coach says he knew nothing before April 2010, when the Columbus lawyer tipped him off in an e-mail.

Tressel violated NCAA bylaw 10.1 -- Unethical Conduct, one of the cornerstones of NCAA rulebook -- three times: first by failing to act when tipped off about the tattoo scandal; again last fall, by signing a standard form given to all coaches declaring that he knew of no violations; and then, last December, by not being forthcoming with school officials. Tressel's violations will almost certainly lead to sanctions that will follow him to any school that might hire him, making it highly unlikely that he will coach a major college program again.

Read more: Sports Illustrated investigation on Jim Tressel, Ohio State - SI.com - Magazine

 

[phork]

@schadjoe RT @BMac_SN: Have now talked to 8 or 9 kids with Ohio State offers, and many are done with OSU because of today's news. about 7 hours ago

How do you rebuild UM fast? Just follow the derailing Tressel train. Can you imagine if Patterson dumps TCU for OSU, the BigEast's move is going to backfire big time.

Good for ND recruiting, even better for UM though.

 

[IrishLax]

Jesus... in typing that, I thought I only copied a couple blurbs. I had no idea my post was that big.

I don't know what you guys are talking about "not a big deal"... the guy implicated ~30 athletes at Ohio State. He implicated three high profile athletes. There was drug trafficking. There were cars. There was incredible lack of booster control. And these transgressions spanned nearly 10 years.

And Tressel got absolutely exposed. This is 10x more damning than Reggie Bush... except OSU might luck out and have it all fall on Tressel to dodge major sanctions. Tressel will never, ever coach again.

 

[BeauBenken]

Everyone expected something huge like buying players houses, I guess, but this article shows that not just 6 like the university claimed but 26 players were included in the tattoo scandal. And if you watched the video at the end of the article, Dohrmann (hope I didn't fudge his name) says they may be uncovering up to some 40+ players involved over the years. I mean, jeepers! For how long and how many times did Tressel try to turn a blind eye? And what's really bad is that this man paraded around as upstanding person, but behind closed doors, he was a football criminal. Talk about being hypocritical!

I saw a picture of him with a WWJD bracelet on and thought, "You turn the other cheek when someone strikes you...not when you're just trying to avoid seeing the wrong doing."

 

[phork]

Jesus... in typing that, I thought I only copied a couple blurbs. I had no idea my post was that big.

I don't know what you guys are talking about "not a big deal"... the guy implicated ~30 athletes at Ohio State. He implicated three high profile athletes. There was drug trafficking. There were cars. There was incredible lack of booster control. And these transgressions spanned nearly 10 years.

And Tressel got absolutely exposed. This is 10x more damning than Reggie Bush... except OSU might luck out and have it all fall on Tressel to dodge major sanctions. Tressel will never, ever coach again.

Aside from the # of players I don't agree. Bush got 6 figures as a single player. These guys sold memorabilia for tats.

 

[RyCo1983]

Aside from the # of players I don't agree. Bush got 6 figures as a single player. These guys sold memorabilia for tats.

...and cars and drugs.

 

[IrishLax]

Aside from the # of players I don't agree. Bush got 6 figures as a single player. These guys sold memorabilia for tats.

True, but add up all of those tats and cars and drugs and I think it's quite a bit. Not exactly a house like Reggie, but I think it's incredibly damning that SI could uncover all of this on a ton of athletes over multiple years but somehow OSU couldn't. And I think the fact that someone could drive a 2004 Jag around without raising questions trumps Reggies Impala by a lot.

Not quite a bomb, but I think it's death by a thousand paper cuts. I think they dodge a lot by deflecting onto Tressel but I also think there is no way they escape this without some pretty heavy sanctions... especially if the Pryor probe turns up anything.

 

[BeauBenken]

It seems to me that if you were in eye sight of the football team you couldn't have not seen something fishy. I vote that there was definitely a "Lack of Institutional Control".

 

[rikkitikki08]

Its been a long time coming....this is kind of like that movie blue chips except im sure tressel doesnt feel bad haha This is great news to come home from work too

 

[Ironman8]

The car Pryor showed up in for the "players only" meeting tonight (with new temporary tags):

 

[PLACforever]

For some reason I can't get Weezer's "Undone- Sweater Song" out of my head while reading this...
Weezer - Undone -- The Sweater Song Video by Weezer - AOL Music

 

[Cali_domer]

The car Pryor showed up in for the "players only" meeting tonight (with new temporary tags):

That is called just not giving a damn anymore.

 

[Riddickulous]

OSU is up **** Creek.

 

[pkt77242]

That is called just not giving a damn anymore.

more like giving a middle finger to OSU and the NCAA.