^
I agree; actually I think it is a preemptive strike by OSU to try to ward off the NCAA suspending him for the season.
I think they are responding to the negative feedback after their dog and pony show press conference where they were joking around and announced the two game suspension. That didn't float well, so they are now trying to equate what Tressel did with what the tat 5 did. That strategy is unlikely to work, either. Bottom line, if Tressel had handled things the way his contract, the NCAA regs, and his religion prescribe the tat 5 would have been a minor bump in the road last year. Instead, by lying and covering up the violations to try to get his national championship he turned it into potentially the biggest violation in OSU football history.
When the Buckeye basketball program was sanctioned by the NCAA in 2006, tagged with "failure to monitor," all games in which the involved players played were vacated and the program placed on three years probation, an NCAA representative said the following:
"Of particular concern to the committee was the pattern by both former coaches of failing to provide critical information in a timely fashion to the institution, as well as providing information only when it became clear that it otherwise was going to become known." The head coach show cause order runs to 2011.
Now I know that hoops was a different violation, coaches actually paying players, but the NCAA's concern sure sounds a lot like what Tressel did. Can anyone say Lack of Institutional Control?
It also makes Tressel's Sergeant Schultz Defense ("I know nothing!") look pretty suspicious when he used it in the past. At YSU Tressel hooked up his superstar qb with the booster, telling the booster the kid "needs money," then claimed he thought all the cash and new cars were the result of the booster giving the kid a job. Right.
What OSU has to worry about IMO is that the NCAA is going to stick their nose into everything. Pryor drives around in new Corvettes, Denalis, etc., shades of Mo Clarett. This thing is just the tip of the iceberg.
