Well, it was nice talking football for a week. After a brief pause from scandal talk here in the Leaves, we are dragged back to it by a major development in the Ohio State-Jim Tressel saga.
Ohio State formally responded Friday to the NCAA’s Notice of Allegations, self-imposing what they feel are appropriate penalties for the violations alleged by the sport’s governing body, and at the same time asking the NCAA to refrain from adding additional sanctions. As the saying goes....good luck with that.
Anticipating one penalty that was going to come down one way or another, Ohio State has elected to voluntarily vacate the entire 2010 season, including the Sugar Bowl win. The university also placed its football program on two years probation effective immediately, and vacated the 2010 Big Ten Championship.
It was also revealed in the OSU statement that one player in addition to the original six named in December will be subject to a suspension for accepting free tattoos. The player, yet unnamed by the university, is likely to receive the same five-game suspension handed out to Pryor, Posey, Herron, Thomas and Adams.
OSU also announced that they are “implementing additional measures” to improve in areas like compliance and monitoring, while also continuing to work closely with the NCAA to review new information that has come to light since the initial violations were reported.
The 2011 college football season is only 60 days away. It really sneaked up on us because...boy, that off-season sure flew by this year, didn’t it? Nothing going on in Ohio State football for sometimes minutes on end. It is actually a quiet time for the public face of the program right now, outside of some 2012 recruiting activity. The players won’t report until August 8 and 9, the dates for freshmen and returnees respectively. And preparing OSU’s answer to the NCAA this summer is the job of Athletic Director Gene Smith and President Gee, not that of Luke Fickell or his coaching staff.
We'll probably never really know how it was the Jim Tressel actually came to lose his job as head coach of the Ohio State Buckeyes. Sure we understand the email from an unethical lawyer that Tressel stupidly didn't pass along to anyone else in authority and the false statement he made about it months later as the lynchpin. But why Tressel was ultimately forced into early retirement is murkier.
Summer is supposed to be a quiet time for college football fans -- a period in our yearly routine where we hunker down, play a lot of pretend football on our Xbox or PS3’s, all while trying to limit the number of nose bleeds we suffer from baseball being the only thing holding off the sports-starvation. I know this analogy is passed around quite a bit, but summer for college football fans is somewhat of a “hibernation” period.
The exodus from Columbus of OSU coaches, quarterbacks, and committed football recruits over the last several weeks is causing me to contemplate the name of this column in a whole new way. It’s not a news headline, people...although lately it could be.