It has been roughly one month since the TatGate bombshell erupted on the campus of The Ohio State University, and an unpopular truth beats on: Jim Tressel may be gone, but the problem remains.
That’s because Jim Tressel wasn’t the problem.
Tressel is certainly not free of blame. The former Buckeye football coach, forced to resign by the university at the end of May, lied to the NCAA about knowingly allowing ineligible players to play during the 2011 regular season.
But the means by which The Senator’s time in Columbus came to a screeching halt in no way justify the end result — a great coach gone while the scorn lives on.
In a March press conference, Ohio State President Gordon Gee and Athletics Director Gene Smith weathered the bullets of media questioning in defense of a suspended (but not fired) Tressel. Their message — that one mistake should not overshadow a life of successes — was at the very least an honorable stand in the face of public opinion.
The stand lasted two months. Then along came Sports Illustrated.
One day before S.I. was set to release a heavily anticipated “update” on the situation, OSU asked Tressel to hang up the sweater vest. The impending story clearly pressured the administration into changing its stance, but over what?
The story balanced new rumors of players swapping memorabilia for tattoos with the rehashing of ‘90s rumors. For those even slightly in the know, none of this was new or startling information; yet it had a profound effect on the way the Ohio State administration chose to define its principles.
It didn’t take long for the former Buckeye coach to become America’s scapegoat. That’s because it was just too easy to pile on Tressel, who made the hate parade easier by taking the grenade in silence.
It was too easy for outsiders to take their long-awaited jabs, for Buckeye fans to accept that the institution was above the problems of an ex-coach and for the Ohio State administration to make a Tressel problem out of the mayhem that continues to poison its joke of an athletics department.
It would be nice to think that all of this was nothing more than Big Bad Jim and his sleazy means of operation, and that college football was still this glorious avenue where we as fans can feel good about the institutions we’ve grown to love. But until the masses agree to face the music of what college athletics actually are, bombshells will continue to destabilize the ground on which the game has its name.
The reality is that the systematic instigator of TatGate lives deep within all major programs. To adhere to a double standard for Tressel is to select a sacrificial lamb for a problem that will continue to haunt college football until those in power care to notice.
For two months, Ohio State was the cause for NCAA radicals to believe in. By standing behind Tressel, OSU could have forced the NCAA to finally reconsider the impracticality of its rules.
Instead, Ohio State gave in. A spontaneous Memorial Day meeting informed 15 players that the university was giving into public perception in hopes of receiving a lighter punishment.
In the month’s aftermath, a new cheating story from somewhere else is said to be building. We’ve seen Texas accused of being a source for money handshakes, Oregon investigated for school officials arranging car deals and the Cam Newton recruiting investigation grow new legs. Ohio State started the summer as the joke, but now appears to have sprung the leak that has college football in a perpetual state of disarray.
It’s a shame the once-proud program settled for filling the punch line.