Jim Tressel’s complicated Ohio State legacy

One of the biggest stories in football in the last weeks has been of Ohio State head coach Jim Tressel. Tressel put up a 106-22 record with the Buckeyes over the past 10 years, taking them to the 2003 national championship with a Fiesta Bowl victory over the Miami Hurricanes and earning appearances in two other national championship games.

The team also made Bowl Championship Series bowls in eight of those seasons and went 5-3 in those games, giving Tressel the most BCS appearances and wins of any coach since the system was brought in in 1998.

Despite all that success and a strong recent season that saw the Buckeyes go 12-1 with a Sugar Bowl win last January, Tressel resigned under pressure May 30 in the wake of a scandal over athlete tattoos and other improper benefits.

Some of the biggest questions, amplified by prominent allegations from outlets such as Sports Illustrated, surround what Tressel knew and why he kept it under wraps.

With further details of the scandal continuing to emerge and questions rising around the future of prominent players like quarterback Terrelle Pryor (the CFL being an option), Ohio State fans are faced with a quandary, torn between celebrating the program’s time under Tressel and worrying about how his actions will affect their team’s future. Some are holding rallies at Tressel’s doorstep, while others are more concerned with where their program is to go from here.

Jason Priestas, of the prominent Buckeyes’ blog and fan community Eleven Warriors, said Tressel’s resignation was the right move, but not all fans have realized that yet.

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“The program with Tressel at the top had a real credibility issue,” Priestas said. “Though a good chunk of the fanbase will always love the man and realize that he made a mistake by trying to protect his players and handling it in house, he wasn’t truthful with the NCAA. If another coach had done what he had, we’d be clamoring for his job.”

Priestas said although Tressel’s gone, his actions may wind up hurting Ohio State for years to come, as the NCAA seems likely to expand their sanctions beyond the already-declared five-game suspensions for five of the players involved.

“While I’d certainly love to call it even with the five game suspensions and Tressel’s resignation, I have to imagine there’s more coming,” Priestas said. “From what we’re hearing, the school will likely take the initiative and suspend Pryor for the season ahead of any NCAA action. I’d be shocked if Ohio State wasn’t forced to vacate victories from last season and loss of scholarships and a postseason ban are still certainly in play.”

However, the decision to move on without Tressel isn’t universally popular. Sam Obermeyer, a journalism student finishing his junior year at Ohio State and a vice-president and broadcaster at the campus outlet Scarlet and Gray Sports Radio, said replacing Tressel quickly may help reduce NCAA sanctions, but it seems harsh considering what he did for the school.

“Based on the information to come out so far, I don’t think it was enough to force Tressel to resign if he wanted to stay on,” Obermeyer said. “Tressel made a mistake, but the good he has done over the years far outweighs the bad. I would have supported the university if they had decided to take a harsher punishment from the NCAA and have Tressel stay on.”

Many of the allegations that have been made so far center around players reportedly receiving favorable deals from local car dealerships and tattoo parlors. The tattoo situation in particular, where Pryor and others allegedly traded Ohio State memorabilia for tattoos and violated NCAA rules in the process, spiralled into an apparent cover-up and a much wider mess. Some pieces, including George Dohrmann’s Sports Illustrated article, have argued that there were enough signs of trouble for years that people should have caught on, but Obermeyer said that isn’t particularly the case.

“At any big-time college football program, there is always some suspicion that players are getting money or free gifts from boosters, but the five players selling memorabilia for tattoos came out of the blue,” he said. “A lot of fans didn’t even know it was against the rules.”

Priestas said there might have been some indications of problems, but nothing that particularly stood out.

“You always hear rumors and hushed talk, but never anything completely solid and certainly nothing specific to memorabilia for tattoos,” he said. “The Columbus metro area is closing in on two million and Ohio State is by far the biggest game in town, so there’s no shortage of people trying to get close to players and the program.”

That environment made violations of some sort seem inevitable, so Priestas said the initial impetus among many fans was to believe athletic director Gene Smith’s comments that the situation around Pryor and the others was a minor one rather than the systematic problem that later came to life.

“I believe most of us took Gene Smith at his word in that it was indeed an isolated incident,” he said. “There’s probably the element of fandom at play with wishful thinking, but nobody anticipated the scope of this thing.”

Although that particular incident came to light in December, the NCAA made the unusual decision to allow the impacted players to take part in the Sugar Bowl. Obermeyer said that move made it seem like they’d investigated and found nothing further.

“Especially after the NCAA cleared the players to play in the Sugar Bowl, I think it was assumed that OSU and the NCAA had looked into it and there was nothing more,” he said.

That particular decision was after Tressel and other Ohio State and Big Ten officials lobbied for those players to be allowed to participate in the bowl game, claiming that this was a one-time mistake based on the institution not instructing them properly on specific compliance rules. Priestas said that seemed like an odd move at the time, but Ohio State fans weren’t going to raise a fuss about it.

“It was weird,” he said. “I think the general feeling within the Eleven Warriors community was that it didn’t quite feel right, but at the same time, if the NCAA was going to clear the players to participate, we certainly weren’t going to light up their phones in an attempt to change the organization’s stance.”

Obermeyer said television and ticket-sales considerations may have played a role there, as it was to the NCAA’s advantage to have star players in one of their most prominent bowls.

“The Sugar Bowl and BCS wanted a competitive game, and OSU missing some of their top players would not be as good of a draw,” he said. “To me, if you are suspended you should just miss the next five games. I think the Sugar Bowl wanted the players to play.”

For Obermeyer, though, that’s a smaller issue. One of his bigger concerns around the saga remains the university’s inconsistent response.

“The thing Ohio State probably should have handled differently was deciding what to do with Tressel,” he said. “First, he was given a two-game suspension, then five games, and then he resigned. I don’t think it was clear immediately how big of a deal his situation would become. If Tressel was going to be out, it would have been best for him to not coach in the spring.”

That inconsistency was apparently displayed in Ohio State president Gordon Gee’s changing opinions. When initially asked about firing Tressel, he responded “I’m just hoping the coach doesn’t dismiss me,” but he later apparently put pressure on Tressel to go as more information came out. Obermeyer said Gee has much more to worry about than the football team, though, so the flack he’s taken for initially supporting Tressel isn’t fully deserved.

“He is the president of a university of over 50,000 students; his job is not to watch over the football players,” Obermeyer said. “Yes, Gee saying, ‘I hope he doesn’t fire me,’ when he talked about Tressel looked bad, but Gee was clearly joking. If you spend any time around Gee you understand that is just how he is.”

Some Ohio State fans have blamed that changing message on the myriad media stories that have come out on the Buckeyes’ problems, putting pressure on administrators. One particular piece that’s taken heat is George Dohrmann’s Sports Illustrated cover feature, which was highly promoted and explored issues going back several years. Many have blasted it for not having enough specifics and sources, and used that as an excuse to accuse the media of being biased against the Buckeyes. Priestas said the media coverage is understandable, though, as this kind of a scandal at a famous program like Ohio State always draws attention.

“It doesn’t feel fair when it’s happening to your team, but there was blood in the water and media outlets would have acted in a similar fashion had it been another big-name school,” he said. “The Dohrmann piece felt a little underwhelming, particularly after he took to Twitter to claim credit for Tressel’s departure, but Ohio State fumbled the PR side of this thing from the start, so instead of deflecting shots, a lot of them stuck, substantial or not.”

Obermeyer said those investigations are fair, but media outlets have to be careful to stick to trying to dig up facts rather than trying to get coaches fired.

“Any media outlet is justified in trying to dig up more to this story or any story; that’s the media’s job,” he said. “But the media should not be digging things up with the goal to get someone fired. At times, to Buckeye fans, it’s like that was the goal of some outlets. Report the facts, and then let the NCAA and fans make their own judgements.”

In the end, Tressel leaves a complicated legacy for Buckeyes’ fans. He took the program to great heights, but may also have brought it low. Obermeyer said his overwhelming success should be remembered despite the later turmoil, though.

“The Tressel Era will be remembered as one of the best 10-year periods in Ohio State football history, with the 2002 national championship and his 9-1 record vs. Michigan,” Obermeyer said. “He will most likely be looked at as the second-best coach in Buckeye history behind Woody Hayes. In Columbus, Tressel will also be remembered for all his work in the community. Depending on how the team does the next few years and what the NCAA’s punishment against Ohio State is, some fans will be mad at him, but in time they will forgive him. After all, Woody ended his career by punching a player and all that is forgotten now.”

Priestas said Buckeye fans will have to struggle with Tressel’s legacy for years, but the heights will endure regardless of how hard the NCAA comes down on them.

“We’re all asking ourselves in one form or another whether it was worth it,” Priestas said. “Was it worth the national championship in ’02, a 9-1 record against Michigan and all of the Big Ten titles? Ultimately, I believe it was. We’ll pay for it over the next few years, but that may be a fair trade for one of the best decades of Ohio State football in its long and storied history. Wins can be vacated, memories cannot.”

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