I’d like to give this refreshing pitcher of Kool-Aid to Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel and all the Buckeyes’ fans who can’t get enough of his lies.
On Friday, you may have heard the Columbus Post Dispatch reported that Tressel forwarded e-mails to Ted Sarniak, a mentor of sorts to Buckeyes’ quarterback Terrell Pryor, but never made anyone with the university aware that he had done so.
Sarniak, a businessman from Pryor’s hometown of Jeannette, PA, has known the Buckeyes’ QB for years. There is no indication that Sarniak attempted to notify anyone at Ohio State about the e-mails or Pryor’s involvement in selling team memorabilia to a local tattoo parlor owner.
According to ESPN.com’s Adam Rittenberg, Tressel nodded affirmatively when asked if he had forwarded the e-mails to anyone during a March 8 news conference. However, due to the current NCAA investigation, Tressel wasn’t allowed to elaborate.
Sources claim that Tressel sent the e-mails to Sarniak hoping that he could work his mentoring magic on Pryor about the quarterback’s actions.
In other words, Tressel didn’t bother confronting one of the players on his team when he became aware of a potentially serious rules infraction.
Rather than address the matter himself, Tressel passed his responsibility off to a person who had nothing to do with the Buckeyes’ football program in hopes that he would council Pryor about being such a naughty lad.
On top of that, Tressel ignored the confidentiality of the e-mails sent from the attorney who notified him of the players selling team memorabilia.
Over the past month we’ve learned that Tressel knew in April 2010 that five of his players – Pryor, Boom Herron, DeVier Posey, Mike Adams and Solomon Thomas – were selling team jerseys and other memorabilia to a tattoo parlor owner.
We’ve learned that Tressel never notified anyone at Ohio State, but that he forwarded at least one of the e-mails to Ted Sarniak.
And we know that Tressel never confronted the players and knowingly allowed them to remain on the team despite the fact they would have surely been suspended or possibly kicked off the team had the infractions been made public.
We also know that Tressel violated the terms of his contract to the point where he should have been fired, yet Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith thought that an appropriate punishment was a two-game suspension and a $250,000 fine.
Forget about Tressel’s feigned concern for his players when he voluntarily added an additional three games to his suspension. We all know that was a crock, but there’s plenty of Buckeyes’ fans who will chug oceans of Kool-Aid thinking that all of this is going to get swept under the rug.
Considering the list of Tressel’s infractions continues to grow, it’s time for the NCAA to do what they’re supposed to do, although what they’re supposed to do and what they end up doing are often entirely different things.
But in Tressel’s case, the NCAA really has a no-brainer to deal with. There isn’t much investigating left to be done, not when all the facts we’ve been made aware of clearly show the Buckeyes’ coach did nothing when he learned of his players committing infractions.
Tressel didn’t confront the players in question, didn’t inform anyone at Ohio State, didn’t maintain confidentiality of the e-mails he was sent, didn’t suspend the players in question, didn’t honor his contract and didn’t hold himself personally accountable.
I’d say that’s more than enough for the NCAA to work with. And they had better extend Tressel’s punishment well beyond his five-game suspension and $250,000 fine or risk being accused of favoritism.
Ohio State’s punishment better include a bowl ban and scholarship reductions for a minimum of one year, or the NCAA will have failed its responsibility to enforce the rules.
And all the Kool-Aid drinking in the world isn’t going to save Tressel or THE Ohio State, and no one associated with the Buckeyes football program will have anyone to blame but their sweater vest wearing coach.
