Should Tressel still be the coach in 2011?

With the Buckeyes poor showing this season one of the topics that keeps showing up on the forums is 'What would have happened if Jim Tressel were still the coach in 2011?"  My feeling is we probably would have lost to Miami/Michigan State but beat Nebraska/Penn State/Purdue.  Jim Tressel had a way to make teams believe in themselves and his teams always finished strong.  Does anyone think he would have allowed Nebraska to score 21 points in the 4th quarter, not come up with something to shut down Purdue, or figured out a way to get another score vs Penn State?  He was a master of the close games and protecting a lead.  Unfortunately he isn't with the team anymore.

That has created quite a backlash on forums as fan anger is now blaming the board for the decision to let him go as the wrong move.  In truth, there have always been a few that have said this they are now just louder since the results of the season are so poor.  Here's a good example of a recent post:

2011 didn't need to be "The Lost Year"; the OSU BOD could have retained JT&forced the NCAA's hands. We gave up too much *

My response was:  "The price of not getting a FTM or LOIC charge for Tatgate was Tressel."

If the university backed Tressel the NCAA would have given us a harsher penalty probably similar to USC. Backing him said to the NCAA, "The institution agrees with Coach Tressel's actons" which would have given the critics of the Buckeyes in the NCAA enough to punish us like they did with Bush/Carrol/Garrett. Instead, Tressel fell on his sword to save the program from his mistake. IMO the mistake was minor but once it became public the events had to play out like they did.

I wish people would move on. I love the 10 great years we got from Jim Tressel and look forward to the day when the NCAA rules and we can welcome him back with open arms in the stadium. I have no doubt we'd be in the B1G championship game with him at the helm but the sooner we move on as a program the sooner things will be able to return to the greatness that Jim Tressel gave us during his tenure. The BoT realized this over the summer and did the right thing to protect the future of the program. They have gotten a ton of grief for their decision but the reality is the program will be better in the long run because of it.

The response was: Says who? Gene The Weak? We gave up way too much and they'll STILL pile on. The Roo, for once, is right. * -

My response: Gene is gone too. I personally wish we'd have gotten rid of him after he allowed scUM and OSU in separate divisions

He's gone within 6 months after the sanctions are given.

In any big enterprise there is a conservative playbook for damage control. We might not agree with the decisions but in crisis large organizations make Tresselball look like the run and shoot by comparison. They don't take risks and anything that could possibly damage the "organization" is addressed in order.

Tressel was the most public issue and he was the first to go. It wouldn't surprise me if the NCAA gave back channel information to the Buckeyes of their penalty with or without Jim Tressel. Even if that didn't happen, part of the reason the Compliance Group was hired was to give the Board long term scenarios. I guarantee projections were made of donations and ticket sales for the next decade for all the possible outcomes. After reviewing everything they came up with their plan and part of that was to get rid of JT.

Many people here pretend that the Board is incompetent but many of them are very successful business people that face situations like this on a daily basis. I have no doubt that if we had all the information they did, most would have made the same decision.

The main opposition to the decision are people that look to the past and not to the future. That is fine for fans but the Board doesn't have that luxury as they have bills to pay. To do otherwise would been just as shortsighted for the athletic department as was Jim Tressel's initial decision to protect Pryor/Posey at the expense of the rest of the team.

Anyone that has spent any time in a large organization knows that what happened to Tressel had to happen. He was only going to coach 5-6 more years and the potential benefit was less than the threat he posed to the organization.  Organizations always do what is in their perceived best interest.  Tressel was a danger and had to go -- it is as simple as that.