Buckeye Confidential

I was cleaning out some of my old drafts and found this that I never published last summer.  It's funny to read now a year later.  The month of August was a lot different last year.
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The past week has seen a flurry of articles that are positive about the Ohio State Buckeyes like this one at Theclevelandfan and this one at the Ozone.  Add to that the positive news from the BMV and the report from the board and this has been the best week since the whole thing started in March.  Add to that the fact that the NCAA has left campus and the fact that their has been no amendment to the NCAA's Letter of Allegations or a change in the August meeting date and Buckeye nation is positive that the pundits are going to be sadly disappointed when the ruling comes out this fall.

I am trying to keep an open mind but numerous allegations have been thrown at the school and been dis-proven time after time.  I'd bet most pundits don't realize this but the only allegations that we know are 100% true are the things that were disclosed in the initial report to the NCAA.  Those are Jim Tressel's coverup and the 6 players that sold items for tattoos.  Those are still serious allegations and as a result we have lost a coach / quarterback and will face sanctions from NCAA.  My personal opinion is we will see a reaffirmation of the 5 game suspension, a loss of the 2010 regular season, and a 2-3 year show cause penalty for Jim Tressel.  This thought is common by other Buckeye fans and while it could be a case of Buckeye mass delusion it has led to an increase in posts that the leaders at Ohio State are cowards and should have backed Jim Tressel.

I love Jim Tressel.  I respect Jim Tressel.  Jim Tressel made a huge mistake but I know he is an honorable man.  I'd love to have Jim Tressel at coach as he's taken the team to a height that few other programs reach.


https://web1.ncaa.org/LSDBi/exec/miSearch?miSearchSubmit=publicReport&key=691&publicTerms=THIS%20PHRASE%20WILL%20NOT%20BE%20REPEATED

But he made a mistake and he had to go.

In a long race is slow and steady better than fast and reckless?

In the old folktale - "The tortoise and the hare", the tortoise wins because he doggedly sticks to his goal.  The moral of the story can be taken in quite a few ways but one I've grown to appreciate is that sometimes in life going slower is actually going faster.  Stonewall Jackson was a big proponent of this as he found that his men could march further if he had a mandatory rest of 10 minutes every hour.  Any NASCAR driver could tell you the same thing ... sometimes you need to go slow to go fast.

Jim Tressel was the epitome of slow and steady.  He was big on preparation and no one ever accused him of being hasty.  His idea of pressuring a player was firm discussions.  Compare that with Urban Meyer.  He's big on preparation too but moves with a manic passion you never saw with Coach Tressel.

Tressel's method develops team unity.  These players that are more confident in themselves and more likely to produce in crunch time.  I think these players have more fun as it is less pressure packed and a more family type atmosphere.  This is important in developing cohesion but giving players freedom to be adults isn't always a positive as we saw with the TAT5.

Urban's method creates better individual players.  Everyone pushes themselves to the limit all the time.  There is no time off.  There is no quit.  This is impossible to keep up forever and a good example is what happened at the end of Urban's tenure at Florida.  You could make a pretty good argument that Urban had pushed the program so hard for so long that a good portion of them players rebelled and he lost control of the program.  When that happened he knew it needed a reboot and frankly that was easier to accomplish with a new coach.  In effect, he fired himself.

No doubt either method can have great results.  The key is knowing when to push on the gas and when to apply the brake.  Urban says he's learned during his time off how to use the brake but the only thing for sure is the Ohio State program has currently got the pedal on the floor and is racing at full speed for the turn.

I'd really like to see obvious signs that Coach Meyer knows how to apply the brake in the next year or I really doubt his tenure will be any longer than what he was able to achieve at Florida.

Post note - This blog entry might be influenced by the fact the Daytona 500 was yesterday.

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.

JT was a great coach in most every way but micromanagement was his biggest flaw

I just read this article and agree with it almost 100%.

Jim Tressel is a great man and should be remembered as one of the best coaches of all time.  Most of us were annoyed in the past 10 years with his micromanagement but we mostly overlooked it as he gave us wins.

The scary thing is we could have been better if he would have allowed more talented individuals into his inner circle.  During his era the talent level in the rest of the Big Ten declined while Ohio State's talent was as good as ever.  Tressel used that talent to win the surest way and while the results on the field weren't always pretty he won.  The thing is after many of Ohio State's games you were often left with the perception that we made the games a lot harder than we needed.  That was usually because we didn't adapt to what the other defense gave us and instead insisted on running into the strengths of the other team.  We won in spite of that because we outmanned the other team but it did little to prepare us for teams with speed that matched ours.

The fact that Jim Tressel won as many games as he did is a testiment to his ability to micromanage the team but in the end his decision to micromanage punishments were his downfall.  His departure has left a massive hole in the football program and as there is no one on the staff with Jim's ability the only way to fix it is to bring in a new coach and overhaul the whole thing.  The talent level at Ohio State is still great and assuming the NCAA sanctions are light it shouldn't take a decent coach very long to restart the recruiting pipeline that happened in the Tressel era.  Whether they can have the same success on gameday is the big question.

In hindsight that was probably inevitable but I'm sure most people would have never imagined at this time last year that the program would be in this state in a short 12 months.  I for one can't wait for the nightmare to end.

Why did Smith's opinion of Tressel change.

The editor of the Ozone wrote an open letter to Gene Smith that basically were calling him out for not getting invited to last week's press conference.  You can read it here.  My thoughts?

 There are legitimate reasons to be upset at the handling of the situation since the beginning but you write an open letter because of an impromptu press conference?  Seriously?

Despite being a bit frivolous, the article does ask a few good questions, most notably, why did Smith's opinion of Tressel change?

I've always assumed that Gene Smith's initial issue with Jim Tressel was that JT never apologized.  You know that Tressel had to promise this before March's press conference or it wouldn't have been included in the NCAA filing.  Keep in mind that Smith spoke first then Gee and finally Tressel.  Once they both unequivocally endorsed Tressel it was really too late to take it back when Tressel gave his rambling speech that had nothing resembling an apology.  I know Smith and Tressel sat down a few days after the press conference so Smith could instruct Tressel on what he was expecting in an apology but what I saw over the following weeks wasn't any better.*

The apology request disappeared afterward so I always assumed that Smith told Tressel to hold off for the August meetings for a firm statement of responsibility.  About 6 weeks after the March press conference, Smith had an odd conversation with a member of the press that made it obvious that he and JT weren't seeing eye to eye.  In hindsight my suspicion is that time passed the gulf between the two widened from not agreeing about an apology to not agreeing about compliance.

Why would it widen?

One constant of most high level managers is they all have large ego's and people with ego's have a high opinion of their own ideas.  Another constant is the longer someone has been in an organization, the tougher it is for that person to change.  As change is constant in any organization, turf wars are the inevitable result.

When the Compliance Group came back with their recommendations my suspicion is their proposal included a lot of things that would take away a lot of the free reign that Jim Tressel had grown used to over his last 20+ years of coaching.  I know Andy Geiger recommended changes to football compliance so this isn't exactly a new idea.  His long tenure would have allowed that to happen pretty easily but his abrupt departure left the job undone.  When Gene Smith arrived he was in a weak position to implement change in the football program.  Some might say -- well he's the boss and it is his call.  You need to keep in mind that any change in policy still needs to have approval from Smith's bosses and he really was in a weak position to implement change in a program that was winning league championships every year.  All it would have taken was a phone call from Tressel to a few of the football friendly board members and any changes would have been tabled.  I have no doubt that Smith saw the TAT5 situation as an opportunity to improve compliance and when they were told to Jim Tressel he pushed back hard.  At some point Smith insisted and Tressel declined to comply so it went to Gordon Gee and the board. 

Of course all that is conjecture and  all we know is Smith supported Jim Tressel in March then asked for his resignation in May.  One hint we do know is when recently asked how long Smith felt he had spoken too strongly in Tressel's defense, he gave a one word answer - "Days".

I do know the answer to one question from the article - Why has Gene Smith never publicly spoken as to why he changed his mind?  The answer is simple - There is nothing to be gained from airing dirty laundry inside the program.

* "I'm sorry for what Buckeye fans are going through" is not an apology for the act.

Double standard for Jim Tressel

When the TAT5 story first broke back in December the O-Zone boards were split between the fans that wanted the players kicked from the program and the fans that didn't.  The posts were really heated and I was personally outraged that they'd disrespect the university and do something as stupid as selling their trophies for money.

I wanted those players kicked off the team so we could move forward with players that valued the tradition of Ohio State.  As time went on and the players were allowed to play in the Sugar Bowl I was outraged that the university and the NCAA could allow this to happen.  At that point I put my faith in Jim Tressel.  Certainly he understood the magnitude of what these players had done.  Certainly he would put everything right.

As I posted in another article, Jim Tressel proceeded to have a masterful press conference where he chastised the fans and alumni for thinking of themselves first and not the kids.  Three months later that press conference had a different meaning altogether.

The day in March the news broke about Jim Tressel  it was chaos. Various rumors were coming out and a question was asked on the O-Zone forums:

"To all you people that wanted the players to be kicked from the program in December ... Do you feel the same way about Jim Tressel?"

The question was asked condescendingly as it was unthinkable to most that this could cause Jim Tressel to leave the program.  I started to post but stopped myself.  I didn't know what to think as frankly we didn't have all the information at the time.  Even a few weeks later when I wrote the post I linked above I hesitated because I didn't want to face it.  The truth in hindsight is what Jim Tressel did was unpardonable.  He's the coach and  he can't lie to the NCAA.  He had to go.

My first reaction when the question posed above was asked was ... "He has to go too!"  I didn't think about it but it was my gut reaction.  It's funny how we react when we are faced with tough situations.  Being human means any decision can be affected by our emotions and it is up to us to see if we remain true to our values or bend them because of past deeds (or wins).  I modified my opinion over times because while the rest of the world was calling for his head, Buckeye Nation was pretty much following Gordon Gee and Gene Smith's lead in supporting the coach.  There were a few Buckeye trendsetters like Bruce Hooley and I personally remember being chastised repeatedly for even suggesting that Jim Tressel lied as many thought it was a grand conspiracy of some sort.  Despite the administration's support, public opinion gradually shifted and Jim Tressel went from 90% support to barely a majority with the minority getting more vocal every single day.  I found it funny as I saw my opinion go from being a radical Buckeye hater to being called a mindless supporter.  My position never changed -- once Gene Smith said they were going to support the coach and present information to the NCAA in August I felt we owed it to Coach Tressel to give him his day in court before making a final judgement.  Pressure mounted though and ultimately Jim Tressel decided to end the circus by resigning.

In hindsight I wish I had stood by my gut reaction because although I still think Coach is a good man he just had to go.  Taking a position like that would have been tough in Columbus back in March but I regret having a double standard.  I know I was uncompromising in December when I felt the players should have been kicked from the team but caved when the subject changed to the coach.

In the end I think that's the key.  We love our heroes and Jim Tressel was a hero for Buckeye Nation. We would have followed him almost anywhere and believed anything he said until he was proven to be human like the rest of us.  It took a while for us to realize it and once we did the double standard disappeared.  Once that happened, it was impossible for Jim Tressel to remain coach of the Buckeyes and his departure was only a matter of time.

Call for the Death penalty for Ohio State

I see more and more people calling for the death penalty for the Ohio State football program.  I'd find it funny if it weren't such a serious situation.  Someone posted the question today if Ohio State should get the death penalty and this is my response:

Even as bad as it was, the NCAA later admitted they didn't realize the massive effect on SMU and wouldn't do it again.

If they did the same thing to Ohio State, they'd basically be shutting down 30+ other programs that were totally innocent.  The NCAA knows they are dancing with the devil when it comes to college football and the funding for all the other sports.  They can't kill the golden goose for fear of killing the whole thing.  Colleges are already hemorrhaging money from rising costs/government cutbacks so they depend on their football teams to pay for everything else.  Without football you don't have college athletics.

Players are paid comparatively very little when you consider their counterparts in the NFL.  Keeping kids away from people that want to buy access is impossible to achieve 100% of the time.  The colleges and the NCAA don't have near the amount resources available to police this so eventually every school is going to get hit.  All it takes is one kid that does something stupid and somehow it gets documented.  At that point the NCAA has to go through the motions and while the media points to the program and says, "Shame on you!" while behind closed doors their opponents all breath a sigh of relief, thankful that it isn't them.

((I'm in no way saying that I feel a lax compliance atmosphere or Jim Tressel's omission was acceptable.  I expect tough compliance at Ohio State and lying from the head coach is inexcusable.))

Dorhmann will get credit for Coach Tressel's dismissal but it had been in the works for weeks

The brass at Ohio State didn't even know there would be an article until it was pretty much too late to do anything. You just don't find out on Friday there is going to be an article and fire him on Monday. At that point they don't even know if the allegations in the article are true or even exactly what is going to be said. It takes a while to do these things because lawyers will always be involved. Yes I know Ohio State has the misstatement on the October compliance report as cause but the last thing they want is a public battle of any sort. You just don't get that kind of agreement over a holiday weekend.

I've thought for a while that if the administrators were going to fire Jim Tressel that they had to do it now. The NCAA has been in town for a while and I'd be disappointed if there hasn't been off the record conversations between Gene Smith, The Compliance Group, and key members of the NCAA infractions committee about "what can we expect?" Assuming the response wasn't good for Coach Tressel, waiting until the official ruling could be devastating. Once camp starts making a change any time before NLoI day in February would be really messy. Better to do it now to minimize the damage to the program than wait and affect the regular season and recruiting.

Dohrmann will get the rep as someone that fired Coach Tressel but it isn't true. He just had fortunate timing for his article.

What can Buckeye fans learn from Barry Switzer? (and for everyone else, why Buckeye fans still support Coach Tressel)

It's been over twenty years since he left the school but to a kid growing up in the 70s and 80s, Barry Switzer was and still is Oklahoma football.  He was big, brash, and always smiling.  It was like he knew a secret and wasn't going to tell you about about it.  As an adolescent Ohio State fan, I hated every school except my beloved Buckeyes but Oklahoma held a special place in my hate.  It wasn't because of Eve Von Schamann's kick in  1977 or Brian Bozworth stealing Chris Spielman's Butkus Award in 1987.  It was more primal than that.  In hindsight I probably hated them because of their success.  Switzer became coach in 1973 at the young age of 36 and was the head coach for the next 16 years until he resigned in 1989.  During his tenure the Sooners had a record of 157-29-4 or a winning percentage of 83.7% and won 3 national titles.  Switzer also had the fortune (or misfortune) to coach in an era when payoffs and scandals occurred that make the Reggie Bush scandal look like child's play.  No doubt some schools were more aggressive than others but to be successful things like this happened at every school.  Oklahoma was always at the top of the hit list because somehow every year they seemed to attract the best recruits.  Everything for Switzer and the Sooners came to a crashing halt in 1988 when the NCAA put them on a 3 year probation with reduction in scholarships, TV exposure, and bowl visits.  Switzer escaped direct blame in the matter but 6 months after the penalty was announced he decided to resign at the young age of 51.  


The reason I decided to write about this was after I saw this article in the USA Today.  A few things in the article stick out to me the most.  First, most people were surprised/upset that Switzer would resign as most fans wanted him to stay as coach.  He felt otherwise and this particular quote was telling,

"Coaches pay a tremendous price for the actions and behavior of their athletes. We are held accountable for their actions. That's what the media and administration do. Is that fair? You judge it."

and this one when talking about Bob Stoops and how the program fell on hard times when he left,

"That was where the program always should have been," Switzer said. "We were doing what should have been done. The '90s were a disaster. If I had lasted, it never would have happened."

The 3 coaches that followed Switzer had a combined 61-50-3 record until Stoops was hired in 2000.
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On the surface you couldn't find two men any more different than Jim Tressel and Barry Switzer.  Switzer is flamboyant, loud, and aggressive while Tressel is quiet, reserved, and conservative.  In fact, I'd wager the only thing they have in common is that they are both amazingly successful football coaches.  Jim Tressel's record in his ten years at Ohio State is 106-22 or 82.8% with 1 national championship.  Like Switzer before him, Tressel's university is under investigation by the NCAA with the current expectation of further NCAA penalties after the two sides meet in August.

Buckeye fans are growing tired as it seems every week another rumor pops up in the media and as it makes its way across the internet there are thousands upon thousands of posts either calling for Jim Tressel to be fired or conversely (from a shrinking section of  Buckeye fans) calling for him to remain as head coach.  For me the answer is simple and can be answered with one simple question to all Buckeye fans (other fans need not bother -- we don't care what you think):

"Do you think Jim Tressel is a man of integrity and one that is trustworthy to lead the program through whatever penalties the NCAA gives us and does so in the manner which we all expect?"

It's a simple question and not as easy to answer as some cynics might think.  Being the head coach at Ohio State means more than just wins and Jim Tressel himself said it best when he was first hired that, "you will be proud of our young men, in the classroom, in the community, and"... well you know the rest.  I was always impressed that he put them in that order.  Ohio State fans want success on the field but they also want to be proud of the players and they want someone at the helm to make sure they are winning the right way.  Is Jim Tressel still the man to do this?

At this point we know he lied to cover up a stupid actions by his players.  This mistake will haunt him for the rest of his life and let's not kid ourselves, a mistake by a coach is much more egregious than a mistake by a player because coaches are the leaders.  Jim Tressel decided to take care of this violation in house and he was wrong.

On the other hand we look at the long history Coach Tressel has of selfless community service, improving graduation rates, and yes winning.  So we have to ask ourselves -- Is one mistake worth termination?  Do we feel Jim Tressel can live up to the standard he set when he first accepted the job?

My feeling all along has been if this is limited this one mistake we'd be stupid let him go.  Look at Switzer's comment about the media using coaches as scapegoats.  It is certainly true in this instance.  Every week another article pops up about the football team and instead of focusing on the player doing something he shouldn't, the media focuses on Jim Tressel.  I make no apologies for his mistake but does it invalidate all the good he's done?  As a fan of the program I am looking for an indication of something bigger.  Is there a pattern of cheating?  So far I'm not convinced though the negative press would have me believe I am being naive.  My question to them is -- if cheating is so rampant at Ohio State why haven't you been able to find anything concrete in the 3 months since the story first broke?  You know everyone in the country has reporters here (I hope I'm not tempting fate with the alleged SI article coming out soon).   To damn the man, I want concrete proof of more wrongdoing.

For me, it all goes back to the simple question above and I just don't see enough proof that he is corrupt.  That brings me to the second Switzer comment about the 90s being a disaster.  There is no guarantee that a new coach will be able to perform on the field at the same level as Coach Tressel.  In fact I'd find it highly unlikely that the next coach will be able to duplicate his success.  So the question goes back to integrity and do I trust Jim Tressel to lead the program with integrity.

At this point, I do.

The Tressel Situation

3 months ago it was unthinkable that Jim Tressel’s job could ever be in jeopardy but the way this thing has been handled has been abysmal from the start. It’s like every time there’s a choice to be made they go out of their way to make the wrong decision. My problem isn’t as much that he didn’t forward the email, it’s the way he handled it when the truth came out in December. He should have come forward at that point and didn’t. Rewatch this press conference:

http://www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=17300&ATCLID=205069730

Tell me after watching this that you aren’t a little bit angry. Watching that makes me feel like my dad did something stupid then lied about it. No Buckeye wants to admit it because we were all in love with Coach Tressel but he lied to us. Not only lied but admonished us for how he was handling the situation. This quote is the one that bugs me the most,

“I’ve gotten lots of help with emails and opinions. It’s been an interesting lesson for me, so many of the opinions seem to revolve around what we would look like as opposed to a lesser number that would be what would be best for the student athletes involved. As I thought about that I hope that no one has the impression that when we visit hospitals it’s because of what we might look like … It’s been an interesting lesson. It’s my 36th season of coaching and it’s just a reminder that you learn lessons as you go and there’s not a whole bunch of what we can talk about in terms of these youngsters other than they are in the family, they’re on the trip, they want to be Buckeye in 2011, they’re obviously very remorseful for misjudgments made, and they’re anxious to have a great experience at the Sugar Bowl.”

I remember that quote specifically because I thought that press conference was a masterpiece and it shamed me as I was thinking more about image than the kids. 3 months later and I am amazed at the gall Jim Tressel had in admonishing Buckeye fans for not thinking of the kids while at the same time he was lying to the NCAA. His lie may cost future Buckeye kids a lot more than one game and it has tarnished Ohio State’s image more than selling 1000 trophies would ever have done.

Despite all that I still love Jim Tressel and feel he is a good man and coach. He made a mistake and I’m willing to forgive but he owes Buckeye nation a much better apology than we’ve received so far.