Maybe Ohio State university did not want to distract its basketball team but that is no longer an issue. Why then aren't we hearing about a press conference on Monday to announce that football coach Jim Tressel is resigning? Nothing short of Tressel leaving is adequate punishment for covering up for five players who bartered memorabilia for tatoos last season.
Look at it this way: President Richard Nixon -- the leader of the free world -- as we used to say then, was forced to resign for being part of the Watergate cover-up, a second-story burglary of Democratic headquarters that said more about Nixon's insecurity than anything else. If a President of the United States steps down for something like that, how does a football coach keep his job?
It's not about the rules violations committed by the Buckeye players; this is about the coach. If we hold the players responsible for their actions, in part because we say they should know better or should have asked whether it was okay to to engage in barter, then why isn't Tressel held to an even higher standard?
Is he more than just the football coach: Tressel is probably the most visible and best known representative of Ohio State. He is an educator, even if he is teaching football not physics. He certainly knew what to do and just comes across as even worse for suggesting that he didn't. He managed to tell Terrelle Pryor's mentor about the incident so he couldn't tell the athletic director, university president or the NCAA itself?
It's a rhetorical question. We know that winning and a BCS bowl bid come first. But now Ohio State is no better than any of the renegade programs that are singled out for disdain. Look, it's not as if it would be difficult finding a successor. Ohio State and Michigan will always get the best recruits in the Big 10. The university should name an assistant the interim head coach for the 2011 season and go from there. At worst, the Buckeyes will finish at .500 and go to the Violations Bowl or something similar.
But it would convey the right message and show that Ohio State is not willing to turn a blind eye to NCAA violations, no matter how ridiculous they are. We know that Tressel always comes across as looking professorial and squeaky clean, but to borrow that old line from Andre Agassi's commercials, "Image isn't everything."
