NCAA rules: Ohio State Coming Into Focus, Tennessee's Not So Much

You have no proof at all. OSU has a lot. They win. The end.

I think Pryor was quoted as saying something like he got whatever he wanted. Was Tressel the only one that aided in that? We may have no idea. A rogue coach defense, even though they told him to abide, doesn’t seem fitting, to me. I thought the email trail proved they knew long before, and did nothing.

If you read the NOA and the response from the NCAA it will answer all of these questions. You can read the actual transcripts of what Tressel said, and what the compliance dept did. It was the compliance dept that revealed the info to the NCAA. If the compliance dept wanted to, they could have easily destroyed the incriminating evidence. Unfortunately, the media loves to sensationalize without regard to facts.

I can also assure you that there has been every sports “media” investigative team known to mankind in Columbus for the last 6 months, not to mention the NCAA themselves. They have turned over every stone many times, and if it was as sinister as people think, they sure would have found it. sorry for trolling.

The AD resigned before his job was taken away from him. The guys in charge are new – the university president just took office on January 1 of this year, and the chancellor has been as much a part of the problem as anyone, and he’s only been around since February 2009. There’s plenty of guilt to go around.

I understand Chancellor Cheek is not a popular guy with Tennessee fans, but is there really perception that this is all his fault?

… and each time when it came to Pearl, I mentioned that it was a high probability that the NCAA would slap the show-cause penalty on him because of his unethical behavior.

I have been raising this issue since last September’s press conference. I don’t claim any particular insight into the NCAA, but this just seemed so patent and obvious. But I defended Tennessee’s right to keep Pearl if they could. As time wore on, it became more and more obvious that was a big mistake.

When Tennessee sanctioned Pearl monetarily, I did not believe it was enough. When Tennessee failed to suspend him and forced the league to do it, I hoped at that point Pearl would step down and save Tennessee further pain. Now, we have what we have.

I have learned much from these two events. If anyone cared what I thought, I would recommend that any school who had admitted unethical conduct by a coach should fire him immediately, and that the NCAA should require every school to have a clause in their coach’s employment contract allowing them to remove a coach for cause for admitted unethical conduct. Ohio State and Tennessee’s failure to do so harms them, and that is so incredibly unfair to their fans and to all of us in their respective leagues who need a strong, fully functional UT and OSU for all kinds of good reasons.

If any of you, for even a nanosecond, feel that I will not demand the removal of Phillips or Calipari for an admitted unethical conduct like Pearl and Tressel, I assure you that I will be leading the charge, and if UK tries to hang on, I will denounce them roundly for it. Trust me. These two matters have opened my eyes in a lot of ways.

Unethical conduct demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt or admitted outright should always result in a firing. Always. Period. That’s the only way we can begin to hold these coaches accountable, and quit killing the schools for the actions of the coach. I am so tired of seeing schools, who have made a good faith effort for compliance, get blamed when coaches break bad. These guys are earning millions and damaging well-meaning athletic institutions, their patrons and their fans. It is intolerable. They must be brought to heel.

which to me was the only option apart from keeping Pearl until March and firing him then. . . where do you find an interim if the whole staff was involved? Hire the video director (who was the interim after the season)?

The problem is the proximity to each other create the appearance of a lack of control. What also makes it look like a compliance department issue is the fact of all these impermissible telephone calls. It’s really hard to reconcile how all these coached made all these impermissible calls if the compliance department was on their toes.

Forget the lying, that’s on Pearl. Forget what he was lying about, that’s clearly on him, too. But how does one have all these impermissible phone calls in a compliant athletics department? It’s the kind of thing that if I were in charge of compliance, I would be all over, every day. It just boggles the mind.

How can it be possible that they would receive a FTM for basketball (specifically in the case of the illegal phone calls) and not get the same for football? It cannot be, and was not. I refer to the NCAA Notice of Allegations charges 10 and 11, bookend FTM charges that make perfect sense given the circumstances. Kiffin got the additional charge of failure to promote an atmosphere of compliance, another charge I feel is justified.

I cannot see how the University of Tennessee, under the circumstances, could not have docked itself some scholarships particularly given the fact that the vast majority of actual violations involved recruiting, even if in isolation and individually they would have been considered minor. That’s what galls me, and I fear it will also gall the NCAA COI.

are a prime example of not having plausible deniability, and it’s gotten them fired and probably show-caused. Whereas folks like Coach Cal and the other Coach Cal make sure they don’t know about violations that are going on under their noses, which is how they both have jobs in which they’ve been quite successful.

… this is a man who does not understand how federal investigations work. He is making up an excuse for Tressel out of whole cloth, and you buy it at your peril.

First of all, no matter what the FBI says, does, or claims, if the fact of an investigation is revealed to you, and that revelation shows information that you are ethically, legally and contractually required to disclose to your employer, you may not substitute your own judgment for your requirements to perform under your contract. Tressel had absolutely no obligation under the law to comply with the FBI’s request for secrecy at the expense of his contractual obligation, assuming that request actually existed.

Instead, what he was ethically required but obviously failed to do was engage an attorney, inform him of the facts, and allow that attorney to advise him how to proceed. His attorney could have then contacted the AUSA in charge of the investigation and a rational decision could have been made as to the disposition of the NCAA violations. If the AUSA felt strongly about protecting the secrecy of the investigation, he would have explained that to OSU’s counsel. That would have provided all the cover OSU needed to hold off reporting the matter until the need for secrecy was no longer required.

Assuming all this blogger’s speculation is completely accurate, doing that would have saved Tressel’s job and had all of college sports lauding him for taking care and trying to do the right thing whatever the outcome. Without a court order, neither the FBI, nor any government agency, can compel a private citizen to secrecy. All they can do is ask you to volunteer it, and if Tressel did that, then he was a lot dumber than a man of his position and experience should be.

So don’t pay attention to this sort of speculation, it comes from people who don’t understand the investigative process or the legal ramifications of it. Rather, these are guys who are looking to find a way to make Tressel’s unbelievably silly defense look somehow plausible.

It isn’t.

Here is my response:

Tressel unquestionably offered a fear of obstructing an FBI investigation as the reason he didn’t come forward. Read OSU’s response to the NCAA.

Assuming that were the case, consulting OSU’s attorney would not have helped him. The client for that attorney is the OSU, not Tressel. Attorney-client privilege would not apply, and OSU’s attorney would be ethically free to take it up with the compliance department. Tressel needed his own paid attorney to protect his interests and secure that A/C privilege.

Why would Tressel not consult his compliance people? The answers seems straightforward — he did not want to jeopardize OSU’s chances at a national title by suspending Pryor et. al. He rationalized an excuse that he would be obstructing justice to do so, and instead of taking the correct actions, figured he could use his “fear” of obstruction to avoid the consequences of his actions.

You cannot confirm anything from undisclosed “reliable sources.” What you have is speculation, but even if I grant that all you heard is true and that Tressel contacted an FBI investigator, it could not have possibly done him any good. The only person who could have helped in this case is the AUSA supervising the investigation. Why didn’t he contact him? Also, the FBI has no authority to require private citizens to do anything if the secrecy of an investigation is compromised. That requires a court order. All Tressel had to do to discover this fact was to place a phone call to his lawyer.

What we really have to ask ourselves is how Tressel became so trusted. He was repeatedly admonished by OSU for a failure to report violations, and was criticized at his previous job at Youngstown St. for his lack of commitment to compliance.

Finally, Tressel’s claim that he “would do it again” is utterly meaningless as a probative matter, and tells me only one thing — Tressel is trying to make everyone believe that his motives were pure. If that convinces anyone, I would accuse them of both naïveté and ignoring Tressel’s past failures, which probably inform this one.

I think both are equally bad.

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