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Recently, Jim Tressel resigned as the head football coach for Ohio State University. This resignation was a result of “charges” that Tressel hid information from the NCAA that his players had received money for signing autographs for a local businessman. For those who don’t know, this is a big no-no in the land of college sports.
The NCAA (stands for National Collegiate Athletics Association) has regulations that define “their” athletes as amateur athletes; therefore, they are ineligible to participate in collegiate sports if that athlete received any kind of money as a result of that sport. This also takes into consideration an agreement, either oral or verbal, to turn professional. Another consideration is receiving any money for promotion, even if that athlete is promoting an NCAA event.
Contrary to popular belief, student-athletes can get paid from an outside job if the wage is consistent to what it would be “normally” and that job was also obtained under “normal” circumstances. There are also regulations with regards to practice time, academic standards, length of a collegiate career, etc.
If you read these regulations, there is a lot of gray matter and most people have been able to translate them based off of previous “violations”.
Tressel should have known that covering up information is the biggest violation in the eyes of the NCAA. After ethics, student-athletes maintaining their amateur status are listed at the top of their regulations.
Ironically, many sports writers think it’s unethical for student-athletes not to be paid for their sport, especially considering the draw of these athletes brings in millions of dollars of revenue for the NCAA between the games and the merchandise that is sold.
Take the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament alone. The NCAA receives $771 million each year according to thebiglead.com. How much do the student-athletes see of that? Zero.
Meanwhile, the coaches get millions of dollars and the bigwigs in the NCAA and its associates are getting paid handsomely. Tressel alone had a salary of $3.5 million according to Cleveland.com. The executives are even worse. The CEO of the Fiesta Bowl (which to me is BS by itself) used funds from the Fiesta Bowl to pay for a 4-day party at Pebble Beach, a wedding for his personal aide, and also for a strip club, among others according to Omaha.com
So what exactly did Tressel do wrong? He didn’t kill or injure anybody, but he did what the NCAA perceives as stealing. He withheld information about someone receiving money that was stolen from the NCAA is basically the crime he committed in its eyes.
Now the “crime” the athletes performed should have more weight than what Tressel did. They were the ones performing the illegal act and knew full well that it was illegal. They put their head coach in a compromising position that ultimately cost him his job. The only things the athletes received were five-game suspensions.
What will ultimately happen to Tressel? The sports world is a very forgiving one and loves giving individual second chances. Take a look at figures like Ray Lewis, Michael Vick, and Marv Albert who all received major headlines in their own respects. All are doing fine now and even have the same job they all had prior to their respective scandals.
Tressel will be fine. If college won’t hire him, he’ll certainly grab a job in professional football. Point-in-case goes to Pete Carroll who was a part of a team where their championship was recently stripped from them and erased from memory from all of their violations. Pete Carroll is the head coach of the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks and he received no punishment from the NCAA.
So what can we learn from this? Nothing will really be learned from this except for maybe learning how to better cover up. The majority of the public thinks Tressel was caught in a bad situation and didn’t really do that bad of a thing. He acted like a father-figure to his players and tried to protect them, which is what a coach should do in most situations. What would most fathers do when they learned their sons did something wrong…turn them in???
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