Tennessee basketball coach Bruce Pearl committed a serious offense when he lied to the NCAA about a silly secondary recruiting violation. Next to Ohio State's football coach Jim Tressel, Pearl almost looks like an NCAA saint.
In April 2010, an unidentified man tipped Tressel off about an alleged "memorabilia for tattoos" scheme. Two weeks after the first email, the man asked that the information be kept confidential, although he never stated why.
Coach Tressel might argue he was protecting his players but, in the end, didn't do them any favors. Had the NCAA known about the situation in April, they could have conducted a more timely investigation. The way it ultimately went down was absurd: The players were allowed to play in OSU's bowl game, but only if they promised to return to school in 2011, rather than declare for the NFL, in order to serve suspension.
It was not just what this man was emailing Tressel; it was also what he was doing. He was acting as a self-appointed operative working to keep this situation from blowing up. Man, did he fail! And now we can examine the "smoking gun" emails, which leaves zero doubt that Tressel knew exactly what was going on. No plausible deniability. No claiming ignorance. Tressel's job is to coach the football team, not to bury possible NCAA violations.
Here are a few of the most damning points made by the unidentified emailer:
- "A lot of my friends are in law enforcement."
- "I have been told OSU players including [name redacted] have been given free tatoo's [sic] in exchange for signed memorabilia."
- "I had Eddie Rife in my office for an hour and a half last night."
- "He will not talk about this publicly."
- "I will try to get these items back that the government now wants to keep for themselves...I know who specifically in the District Attorney's office that is working on this matter and know both of them well so I will try if the opportunity presents itself."
The (wrong) lesson for other powerful football coaches: If you're going to enlist operatives, make sure they are competent. Hint #1 you're dealing with a Keystone Kop: He sends an incendiary email to a work account at a public institution.
There is really no way to explain Tressel's inaction other than to conclude he thought he could get away it. Read Tressel's scathing obit written by Clay Travis.
Tressel and others can hide behind his stellar reputation developed over 30+ years in college coaching, but is that enough? Then there's this from Tressel's autobiography, unearthed by ESPN.com's Mark Schlabach:
"The reputation of a thousand years may be determined by the conduct of one hour." Ohio State coach Jim Tressel included that Japanese proverb on Page 193 of his book, "The Winners Manual For The Game of Life." Eight pages later, there's this nugget from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: "It takes less time to do the right thing than to explain why you did it wrong."
Nothing like using a man's own rope to hang him with.
Of course, Tressel did not write the playbook when it comes to coaches overstepping their bounds. That honor would probably go to former Nebraska coach Tom Osborne.
From a September 25, 1995 Sports Illustrated article titled, "Coach and Jury":
"I don't tell Tom Osborne how to run the football department," Lancaster County Attorney Gary Lacey says, "and he should stay out of the criminal justice system. He hasn't done that at all." According to Lacey, Osborne has taken it upon himself to interview witnesses in criminal cases, offered very public opinions on the probable innocence of players who have yet to stand trial and attacked the credibility of witnesses testifying against his players. In January 1994 he and an assistant even locked away a gun that had allegedly been used by one of his players in the commission of a felony.
I recently wrote in Basketball Times about the coaches' code, the practice of not turning fellow coaches in to the NCAA:
Georgia State football coach Bill Curry (who also coached at Alabama, Georgia Tech and Kentucky) told ESPN The Magazine: “For the most part, when I was involved at the high level of recruiting, we usually called each other and worked it out between the two of us. If we caught someone doing something wrong, I would call and say, ‘Look, let’s talk about this. If we can’t talk about this, I am going to turn it in.’ And I always told them, ‘If you ever get something on us, then you call me. And if I don’t cooperate, you turn us in.’”
Translation: The NCAA’s job might be to investigate possible rules violations, but the coaching fraternity is better served when these matters are settled without involving the NCAA, the rightful legal authority. And Curry is one of truly good guys in college athletics.
The old comic strip Pogo had a classic line that applies here: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”
I'm sure Tressel regrets his actions now. But you're kidding yourself if you believe that covering up (or ignoring) such allegations has not been the go-to strategy for many coaches...for many years.
Honesty should be the best policy. But, morals aside, winning in college sports is the ultimate best policy.
--Marc Isenberg
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