Column: OSU Treads Too Lightly on Tressel

On Tuesday night, Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith flew back from New York, where he had been running the NCAA basketball selection committee, to conduct a press conference. He announced he was suspending his head football coach, Jim Tressel, for the first two games of the 2011 season.

It looks like Tressel has gotten himself into a bit of hot water. That’s why Smith, his boss, flew back to make sure everybody said they were “taking responsibility” – a phrase which changed some time in the last decade, and now means the exact opposite.

It was fine theater.

In December, a few weeks before Ohio State’s Sugar Bowl game, five Ohio State players were forced to admit they sold some jerseys, mementos and trophies to a tattoo parlor owner. (And if you can’t trust a tattoo parlor owner with your ill-gotten goods, who can you trust?) Well, he naturally put them on eBay, and there’s your scandal. It all seems pretty petty to most people, but it’s serious business to the NCAA.

In fairness to the NCAA, the players knew the rules – despite initially denying they did – and brazenly decided to do it anyway. They got caught, and they will have to pay the price. Or they might … eventually. You can’t be certain.

That’s because they were not caught by the FBI or the IRS or whatever agency hunts down the scofflaws who tear off mattress tags. They were caught by the NCAA – and that changes everything.

The NCAA started in 1905, after 18 college students died playing football that year. President Theodore Roosevelt wanted to save college football, so he called the presidents of Harvard, Yale and Princeton to the White House to figure out how. And that’s when the NCAA was born.

For decades, the NCAA’s main source of money was members’ dues, which it used to enforce the rules. Simple enough. But about 30 years ago the NCAA started profiting enormously from its basketball tournament – the current TV contract is worth more than 10 billion dollars. The sheriff became the saloon keeper. And nobody can do both jobs equally well.

Six years ago, the University of Southern California Trojans were suspected of giving the parents of its Heisman Trophy-winning tailback, Reggie Bush, a house. A whole house. I said at the time: Watch how slowly the NCAA moves on this one. But even I didn’t think it would take five years for them to find the house – the kind of thing you can find with, say, a phone book.

But when the five Buckeyes were busted, they were in danger of being suspended for their upcoming bowl game. Suddenly, the same Keystone Cops who took five years to find a house sorted out the Ohio State mess in just a couple weeks. Then they allowed the players to serve their five-game suspension the following fall, when some or all of them might already be in the NFL.

Now an email has turned up which seems to prove Jim Tressel knew about all of this back in April – but told the NCAA in December he knew nothing, no-how. Oops.

So that’s why Gene Smith came rushing back to Columbus to announce he would suspend Tressel for two games. Sound serious? It’s supposed to – but those first two games are against the Akron Zips and the Toledo Rockets – games the Buckeyes could not lose if they were paid to.

If the suspended players stay in school, they will miss out on almost half their last season to prepare for their one chance at pro football. Fair enough. They brought it on themselves. But their coach, who covered all of it up for a year, will be just fine.

How can I be so sure? Because his boss, Gene Smith, is currently the chairman of the NCAA committee for this year’s men’s basketball tournament – the NCAA’s cash cow. If he’s not the sheriff, he’s the deputy. He’ll find just enough wrongdoing to make it look like he’s doing something – and not one ounce more.

The NCAA is no longer interested in integrity – just the image of it. That’s what sells. The suspended players don’t get that. But Tressel does, and so does his boss. They know the saloon owners won’t be too eager to investigate the saloon manager and his best bartender when business is booming.

So, drink up. This round’s on the house.

About the author: John U. Bacon lives in Ann Arbor and has written for Time, the Wall Street Journal, and ESPN Magazine, among others. He is the author of “Bo’s Lasting Lessons,” a New York Times and Wall Street Journal business bestseller, and “Third and Long: Three Years with Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines,” due out this fall through FSG. Bacon teaches at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, and the University of Michigan, where the students awarded him the Golden Apple Award for 2009. This commentary originally aired on Michigan Radio.