Tokens of Ohio State football traditions apparently are for sale: Bill Livingston
Published: Thursday, December 23, 2010, 7:29 PM Updated: Thursday, December 23, 2010, 11:25 PM
By Bill Livingston, The Plain Dealer
The tradition of singing "Carmen Ohio'' after games rings hollow after revelations that quarterback Terrelle Pryor, far right, and other players sold tokens of football success, including championship rings and gold pants.
The greatest things about the Big Ten and its flagship university, Ohio State, are their traditions. Thursday the Buckeyes' fans found out how many of them were for sale.
Among the items sold by quarterback Terrelle Pryor were his 2008 Big Ten championship ring, his 2008 gold pants for beating Michigan, and his 2009 Fiesta Bowl sportsmanship award. Thus, even Pryor's award for good manners turned bad. Running back Boom Herron also sold a jersey, pants and shoes.
Other players in the scandal include wide receiver DeVier Posey, offensive tackle Mike Adams, and defensive end Solomon Thomas. The NCAA suspended all five for the first five games of next season, claiming they received illegal benefits ranging from $1,000 to $2,500. All are eligible for the Jan. 4 Sugar Bowl game.
They are eligible for the bowl game because the NCAA knows no one wants to see Ohio State play Arkansas with its second-string players. It is venal and hypocritical, and you were born very recently if you didn't see that coming from the NCAA/BCS/bowls money machine.
The biggest name by far is Pryor, the most heavily recruited player in the country when he came to Ohio State in 2008 -- after first calling a news conference on national signing day to announce he was not signing.
Jim Tressel wearing a Big Ten championship ring.
With a 30-4 record as a starter, three Big Ten championships and a Rose Bowl Most Valuable Player award, he has been a very good player, just not as good as everybody thinks he should be.
His bravado-filled Twitter messages certainly got in the face of his media and fan critics. His high level of faith in himself was not vindicated in some of the biggest games, though.
Athletic Director Gene Smith, setting the stage for an appeal, said the players were trying to help their struggling families in hard economic times. Smith, in fact, supports giving a stipend to the players.
But they are already getting a stipend, in the form of a free education at a major national research institution. And while working a full-time "job" in college football is tough, round-the-clock tutoring and soft-touch courses are available to scholarship athletes at almost every Division I school.
If there is going to be any demarcation at all between college football and just admitting it is an NFL D-League, the line would have to be drawn at play for pay.
While it might be easy for Ohio State to pay such an extra stipend with 105,000 seats filled for as many as eight home games each season and frequent television appearances, it is not clear how the schools outside the six power conferences could manage.
Any serious reduction in the OSU penalties is unlikely.
The NCAA investigators severely punish liars. Failure to admit wrong-doing, which is the Buckeyes' sin, is close enough in their eyes.
Coach Jim Tressel could, of course, suspend all five players on his own for the Sugar Bowl. Former Arkansas coach Lou Holtz did just that with his top two running backs in 1977 against Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl, then won one of his greatest victories.
That is unlikely. Tressel has usually felt NCAA punishment (Maurice Clarett, Troy Smith) is enough. His personal sanctions (a one-game suspension for quarterback choker Robert Reynolds) have often been light.
The tattoo parlor discounts, which were the first part of the scandal to become public knowledge, seem insignificant, compared to the profits the players turned as athletes.
The most lasting scar will not be tats on players' bodies but the graffiti Pryor and others scrawled over the things alumni most cherish.
Traditions are the ties that bind players today to Woody Hayes' era, which began in 1951, or even to that of Francis Schmidt, who invented the gold pants charms for beating Michigan in 1934. Now we know that it is not the disarray of the Michigan program under Rich Rodriguez that has devalued gold pants, but Ohio State's quarterback who held them in such a careless grip.
"Obviously, that's very disappointing," said Tressel. "I suppose the older you are, the more you understand the difficulty of what has gone into the chance to earn these things. Perhaps when you are a little bit younger, it's not so crystal clear."
Tressel restored much of the pride in the Ohio State program that had been lost before him through Michigan and bowl game beatings. He even made the players sing the alma mater to fans after victories. It seemed hokey at first, then as success mounted, it seemed heart-warming.
Thursday made it seem like lip service.
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