Another Valley Favorite Son Bites the Dust

It was with great regret peppered with some anger that I watched the news from Columbus. Jim Tressel resigned as Ohio State’s football coach. What a pity. What a shame. But he is another in a long line of Mahoning Valley favorite sons to bite the dust.

I wrote several weeks ago that the NCAA crossed the Rubicon in using “amateur” players to enrich itself and its member schools years ago. It is a crime that the NCAA and its members have built a billion dollar business on the backs of often times broke students who are willing to indenture themselves for a 1 in 500 chance of playing in the NFL.

Although I am an Ohio State fan, I much less so now than I was when I was younger. Big time football has always been a business, but lately it has turned into something much more ugly with luxury boxes and tickets that are out of reach of many of the fans. This is especially true in the state schools. This isn’t pro football. At the end of the day schools like Ohio State are taxpayer funded institutions…and Ohio State uses A LOT of state money in its various pursuits. At Ohio State, the average schmuck gets a chance to buy two tickets to one game.  If you want season tickets, it will cost you several thousands of dollars each year in various money schemes including everything from straight donations to purchasing insurance policies. 

There is no excuse for what Tressel did. He let the players play when he knew he shouldn’t have. He lied about it to Ohio State and the NCAA, and given that another of his players spilled his guts last week about sweetheart car deals,  there may be more to come. It’s admirable that he wanted to look out for his players. It also understandable that at $3.5 million/year he would look out for himself! After all, he built his team around those guys. He had to produce. Had he done the right thing, the entire season would have been lost.  Minimally it would have shown that the character of the recruits played much less a role than their football ability.  He had already been down that path before.  Didn't he learn anything? 

But the lawyer in me gives me pause. If you don’t like the rules, you work to change them. You don’t cheat on them. You don’t lie about it.

Tressel is not native to Youngstown, but we certainly adopted him as one of our own when he turned the Youngstown State University Penguins into a football team to be reckoned with. Now he is just another in a long line of people who pushed the envelope over the edge of the table. Marc Dann and Jim Traficant come to mind. You might say this is not the same thing; that there is no comparison. Why not?

People from this area have been honing basic survival skills since the mills shut down. We are tough, and more often than not we succeed in tough businesses be it Wall Street, Hollywood, or sports when we leave the area. Don't be surprised if the next Ohio State coach also has a strong Youngstown connection. We know how to compete. We know how to walk that line.

Unfortunately, lots of times we get caught crossing over the line. The reputation of the Mahoning Valley anywhere in the state is abysmal. And we came by it "honest." It might be a good idea that anyone who is from here, or works and has associations here, be given a fast ethics course before being issued a driver’s license. Ethics is a word that is seldom heard around here; witness the latest round of local official indictments….AGAIN. You think we would learn our lesson.

At the end of the day, I hope that this turns out to be a good thing for Ohio State. Maybe, just maybe, it will move the university to do some soul searching as to exactly how its program is operated with maybe some adjustments in priorities. I hope that this turns out to be a good thing for the NCAA as some of the larger schools have started a drive to revise what “amateur” status means in the context of big time college football.

And I hope that is a new beginning for Jim Tressel, who is a decent guy by any standard. Perhaps he can re-evaluate what is important in life outside of the spotlight of being Ohio State’s head coach with all of the attendant pressures. (I personally think it has to be worst job in the world). He will be fine. Maybe he will go the pros. Maybe he will come back to Youngstown State to finally move our local team into the big leagues, but in a way that would restore his pride in self, and in a way that might teach our local population what the word “honor” means.  If anyone could teach that lesson to us, it is Jim Tressel.