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发帖数: 2885 | 1 Among the latest avalanche of allegations surrounding the Ohio State
football program here’s the one that could be the
kill shot, the one that, if true, should cause the NCAA to level sanctions
against the Buckeyes far in excess of even the
carpet bombing it delivered to USC last year.
The website SportsByBrooks reported that the NCAA enforcement staff has
discovered “dozens of payments
[quarterback Terrelle] Pryor received in past years from a Columbus sports
memorabilia dealer. … the NCAA violations
were discovered when the name of the local memorabilia dealer, Dennis
Talbott, was seen on checks Pryor was
depositing in his personal bank account.”
More From Dan Wetzel
Focus on OSU, Big Ten brass, not Pryor Jun 1, 2011
Compounding mistakes cost Tressel his job May 30, 2011
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Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith declared in December that there was
not a systemic problem inside his
program. That is looking less and less likely.
(Terry Gilliam/AP photo)
Checks? Seriously, checks? In the long, illustrious history of NCAA
violations, the existence of a paper trail of
deposited checks is almost unprecedented. Bags of cash? Absolutely. Tricked-
out car registered in grandma’s name?
Standard operating procedure. Downtown condos where the rent is never due?
Of course.
Checks? Oh, my.
If this is true then it’s the big one for Ohio State because there is
nothing the NCAA likes more than the irrefutable
evidence that documents provide. It’s why so many cases involve seemingly
minor violations such as excessive phone
calls. Cell bills don’t lie.
The checks would be more than just proof that Pryor, who left the program on
Tuesday, was accepting compensation
for signing memorabilia, which is a violation of NCAA rules.
It could be the smoking gun that proves Ohio State’s 11-day investigation
last December into Pryor and his teammates
profiting off memorabilia sales was nothing but a shallow show designed to
sweep the scandal under the rug and get
the players back on the field for the upcoming Sugar Bowl.
It’s the proof that the school, and its highest leaders, not only failed to
monitor the behavior of its star athletes, but
even when tipped off by federal authorities of a major scandal, failed to
find out what was actually going on.
While it may be Gestapo-esque, Ohio State always had the ability to access
Pryor’s bank records. That’s one of many
rights student-athletes are forced to give up in exchange for a scholarship
and it’s how the NCAA could get them
during its current investigation into the program.
“At the beginning of each school year student athletes sign a statement
that gives consent for that information to the
school,” said NCAA spokesperson Stacey Osburn, who would only confirm there
is an ongoing investigation at OSU.
(For the record, let’s reiterate our disagreement with this, among other
NCAA policies, which are mostly designed to
maintain some veneer of amateurism so schools can profit from not paying
either players or taxes. However, these are
the rules the schools themselves created and should be on the hook to obey.)
If there are deposited checks from a memorabilia dealer in Pryor’s account,
then the school should have found them in
December. There is simply no excuse for not uncovering them. This isn’t a
hundred-dollar handshake in a back alley
somewhere. It’s all there in black and white. All they had to do was look
at the statements.
Instead, 11 days later, a time frame that included repeated lobbying to the
NCAA reinstatement committee in an effort
to maintain a full roster for the Sugar Bowl, the school concluded its
investigation with no such discovery.
“There are no other NCAA violations around this case,” athletic director
Gene Smith implausibly declared. “We’re very
fortunate we do not have a systemic problem in our program. This is isolated
to these young men, isolated to this
particular incident. There are no other violations that exist.”
In fact, there were many other violations. Sports Illustrated has since
found nine other players tied to the tattoo parlor.
The Columbus Dispatch has since raised questions of why more than 50 players
and family members purchased
automobiles from the same local used car lots.
And now there is word that sitting in Pryor’s bank records all along were
checks from a memorabilia dealer and part-
time photographer that SportsByBrooks claims was banned from attending games
by OSU in the middle of the 2010
season.
Throughout this case it’s been the cover up, not the crime, that’s ruined
everything. What could’ve been brief
suspensions for a few players has, courtesy of mismanagement, snowballed
into a scandal that could level the
program.
First coach Jim Tressel resigned last month because he failed to alert his
bosses of the memorabilia deals back in
April of 2010.
Now here comes an even bigger problem.
USC was drilled with a two-year bowl ban and the loss of 30 scholarships for
not keeping tabs on star player Reggie
Bush and his dealings with two separate sports marketing agencies. A key
part of the case came down to the NCAA
claiming that the school (through one assistant coach) either did know or
should have known about the relationships. It
also leaned on a concept that claimed “high-profile players demand high-
profile compliance.”
The initial news of Bush receiving impermissible benefits didn’t come out
until three months after the Heisman winner
had left school and turned pro.
The word on Pryor came while he was still a student-athlete. It was followed
by the push to keep him eligible for the
Sugar Bowl.
If USC was guilty of not acting on allegations that weren’t made until
after a player’s career was over, then Ohio State
faces the more significant problem of not fully acting on allegations made
while a player’s career was still active. Plus
there are more players than just Pryor involved.
This is on Gene Smith. And it’s on school president E. Gordon Gee and Big
Ten commissioner Jim Delany, both of
whom rubber stamped the investigation that even those uninitiated in NCAA
procedure knew was ridiculous. Gee and
Delany have no excuse for playing along with such a whitewash.
If Ohio State and the Big Ten were really committed to following NCAA rules,
Smith, Gee and Delany would’ve given
up on the reinstatement process, conceded a likely loss to the hated SEC in
the Sugar Bowl and dug in for a true
exhaustive look at the situation. At the very least it would have taken a
look at Pryor’s bank account.
When it comes to the NCAA, the issue isn’t usually the initial violation (
those happen everywhere). It’s how the school
responds.
For Ohio State, it was another form of the cover-up Tressel started nine
months prior. This is college sports’ highest-
paid AD (Smith), highest-paid president (Gee) and arguably most-powerful
person (Delany), millionaires one and all,
making a mockery of the very NCAA statutes and procedures they create,
enforce and claim to hold dear.
In one purposefully weak internal investigation, they managed to put the
proud Ohio State football program directly in
the NCAA crosshairs, debased decades of honor from former players, coaches
and fans and all but begged for
sanctions even more crippling than the Trojans received.
Hope that win over Arkansas was worth it, guys.
Dan Wetzel is Yahoo! Sports' national columnist. He is the co-author of the
new book "Death to the BCS: The
Definitive Case Against the Bowl Championship Series." Follow him on Twitter
. Send Dan a question or comment for
potential use in a future column or webcast.
Updated 3 hours, 42 minutes ago
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发帖数: 11948 | 2 yahoo writer有多少威慑力？现在众说纷纭，到时候看这小子是否如愿吧 | b*****a
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