He's admitted to have lied to the NCAA about the violations at Ohio State -- violations which directly have cost Michigan State University millions of dollars, a Rose Bowl BC$ appearance against TCU, and may well have caused another major program to lay down its season after the writing was on the wall.
(After Alabama's lay-down to Auburn in the Iron Bowl, the four non-conference champion BC$ slots were going to go to the SEC #2, TCU (forced), Stanford (forced as #4 and not a conference champion), and then a choice between Ohio State and Boise State -- probably vs. the SEC #2 in the Sugar. The writing was on the wall...)
The violation notice in April appears to specifically point at Tressel, but the question, as Pat Forde notes, is how many people within and subsidiary to the program need to go with him.
The fact is that the NCAA should never have allowed it to get this far. The NCAA should've fired Tressel (which it has the right to do - it can force any school to "show cause" to hire a crooked coach, effectively blackballing the coach from the NCAA).
Forde made two very prescient comments:
"And now Tressel has been forced out of his dream job, one of the top five in America. If he's honest with himself, Tressel must wonder today how much easier life would have been if he'd just done the right thing when he got that first email warning him that his players were breaking the rules."
"He won big and was dogged by NCAA violations at Youngstown State in the 1990s. Now the same is true at Ohio State."
The guy was a cheater from Day One, and now you have to wonder if there's a question about the 2002 BC$ National Championship Tressel and Ohio State won.
He never would've won 82% of his games at a school like Ohio State clean. No chance in Hell.
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