The Buckeyes dodged a bullet as the vaunted “failure to maintain institutional control” and “failure to monitor” weren’t amongst the charges levied against the program. However, Ohio State isn’t out of the water just quite yet with an August 12th hearing in front of the NCAA to come. Ohio State’s 2010 wins (sans the season ending Sugar Bowl, of which the players in question were cleared formally by the NCAA) are all but sure to be vacated, but the chance for scholarship reductions, and a potential Big Ten Championship/Bowl ban for 2011 lingers. This spells some serious trouble not only for Jim Tressel, but the Buckeyes as a whole. The NCAA also warned that they could count Ohio State as a repeat offender because of the Troy Smith situation back in 2004 and Jim O'Brien who gave 6,000 dollars to a recruit. In my opinion, the Troy Smith situation will not end up coming into play, but because Tressel failed to let the NCAA know, he might be in the same sort of mess that Jim O'Brien was, and that's not good. A PDF of the NCAA's notification of allegations is here.
Jim Tressel's suspension stands at 5 games right now as you read this. This suspension was put in by Tressel and Gene Smith and company to try and keep the NCAA out of adding on to any more punishments.
- Tressel was guilty of ethical misconduct when he knowingly provided false information to the NCAA in certifying that he knew of no potential violations by his players and failed to inform OSU officials.
- Ohio State fielded ineligible players last season when starting quarterback Terrelle Pryor and others competed despite Tressel's knowledge of their misconduct. NCAA bylaws call for immediate suspensions.
This is pretty serious, and shows that the NCAA will most likely vacate most of the wins in the 2010 season, except for the Sugar Bowl, because they cleared the players to play in that one. The regular season will most likely go down.
