Clarett report dogs Buckeyes

Clarett report dogs Buckeyes
(ARCHIVE PHOTOS)
By Dick Weiss
New York Daily News
(KRT)
It never fails. As soon as a team wins the national championship in college football, trouble follows.
Ohio State defeated Miami, 31-24, in double-overtime last January to win the BCS title at the Fiesta Bowl.
But some of the that afterglow has diminished. AD Andy Geiger was forced to defend the Buckeyes' academic image Sunday after an anonymous graduate assistant told The New York Times that prize tailback Maurice Clarett had received preferential treatment in an introductory class in African-American and African studies last fall as a freshman.
Clarett -- the preseason favorite to win the Heisman Trophy this season -- walked out of a midterm examination and did not take a final exam. But he passed the course after taking oral exams instead, an Ohio State official said.
Paulette Pierce, an associate professor in that course, told The Times she worked directly with Clarett and administered two oral exams because she wanted to motivate him and because his lack of academic preparation required her to use unconventional means to test his knowledge. She also said she has taken similar steps with other students who are not athletes.
Pierce admitted Clarett did flee his midterm without completing it. "He looked at it and didn't know a thing," Pierce told the Times.
Geiger was in heavy spin control at a hastily called press conference.
"First of all, the student was prepared for college, at least according to credentials we received from him and from his high school," he said. "No preferential treatment was afforded in the class, according to the faculty member who taught the class. If there is cheating, faculty are required to report it and none has been reported."
"I was disappointed that a faculty member or any member of our teaching staff, which would include our gradaute teaching associates, would be speaking publicly about the academic performance of a particular student," said Ohio State's interim provost Barbara Snyder, referring to student privacy laws.
Clarett -- who set an Ohio State freshman record with 1,257 yards rushing and 16 TDS -- isn't talking. That is an upset in itself, given the fact he couldn't shut up about the school's refusal to fly him home for the funeral of a close friend in Youngstown the week before the Fiesta Bowl.
But he has been a lightning rod for controversy ever since he entered school in January of 2002 and began talking about challenging the NFL draft midway through his freshman year. Clarett met with NCAA officials on two different occasions the past two weeks, focusing on his financial dealings with close friend and fellow Ohioan LeBron James.
According to Geiger, there are no problems with Clarett's eligibility. "That doesn't mean it won't change," he said. "But, as of now, he's fine."
But Clarett and senior wide receiver Chris Vance, who reportedly failed one class and struggled in others yet played in the Fiesta Bowl, appear to represent a much bigger problem. If the most recent charges involving Clarett are true, they are not necessarily NCAA violations, but do speak volumes about the unusual educational opportunities for athletes at OSU.
Geiger and Snyder will head up a special committee to investigate this and other accusations as detailed by the teaching assistant, among them that tutors sometimes wrote papers for athletes and that football players had forged the names for absent teammates on class attendance slips.
"Nobody played in any bowl game who wasn't eligible," Geiger said.
Harder to brush under the rug is Ohio State's recent history of academic problems. In 1998, linebacker Andy Katzenmoyer said that to avoid academic ineligibility he took summer school courses in golf, music and AIDS awareness and his teammate Damon Moore told Sports Illustrated he had "some grades changed."
In 2000, the year before Jim Tressel arrived, receiver Reggie Germany was declared ineligible for the Rose Bowl with a 0.00 GPA for the fall quarter. And, in 2001, Ohio State had the lowest graduation rate of any Big Ten football team in that year (28 percent).
In the end, Clarett -- who probably will sign a lucrative NFL contract after this season -- will be just fine. The teaching assistant, who took her concerns about Clarett and Vance to the head of the department in the spring, was dismissed from her teaching duties. She has been stigmatized by school officials as a liar who had a history of psychological problems. She has since left the school.
And life goes on in big-time college programs.