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OSU goes before NCAA today
ASSOCIATED PRESS
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Jim Tressel
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Columbus Dispatch
Ohio State’s day of reckoning with the NCAA finally has arrived.
More than 16 months after football coach Jim Tressel received an email tipping him to potential violations by Buckeye players, Tressel and university officials will appear in Indianapolis for their long-anticipated hearing in front of the NCAA Division I Committee on Infractions.
To some degree, the hearing might be anticlimactic. The NCAA announced last month that Ohio State would not be hit with a failure-to-monitor charge stemming from the memorabilia and tattoo scandal that eventually resulted in Tressel’s forced resignation in May.
A finding that Ohio State had failed to adequately monitor its athletic program would have made serious penalties such as a bowl ban or scholarship losses much more likely.
That’s not to say Ohio State is out of danger. Its status as a repeat NCAA violator — OSU was reprimanded after Heisman Trophy winner Troy Smith accepted $500 from a booster and from the Jim O’Brien men’s basketball scandal in which he paid a recruit $6,000 — could leave the door open to harsher sanctions. The Committee on Infractions is not bound by the recommendations of the NCAA.
The committee’s decision likely will come in six to eight weeks.