Buckeyes holding up (gold) pants

By Tim May

The Columbus Dispatch

COLUMBUS

The members and associates of the 2010 Ohio State football team, which beat Michigan for the Buckeyes’ seventh straight win in the series, have yet to receive their traditional gold pants charms, but it’s not because they’ve been lost in the mail.

Besides, even with gold trading at about a $1,500 an ounce, there’s not enough of it in the charms to fill a tooth.

With Carioti Jewelers doing the work, each pair is sold to the university-licensed Gold Pants Club for about $50 apiece. Usually by now, the charms would have been distributed to the players, coaches and support personnel from the previous season as a traditional award for beating Michigan.

So what’s the holdup? Gold Pants Club president Jim Lachey, a former Ohio State All-America offensive lineman and a radio analyst during football games, said the pants aren’t ready, but he didn’t mean they haven’t been molded and dipped.

“We’re dealing with some outstanding issues that we’ve never had to deal with before,” Lachey said.

He was referring to the current NCAA investigation of coach Jim Tressel and the football program. That won’t be settled until after Aug. 12, when the coach and school administrators go before the NCAA Committee on Infractions.

The gold pants are sort of at the heart of the case. It was learned in December by a letter from the U.S. Attorney’s office to Ohio State that six players had bartered those or other memorabilia for cash and/or deals on tattoos with Ed Rife, owner of Fine Line Ink Tattoos and Piercings in Columbus.

That is against NCAA rules that prohibit improper benefits for players who still have eligibility remaining, even though most of the memorabilia exchanged had been awarded to them. Five players — quarterback Terrelle Pryor, receiver DeVier Posey, running back Dan Herron, offensive tackle Mike Adams and defensive end Solomon Thomas — must serve a five-game suspension to start the 2011 season, and linebacker Jordan Whiting must sit out the opener.

Tressel became the focal point of the controversy in March when the school said in a letter to the NCAA that he had been made aware of the situation by Columbus lawyer Christopher Cicero in April 2010, but that Tressel had not shared the information — as required by his contract — with the university’s compliance office.

It is a major violation, as the NCAA stated in its notice of allegations last month, and could lead to the vacating of wins from last season, along with other penalties.

And it’s the tenuous nature of those wins, primarily the unprecedented seventh straight over Michigan, that has the gold pants in a bunch.

“If they vacate the win, it makes no sense to award the gold pants, at least in our minds,” Lachey said. “And if you hand them out and say, ‘Oh yeah, we’ll need to get them back if the win is vacated’ — I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t be a smart way to go.

“And I’ll be honest: We don’t want to see any 2010 gold pants on the market right now.”

The gold pants are about more than their minimal gold value. For example, a pair that was awarded to a non-playing member of the 1968 team after its seminal win over Michigan is for sale on eBay with a minimum asking price of $1,500.

“They are a symbol of being part of a special team, of a bunch of guys who worked hard for a common goal of beating our rival,” said John Hicks, an All-America offensive lineman under coach Woody Hayes and considered sort of the godfather of the ex-players.

“Sometimes when you’re 18, 19, 20 years old, you don’t realize what that really meant to you, but when you get to 60 or so, you do.”

It bothered him deeply, he said, to see where several current members of the team had bartered their gold pants, but he said such foolishness isn’t reserved for the young.

“I average about 20 to 25 calls a year from former players trying to find out if they can get a replacement pair,” Hicks said. “Either they were lost, or they lost them in a divorce, or who knows, they might have sold them. But they suddenly realize how special they are.”

What they also find out is replacements aren’t simply handed out. Lachey makes that judgment.

“And it better be a pretty good reason,” Lachey said.