SI probe maintains Tressel should have known of YSU football violations

YOUNGSTOWN

Jim Tressel had to be aware of football program violations that occurred during his tenure as Youngstown State University’s head coach, according to a Sports Illustrated investigation.

Tressel on Monday resigned as head coach at The Ohio State University.

In February 2000, 11 months before OSU hired Tressel, Youngstown State acknowledged football violations and announced self-imposed sanctions, states the SI article, which appeared online Monday night and will be in print June 6.

“What bothered me was that the family knows,” retired YSU President Leslie Cochran. “Inside the family everyone knows what’s going on.”

YSU hired Tressel in December 1985. “In 1990, with hometown hero Ray Isaac under center, the Penguins went undefeated in the regular season. In ‘91 they won the Division I-AA national title,” the article states.

But in 1988, according to court documents from a jury-tampering trial involving Mickey Monus, a YSU trustee and the founder of the Phar-Mor chain of drug stores, Tressel had called Monus about arranging a job for Isaac. By the time he left Youngstown State, in 1992, Isaac had collected more than $10,000 in cash and checks from Monus and Monus’s associates and employees, the article states.

In January 1994 the NCAA’s director of enforcement sent Cochran a letter saying that according to an anonymous source, Isaac had been driving a car provided by a local business, which would turn out to be Phar-Mor; 13 Penguins had had jobs with Phar-Mor during the season, in violation of NCAA rules; and nonscholarship student athletes were being illegally paid by the university’s director of athletic development.

After YSU announced self-imposed sanctions, and because it was satisfied with those steps and its statute of limitations on the violations had run out, the NCAA allowed Youngstown to keep the ‘91 national title.

“I’m sad because he’s such a good guy and he’d do anything for you,” said Dan Wathen, the strength and conditioning coach at YSU during Tressel’s tenure.

To read the story online at Sports Illustrated, go here:

SI investigation reveals eight-year pattern of violations under Tressel