It seems unlikely that the OSU problems will fade to the background despite the school’s hope that Terrelle Pryor’s departure will lessen the focus on the bulk of the allegations.
If you look at the Notice of Allegations that North Carolina received from the NCAA, you have to wonder if OSU will face a similar littany of charges once the full investigation is completed.
According to reports last week, OSU trustees were supposed to comment in further detail this week about the NCAA investigation. The board meets on June 23rd and 24th so we should probably expect some comment before the close of business Friday.
What has been interesting is that there are many around the program who believe that OSU “encouraging” Jim Tressel to leave has been a wise move because it could have been costly in the NCAA’s eyes if OSU had left Tressel in charge of the program. So now it will be interesting to watch how much of a scapegoat the school tries to turn Tressel into. Clearly Tressel made mistakes and failed to live up to his obligations to the school and the NCAA. But the problems at Ohio State were MUCH deeper than just Jim Tressel.
It was also surprising this week that Ohio State stopped its investigation into vehicle purchases by its players after the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles declared that “no state laws were broken in the recording or pricing of some of the used car deals given to Ohio State football players and family members.”
I am not sure anyone was really questioning whether state laws were violated as compared to whether or not the transactions were violations of NCAA regulations and constituted improper benefits for the student athletes.
The BMV report is suspect not only because they have refused to provide unredacted documents to show the true transactions, but also because they did not address loaner cars to athletes.
