In defense of Jim Tressell

By Dick "The Coach" Betts

Just about everybody I know has asked me in person or by text or e-mail or semaphore flags or smoke signals for the last couple of months what I think of the "Tressell thing." I repeatedly said I would wait until more came out because I knew more was to follow.

But when Tressell was asked to resign I have to tell you I was shocked. I was shocked for a lot of reasons but the biggest reason was the The Ohio State University was so willing to turn it's back on, and walk away from, the best college football coach in America. The President of the University and the Athletic Director had time and again given their full support and backing to Jim Tressell and then Sports Illustrated comes out with a witch hunt article of half truths and old news and Gordon Gee and Gene Smith and the rest of the Trustees caved like a surrounded Math Professor at a pantie raid, "I give, I give, just don't blemish my good name."

Jim Tressell has been the best football coach in the fifty years I have followed Ohio State football. John Cooper could recruit but he just never got the whole Ohio State/Michigan thing. Nobody loved Ohio State more than Earle Bruce but there was a reason they called him Old 9 and 3 Earle. And for most of my young adult life I thought Woody Hayes was God himself. But Tressell was better than all of them. He wasn't just a great football coach, he was a great man. He raised money for just about every charity in Columbus and was a lifelong supporter of all things military. Talk to any coach that ever coached with him, for him, or even against him and you will not hear one unkind word about Jim Tressell. Every one of them say they would want their son's to play for Coach Tressell. What did he do on the field in his ten years at Ohio State? Well, he won seven Big Ten titles and took his teams to eight BCS Bowl games. He played in three National Championship games (that's 30%) and won the 2002 game in double overtime against a Miami team that came into the game with a 34 game win streak. And, oh yeah, he was nine and freakin' one against Meeeshitagin! Woody never did that. Earle never did that. And John Cooper for damn sure never did that. And just this month the football team had the highest APR (Academic Progress Rate) for academics of any of the top 25 teams in the country. They graded out at 985. Stanford came in at 977. Jim Tressell is the best college football coach in America and Gee and Smith shit canned him like a pair of old underwear with more skid marks than the Indy 500 race track. It's like Danny DeVito divorcing Julia Roberts. What the hell were they thinking? They'll never find another one as good as the one they had.

And for what? Because he didn't report that he got an e-mail from an old ex player that said some of his players might be trading things for tattoos? Are you kidding? Every coach in the SEC is having a belly laugh over that one. No agents involved? No recruits being paid? No grade issue? No grade changing? No drugs? He lost his job over THAT? Where you work is it normal for people that do everything at the highest level for ten years and then make one mistake to be fired? Just wondering.

This mess all started with five players that knew the rules but chose to ignore them. They thought the rules were for others. They were above them. They were starters. They were important. They didn't need to put up with that petty shit, they were somebody, by God. And what's a Championship ring more or less? They had three of them. And that is the thing that bothers me the most of all in this whole stinking mess with the players. How could you sell a pair of gold pants? As Charlton Heston once said, you'd have to rip them from my cold, dead hands. You know that they will spend the rest of their lives regretting the day they sold those rings and gold pants. Good.

I've been reading letters from his players and they are eye opening. He made them read books and do book reports and read the reports to the team. These books were not about football but about character building and how to be a better person. He not only knew all 120 players and walk-ons but he knew all of their parents and all of their brothers and sisters BY NAME. He cared about his players and their families. He had the players constantly work with Out Reach programs and visit hospitals to see sick children and veterans. He is the kind of man you want your son to know. He started every day with a team prayer and asked every player what they were going to do that day to get better as a person. He also happens to be the best college football coach in America.

And now, because a few idiots who thought they were above following the rules, and because an e-mail that stated that might be the case wasn't turned over to the compliance people and because the gutless administration once again got weak-kneed and turned their backs on the promises they made, we are without the best college football coach in America. ESPN and Sports Illustrated are happy because they brought down the head coach of Ohio State football and the rest of us true die hard fans are heart broken. It is what it is, so where do we go from here?

Well, if it were up to me I'd start with the Compliance Department. It is headed by a man named Doug Archie. He and his entire staff would be history. I mean, what were these people doing for the last few years while players were trading trinkets for tats and getting special deals on cars? Every car deal has to be approved by Compliance. So how can there be problems there? And if guys are getting deals on tattoos someone is talking about it. It is the job of the people in Compliance to find out about those things. If they are not, they are not doing their job. Granted, they have a thousand athletes to worry about in a multitude of sports but I don't think they are to worried about anyone getting special benefits like a free tattoo on the fencing team Captain for selling his autographed epee.

Next would be the Athletic Director, Gene Smith, who oversees Compliance and who, along with E. Gordon Gee, asked Coach Tressell to resign. And Gee should join him. They asked Coach Tressell to leave because that's what would be best for The University. Well guys, time to man up and do what's best for The University; leave. I admired them both for years, now they just nauseate me.

I have no idea who the next football coach will be at Ohio State. Luke Fickell bleeds scarlet and gray. He is 37 years old, as energetic as a jackrabbit in heat and is Ohio State's best recruiter. He has been considered their best assistant coach for years and would be the ideal guy if he could just win every game. Fickell will get his shot this year but unless he wins at least 11 games I don't think they will give it to him. Ohio State is one of the top five jobs in the country. They can get anyone they want. They can get Stoops, Pelini, Meyer, anyone. I just hope it's not Gee and Smith doing the picking.

Ohio State is bigger than all of this. It's just our turn. The squeaky clean sweater vest screwed up and the media had a feeding frenzy. It will all pass. In a few months Luke Fickell will be running out onto the field in The Horseshoe and the sun will be shinning and Akron will get pounded and the Buckeyes will be on the road to another November date with Ann Arbor and her Meeeshitagin Wolverettes.

One thing is for sure. No matter where Jim Tressell goes or what he does he will always have a fan in Bolivar, Ohio.

Interesting take on Ohio State situation

Below is a blog by a former OSU basketball player and what his opinion is on some of the current Buckeye troubles.

Club Trillion

Season Finale Haiku

Since Auburn won the National Champoinship, it will be the season finale of haiku:

Auburn fans gloating
Won't be happening next year
Only won by luck

I ain't calling Wally a liar ...

Reading Wally Hall is occasionally like dabbling in FanFic, that weird subset of writing on the Internet about people's favorite TV shows, just reimagined.

Generally speaking FanFic pieces have Kirk and Spock as boyfriends, or David Duchovny in real life or his "character" from Californication but set in X-Files land.

In a column from Jan. 7, Hall seems set on doing a little FanFic dabbling when he wrote of a chance encounter in New Orleans with a female Alabama fan, who was rooting for Arkansas to win the Sugar Bowl that night.

The start was a sweet moment, one almost impossible to verify, much like Clay Travis's twitter feed that said after the fight on Bourbon Street between an Arkansas fan and an Ohio State fan, a brawl the Arkansas fan won, people who had been watching, began chanting "SEC, SEC."

So is it entirely possible that sitting on a trolley, Hall met someone cheering for Arkansas?

Yes, absolutely.

Then Hall makes a turn into FanFic when he wrote that the same woman, that same Alabama fan, is a United States Attorney and federal prosecutor with working knowledge of a government investigation into the Auburn football program and a pay for play scheme generated by Cam Newton's father?

Umm, no.

For the last six months I've worked as a reporter covering a federal investigation. A very real and multiple state an operation that resulted in lots of plea bargains and convictions in federal court with more trials coming.

An assistant U.S. Attorney isn't authorized to speak to the press without the U.S. Attorney for that district present. And, as a matter of fact, an Assistant U.S. Attorney is much more like to turn and walk the other way when they see a reporter. Trust me, I've seen it happen. Oh Laura Hoey, all I wanted was to talk about Notre Dame football.

But not just that, telling a random stranger, who seems to have identified himself as a member of the press, that she works as a federal prosecutor and is working on an Auburn investigation. It just defies factual description.

FanFic.

pre bowl haiku

Its been a few weeks since I've done a haiku, with the hogs playing in the Sugar Bowl, I had to come up with a new one:
Big ten is winless
Go Hogs beat Ohio St.
Big ten, not all that.

Auburn crowned as winner of Slabby, the CFPA's national championship award

Auburn Tigers named team of the year,
Georgia gets season's skunk award


NEWS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

For more information, contact Robert Shields
at fromthebench@yahoo.com.

CFPA Championship Committee Votes
Auburn as the 2010 National Champion

POOLSVILLE, USA (December 16, 2010) –– The College Football Prognosticators Association (CFPA) awards its national championship, the Slabby Trophy, prior to the beginning of bowl season in the tradition of how the Associated Press used to do it back in the day before the creation of the BCS.

The CFPA’s expert panel, which unlike most of these voting bodies out there that produce polls throughout the season has been diligently studying and watching college football all year, has concluded voting for the 2010 national champion with the following results.

1) Auburn
2) Oregon
3) Arkansas
4) TCU
5) Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Stanford (tie)

Congratulations to the Auburn University Tigers for being voted as the best college football team in 2010 prior to playing out the nonsense mandated by the BCS computers and Harris Poll voters who have no idea what they are doing.

The championship committee, called the College Football Prognosticators Association, is comprised of 152 college football experts from across the country with a range of backgrounds that is a "who's who" of reporters, bankers, doctors, lawyers, ad wizards, lawn guys, bond guys, car guys, pilots, priests, principals, builders, teachers, bums, and nomads.

The mission of the CFPA recognizes that the Bowl Championship Series has become meaningless, detrimental, and exclusionary to college football. The outcome of such bowl games does not deliver a true national champion based on the merits of the season. The CFPA's national championship is the only award in college football that recognizes a true champion based on the team’s efforts during the regular season.

The CFPA national championship trophy, affectionately referred to as "Slabby," is a stone tablet weighing more than 75 pounds. It is proclaimed as the heaviest and most indestructible award in college football, and as a bonus is also all-weather. Each year, the elected national champion's name is added to the trophy and sent to the university's athletic department. After agreeing to accept shipping, the athletic director must then carry the tablet 10 feet in the Slabby Strength Challenge in order to keep the trophy the remainder of the year.

The CFPA has been in existence since 2002 and started awarding Slabby in 2004. Past winners of Slabby have been USC and Auburn (tie vote) in 2004, USC in 2005, Ohio State in 2006, LSU in 2007, Florida in 2008, and Alabama in 2009.

Learn more about an alternative to the current BCS system that includes conference realignment and playoffs at Project Playoffs.


Auburn also wins college football team of the year

As students of the game throughout the season, the CFPA also names a team of the year that is not necessarily the best team but played a difficult schedule and won the majority of those games.

Using a patented scientific formula the CFPA has sworn to secrecy to prevent its exploitation by the BCS and Powers That Be in college football, plus the input of 152 keen viewing eyes, Auburn University also came out as this year's winner for beating one of the toughest schedules in the country while dealing with one of the biggest off-the-field dramas in college football in recent years.


Georgia named college football's skunk of year

Using the same methodology, the CFPA also names the football program that was the most disappointing of the season. For 2010, that team is the Georgia Bulldogs, which failed in every big game and is being rewarded with a trip to the AutoZone Liberty Bowl in Memphis for squeaking out six wins against three other six-win also-rans and three annually bad football programs.

40 FTW: The bowl games

Forty Games for the Win!

Division I FCS Semifinal
Villanova - Eastern Washington
7 p.m., Dec. 17, ESPN2
Sagarin says: Villanova by 3

Division II Championship Game
Delta State - Minnesota Duluth
10 a.m., Dec. 18, ESPN2
No line

Division I FCS Semifinal
Georgia Southern - Delaware
11 a.m., Dec. 18, ESPNU
Sagarin says: Delaware by 7
* Underdog worth three points

New Mexico Bowl
BYU - UTEP
1 p.m., Dec. 18, ESPN
Line: BYU by 11
* Underdog worth four points

Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl
Mount Union - Wisconsin Whitewater
2:30 p.m., Dec. 18, ESPNU
No line

uDrove Humanitarian Bowl
Northern Illinois - Fresno State
4:30 p.m., Dec. 18, ESPN
Line: Northern Illinois by 1

R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl
Troy - Ohio
8 p.m., Dec. 18, ESPN
Line: Troy by 1

Beef 'O' Brady's St. Petersburg Bowl
Louisville - Southern Miss
7 p.m., Dec. 21, ESPN
Line: Louisville by 3

MAACO Bowl
Utah - Boise State
7 p.m., Dec. 22, ESPN
Line: Boise State by 17
* Underdog worth six points

San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl
Navy - San Diego State
7 p.m., Dec. 23, ESPN
Line: San Diego State by 5
* Underdog worth three points

Sheraton Hawaii Bowl
Tulsa - Hawaii
7 p.m., Dec. 24, ESPN
Line: Hawaii by 11
* Underdog worth four points

Little Caesars Pizza Bowl
Toledo - Florida International
7:30 p.m., Dec. 26, ESPN
Line: Toledo by 1

AdvoCare V100 Independence Bowl
Air Force - Georgia Tech
4 p.m., Dec. 27, ESPN
Line: Air Force by 2

Champs Sports Bowl
NC State - West Virginia
5:30 p.m., Dec. 28, ESPN
Line: West Virginia by 2

Insight Bowl
Iowa - Missouri
9 p.m., Dec. 28, ESPN
Line: Missouri by 1

Military Bowl
Maryland - East Carolina
1:30 p.m., Dec. 29, ESPN
Line: Maryland by 7
* Underdog worth three points

Texas Bowl
Illinois - Baylor
5 p.m., Dec. 29, ESPN
Line: Baylor by 1

Valero Alamo Bowl
Arizona - Oklahoma State
8 p.m., Dec. 29, ESPN
Line: Oklahoma State by 6
* Underdog worth three points

Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl
SMU - Army
11 a.m., Dec. 30, ESPN
Line: SMU by 8
* Underdog worth three points

New Era Pinstripe Bowl
Syracuse - Kansas State
2:30 p.m., Dec. 30, ESPN
Line: Pick 'em

Franklin American Mortgage Music City Bowl
North Carolina - Tennessee
5:30 p.m., Dec. 30, ESPN
Line: North Carolina by 2

Bridgepoint Education Holiday Bowl
Washington - Nebraska
9 p.m., Dec. 30, ESPN
Line: Nebraska by 13
* Underdog worth five points

Meineke Car Care Bowl
Clemson - South Florida
11 a.m., Dec. 31, ESPN
Line: Clemson by 4

Hyundai Sun Bowl
Miami - Notre Dame
1 p.m., Dec. 31, CBS
Line: Miami by 3

AutoZone Liberty Bowl
Central Florida - Georgia
2:30 p.m., Dec. 31, ESPN
Line: Georgia by 6
* Underdog worth three points

Chick-fil-A Bowl
Florida State - South Carolina
6:30 p.m., Dec. 31, ESPN
Line: South Carolina by 3

TicketCity Bowl
Northwestern - Texas Tech
11 a.m., Jan. 1, ESPNU
Line: Texas Tech by 9
* Underdog worth four points

Outback Bowl
Penn State - Florida
Noon, Jan. 1, ABC
Line: Florida by 7
* Underdog worth three points

Capital One Bowl
Alabama - Michigan State
Noon, Jan. 1, ESPN
Line: Alabama by 10
* Underdog worth four points

Gator Bowl
Michigan - Mississippi State
12:30 p.m., Jan. 1, ESPN2
Line: Mississippi State by 5
* Underdog worth three points

The Rose Bowl Game
Wisconsin - TCU
4 p.m., Jan. 1, ESPN
Line: TCU by 2

Tostitos Fiesta Bowl
Oklahoma - Connecticut
7:30 p.m., Jan. 1, ESPN
Line: Oklahoma by 17
* Underdog worth six points

Discover Orange Bowl
Virginia Tech - Stanford
7 p.m., Jan. 3, ESPN
Line: Stanford by 3

Allstate Sugar Bowl
Arkansas - Ohio State
7:30 p.m., Jan. 4, ESPN
Line: Ohio State by 3

GoDaddy.com Bowl
Miami Ohio - Middle Tennessee
7 p.m., Jan. 6, ESPN
Line: Miami Ohio by 1

Division I FCS Championship Game
Select winner from semifinalists at top
6 p.m., Jan. 7, ESPN2
Sagarin says: To be determined

AT&T Cotton Bowl Classic
Texas A&M - LSU
7 p.m., Jan. 7, Fox
Line: LSU by 1

BBVA Compass Bowl
Pittsburgh - Kentucky
11 a.m., Jan. 8, ESPN
Line: Pittsburgh by 3

Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl
Nevada - Boston College
8 p.m., Jan. 9, ESPN
Line: Nevada by 9
* Underdog worth four points

Tostitos BCS National Championship Game
Auburn - Oregon
7:30 p.m., Jan. 10, ESPN
Line: Auburn by 3
* Winner worth double points

For the Win!
****#****

Editorial on the Army-Navy game

Why doesn't CBS move this game to primetime? Look at Saturday evening's TV lineup — Frosty, Frosty Returns, Flight Before Christmas (Huh?) and 48 Hours Mystery. Are you telling me Army-Navy wouldn't draw better TV ratings? In an era of faux patriotism (no, we should not treat "God Bless America" with the same reverence as The National Anthem), we should honor the real patriots at our service academies by showcasing the Best Rivalry In College Sports on primetime TV. Sure, the Heisman ceremony is on that night, but who wants to watch ESPN milk an hour of coverage out of a 10-minute event? That said, set the DVR for the 30 for 30 on SMU's cheating in the 1980s. It might be as good as the episode on The U and the two Escobars (neither of which were Ramon).

-- Scott

Extra Credit Week

Some professors have been known to offer a chance to improve your grade between the end of the semester and the final exam. Here's yours.

One of the extra-credit questions could be: Would you rather have Malzahn, Mullen, or Petrino if you were Florida?

Another could be: Why would a coach who had a statistically improbable improvement from 7-5 to 13-0 not be voted SEC coach of the year unless the other coaches thought he cheated to get there?

But instead, to avoid being labeled as unpatriotic and anti-Auburn (some say that's the same thing), you get the below to pick. Easy, right?

The Army - Navy Game
1:30 p.m., Saturday, CBS
Line: Navy by 7
* Underdog worth three points

The Heisman Trophy
LaMichael James (Oregon)
Andrew Luck (Stanford)
Kellen Moore (Boise State)
Cam Newton (Auburn)
7 p.m., Saturday, ESPN

Good luck.
****#****

Following the Heisman presentation, stay tuned for Pony Excess!