Jim Tressel Resigns-I'm Not Surprised

The Columbus Dispatch is also reporting that Jim Tressel was encouraged to resign by Ohio State University officials. Link:

Sources: Ohio State Coach Jim Tressel was encouraged to resign

There are reports that a damning article about Ohio State football and Jim Tressel is going to come out in Sports Illustrated this week, so it looks like the issues facing the program are too overwhelming for Jim Tressel to stay on as head coach.

Colin Cowherd on ESPN Radio has been asking some intriguing questions of his guests on this morning's show. Can you win in big time college football and stay clean in the NCAA's eyes?


Look at some recent history. There are questions surrounding the 2011 National Champion Auburn and their recruitment of Cam Newton in addition to allegations of recruiting violations against the team Auburn beat, Oregon. USC will probably have to vacate their 2004 National Championship due to major infractions. 

ESPN just broadcast a report Sunday morning on their show, Outside the Lines, regarding the impact on recruiting that 7 on 7 high school football summer leagues is having. Third-party influences in the recruiting of college football players are becoming problematic according to the report.

I have said it before on this blog. Are Ohio State and Jim Tressel any better or worse than any other University trying to maintain their football program as a perennial top 20 in the country? It's a big business with multiple influences both inside and outside of those programs. And although the NCAA expects these programs to maintain "institutional control" it seems as though it is an impossible task.


Former Notre Dame head football coach and ESPN college football analyst Bob Davie had the best take I have heard regarding Jim Tressel's resignation. On Colin Cowherd's ESPN radio show this morning he said that Coach Tressel was the victim of a "self-inflicted wound" by not reporting the violations he was aware of to the NCAA and his superiors at Ohio State a year ago. 


College football and Ohio State will survive this. The Jim Tressel resignation will make for a great couple of days of coverage on talk radio and on the blogs. Columbus, Ohio will be batty for a couple of weeks. But soon all will be forgotten, and big-time college football will be back again in the Fall. Just a bump in the road in the big business that is college football.