NCAA Bans Ohio State From 2012 Bowl, Blacklists Jim Tressel

Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith says the Buckeyes have 12 pending NCAA violations, though that number may be lower, a spokesman told The Lantern. Smith said the violations are in addition to those reported a week ago, released to the public as part of a large records dump.

The revelation may be surprising, but Smith maintained it’s fairly normal for a large college athletics program.

No mention of tattoos in here, which Pryor alleged all along that he’d paid for. Some would also wonder again where Pryor got all those cars he was seen cycling through even as the scandal picked up. But, yep, that’s his side of the story.

For more on Buckeyes football, visit Ohio State blog Land-Grant Holy Land, plus Big Ten blog Off Tackle Empire and SB Nation Cleveland.

The one-year bowl prohibition won’t hurt him all that much, unless a couple seniors were looking for a reason to transfer away from the new regime. Otherwise, this is essentially the same program he knew he’d be taking over, now with a built-in rallying cry.

A statement from Meyer on the news:

In a statement, Smith said the Buckeyes don’t plan to fight the NCAA any further, but wants you to know he doesn’t like any of this:

With today’s news that the NCAA rejected Ohio State’s proposed penalties and imposed a scholarship reduction almost double that of what the Buckeye’s submitted, many Ohio State fans will wonder how this will impact Ohio State’s recruiting. And this is an important question, as Ohio State has been on an absolute tear lately on the recruiting trail. Meyer has catapulted Ohio State’s class from decent to excellent, with the additions of defensive linemen Noah Spence and Tommy Schutt.

The new penalty is as follows:

But if Ohio State’s apparent strategy really was to pin the troubles on Jim Tressel, it looks like it worked. Tressel faces a five-year show-cause penalty, meaning he essentially cannot coach a college football team for the next five years. In order to hire him, a school would have to get special NCAA approval.

The punishment will have impact lasting well beyond that, though, since he’s now tarnished for good. Not to mention recruiting against Tressel would be a piece of cake for any competing program, even 10 years down the road, since Ohio State and the NCAA have both portrayed him as the prime culprit here.

Tuesday, the year-long escapade into just who get how many free tattoos came to a conclusion, with the NCAA seeing the Ohio St. Buckeyes and raising them quite a bit. The 2012 bowl ban is getting the most attention, but nine lost scholarships will have more instant and long-term impact.

It could’ve been a whole lot worse, though, Yahoo! Sports’ Charles Robinson reports, and if there’s anybody we’ll trust about things getting a whole lot worse, it’s Mr. Robinson:

Really not all that cataclysmic, but a decisive escalation from what Columbus had hoped for. USC has thrived despite a postseason ban, and Urban Meyer’s recruiting dominance should allow Ohio State to do the same.

The worst of it reportedly goes to former coach Jim Tressel, who now has that expected show-cause penalty hanging over his head. That means any school that wants to hire Tressel must take it up with the NCAA for approval or else risk violations of its own.

So what exactly is happening here? Didn’t we go through this already, when the Buckeyes vacated their 2010 wins and so forth? That was Ohio State’s recommended punishment for themselves, not the NCAA’s official proclamation. The governing body could accept those terms, or it could ramp them up.

To think, the NCAA could’ve waited just two more days, and we would’ve gotten to enjoy an entire year of this story. Since then a quarterback has left, a coach was fired, multiple rounds of suspensions happened, a Sugar Bowl win was nullified, and Urban Meyer wound up in Columbus so maybe everything’s not all that bad.

The Ohio State University has paid $142,000 in legal fees to Crabbe, Brown and James LLP, a Columbus, Ohio-based law firm that is representing several athletes that have been under investigation by the NCAA, Alex Antonetz of The Lantern, the Buckeyes’ student newspaper, reports.

According to the report, the payments are being made from Ohio State’s Athletics Department’s general operations fund, which are not funded by student fees. Additional resources for this use would be available from the Student-Athlete Opportunity Fund, which is funded by revenue generated from the NCAA basketball tournament. The university has not dipped into the Student-Athlete Opportunity Fund to pay for legal services for the athletes who were suspended for receiving compensation from booster Robert DiGeronimo for work that they did not do.

According to the release, Posey will have to repay a booster $720 for “work not performed.” Posey also accepted $100 in golf fees, which the NCAA considers preferential treatment. The other three players, Hall, Fellows, and Herron will also have to repay benefits for work not performed. Hall wil have to pay back $230, while Herron and Fellows will have to pay back $290. The suspensions for Posey and Herron are in addition to the previous five game suspension that each are already serving.

In DeVier Posey’s case, this means he will be suspended for 10 of 12 total games during the 2011 season. Posey will get to play one game at home against Penn State and the annual match up with the Michigan Wolverines in Ann Arbor.

As you might expect, the two grown men have a lot of informed and distanced things to say about Ohio State, overbearing college football fandom and the NCAA, and this Omaha World-Herald piece is so dense with quotes you could come up with 10 different things to say about it.

Other than their defenses of Jim Tressel, admissions that football recruits know who’s getting paid and ain’t-sayin’-just-sayin’ comments about athletic director Gene Smith and the athletic department in general, here’s perhaps the most striking quote:

Here’s Ohio State president Gordon Gee, riddling you with his particular language techniques in the wake of freshly churned NCAA troubles:

Again, Ohio State players were found worthy of further suspensions while waiting to serve their original suspensions. Problems don’t get much bigger than that. After last year’s “Little Sisters of the Poor” misuse, everything Gee says reminds me of Ron Burgundy’s “when in Rome” confusion (it’s from a pretty old movie, maybe you haven’t seen it).

Smith insisted Ohio State doesn’t have an ongoing compliance problem, but ... well, here’s an Ohio State fan on that sentiment:

Smith noted the booster who overpaid the three players has been “disassociated.”

Now it sounds like one of those players might not make it back onto the field just yet:

Athletic director Gene Smith has called for a Monday news conference, at which very little will be discussed and discovered, probably.

The Ohio State University administration and now-former head coach have wrapped their NCAA heading in Indianapolis after less than four hours, lending credence to the theory that there aren’t too many surprises coming down the pike when the Committee on Infractions issues its ruling against the Buckeyes in two to three months.

That doesn’t mean, whatever Gene Smith burbled this afternoon, that there aren’t still surprises to be had. The amended notice of allegations delivered to Ohio State in July leaves the possibility of the dreaded LOIC or FTM charges very much out in the open.

The NCAA investigation did find that Sarniak was improperly given free lodging during Pryor’s recruiting visit, but that he was later billed for the hotel stay. It was also found that Sarniak paid for some meals of two assistant coaches who were visiting Pryor. The violations were reported as secondary violations, meaning they were considered common and usually unintended.

In April 2010, Tressel’s relationship with Sarniak was deemed to have crossed that line. After receiving an email from an anonymous tipster warning Tressel of some possible violations, the coach forwarded the email to Sarniak rather than notify his superiors. Tressel eventually told NCAA investigators that he thought of notifying Sarniak because of his relationship with Pryor and “I felt from a safety standpoint that I needed to alert Ted to the gravity of that.” Tressel was forced to resign in May largely because of that decision.

Ohio State’s defense in its case before the NCAA is likely to depend heavily on turning Jim Tressel into the villain and arguing that the university has plausible deniability about what the sweatervested coach might have been up to. So how exactly does the latest public-records dump play into that? It helps the Tressel-as-villain theme, but maybe not so much the deniability proposition.

As you can probably imagine, there’s more. Tressel gave a jersey to a recruit in the summer of 2001, just months after he took over as head coach. Not that all the allegations contained in the documents are bombshells. The pettiness of NCAA regulations appear in a reprimand for allowing a recruit’s mother to make a call paid for by the university, a violation worth a whopping $7.93. And there are a range of accusations in between.

ESPN is currently suing Ohio State in an effort to learn more about Ted Sarniak and other entities. But it’s not as if they just started reaching out to OSU out of the blue. The Worldwide Leader has been working Ohio State for weeks, trying to get information, documents, emails and whatever else they can get their hands on.

Eleven Warriors has posted correspondence between Ohio State and several press outlets. It ranges from Cleveland Plain Dealer’s really polite request to ESPN’s “give us what we want or else” mantra.

Kyle Kalis, a four-star offensive lineman from Lakewood St. Edward High School (Ohio), committed to the University of Michigan Sunday morning, ending widespread speculation regarding his renewed recruitment. Rivals.com’s No. 4 rated offensive tackle in the country -- and No. 18 rated national prospect -- joins the Wolverines as their 19th recruit of the 2012 class.

In addition to the inherent groans that stem from any Michigan success, this coup is sure to personally grind the gears of Ohio State University officials, as Kalis was once committed to become a Buckeye before the Jim Tressel scandal reached critical mass. The 6-5, 302 pound stud prospect de-committed following the now infamous resignation of the university’s embattled head coach, and quickly visited Ann Arbor twice in two weekends before making the announcement official.

ESPN was slow to rouse on this story, waiting after several other outlets had pored through Jim Tressel’s shameful emails to even note the existence of a scandal. If they’re spearheading a new effort to get to the bottom of the story, Ohio State’s troubles could only be beginning.

Plus, the worst the NCAA is going to do is take away scholarships and forbid Ohio State from playing bowl games. ESPN can do more damage to the program’s bottom line than the NCAA ever could. Might be wise to give them what they want and just start wincing.

Columbus, Ohio is a weird place, man. 2010 never happened, and now a player who was already suspended could find himself triply suspended, and depending on your age you’re definitely thinking about quoting one of two specific movies.

Bell is a sophomore, and if this keeps going he’ll be 35 years old by the time he’s allowed to play college football again. At some point along the way, he’ll have to get on that paper chase for real, because college can be super expensive.

Today Ohio State formally performed an auto-auto-da-fe, the act of setting yourself on fire before the Inquisition decides to set you on fire themeslves. Yet instead of doing the whole shebang, Ohio State President Gordon Gee and Buckeyes Athletic Director flourished dramatically, soaked a single toe of their boot in lighter fluid, and then struck a match and expected the NCAA to call it a proper fire.

Ohio State vacated the entire 2010 season and the 2011 Sugar Bowl, the effective equivalent of asking the judge in a criminal trial to accept “time served” as penalty for whatever you’ve done. Vacating wins is a punishment only the past pays for: there’s no refund of bowl loot collected, no taking back the revenue earned by a team knowingly playing with ineligible players. It is the apology of a cheating spouse once it’s already happened, and the “we regret the hurt our actions may have caused” of NCAA sanctions. It punishes no past bad behavior, and discourages no future malpractice.