BRAD CLARK

(Clark started and writes for NFLsFuture.com)

The story of Jim Tressel’s demise will be forever linked to the grotesque sham known as the NCAA.   In an effort to not come off as a Jim Tressel-apologist, I will simply state that Jim Tressel deserved the punishment for an age old practice.

In a day and age, when leading sports stories on ES(EC)PN are marked by athletes with guns, PED’s, rape allegations, the major media markets have decided to chastise The Ohio State University and Jim Tressel for “violations.”

Sports Illustrated led the charge and ultimately took the credit for running Jim Tressel out of The Horseshoe.  After months and probably millions of dollars, SI got their dirt.  The dirt they needed to chalk up another Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism.  Congrats, SI you got your man.  I challenge anyone to the argument that given the resources used they couldn’t dig up dirt on every major collegiate program.  Tats don’t come cheap these days.  So turn on a game and ask yourself how your favorite, overexposed college athlete paid for that sleeve of tats.  Rich uncle, Right?

ESPN runs an all day Memorial Day marathon to depict Jim Tressel as the villain in an attempt to cover-up the corruption of the NCAA.  The sad thing is that most will buy it and move on thinking another dirty program has received the NCAA death sentence.

Only if that were reality.  The reality is the NCAA is perpetrating the biggest lie in all of sports and making billions while we are buying it.

Jim Tressel is not a bad man.  Like most NCAA coaches he did what he did to protect his program and win football games.  Show me a NCAA coach that hasn’t or wouldn’t do the same and I will show you a man looking for a new job in the next couple of years.  In the business of college football it is win or well, win.

The fact of the matter is that Jim Tressel ran a quality program.  He graduated players at a rate that makes higher academic institutions jealous, he preached paying it forward and his players consistently showed their faces at charitable events around the state of Ohio, he molded troubled boys into men.  Most will fall back on Maurice Clarett, Ray Small, or Terrelle Pryor.  But take it from someone in this business of molding teenagers into adults, it isn’t an easy task.  Jim Tressel believed he could mold all young men into men and that is what cost him his job.  He believed his own lie and took the sword for the program he protected against it.

The NCAA will have you believe come August when sanctions are taken that they take these matters seriously.  Serious enough to sanction a program that makes more money than the GDP of Bangladesh.

If we continue to buy the story the NCAA is selling we never get an answer to our age old dilemma and it’s only a matter of time for the next program to be paraded around as dirty.  They have gotten away with archaic rules for so long they are really starting to believe they are doing right by these amateur athletes.

What a sham, amateur athletes.  What is amateur about a stadium packed filled with $100 seats and selling the likeness, jerseys, and memorabilia of the athletes that pour their blood and sweat into ensuring a billion dollar industry.

Maybe SI or ESPN will pour the resources into investigating the NCAA one day and things will really change.  Oh wait, I forgot they are married to the same myth that is the NCAA.

Photo: AP

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