The chickens come home to roost

By: American Decency Staff

Ohio State's Jim Tressel failed to self-report NCAA rulebreaking as early as 2005 … I have been a football fan all my life.  My Dad had season passes to Michigan State University football games for two years.  However, we were primarily University of Michigan fans and we traveled to Ann Arbor many times in my growing up years. How wise is it, however, to be a “fanâ€Â of any football program that uses deceit, corruption, and unusual means to entice student athletes to choose your program over another. Much has already been written in recent years how Michigan’s program was tainted by their unwise decisions to bring Coach Rodriquez to Michigan to head their storied football program. UM, though continuing to have  solid winning records was losing to the school from Columbus, Ohio.  And that’s unthinkable for UM football.  So in desperation, Michigan, after being stymied in their approach to bring in a true Michigan man (someone who had coached or played under UM coaching great Bo Schembechler),  brought in Coach Rodriguez who had demonstrated wizardry in coaching teams at West Virginia who could put points on the board.  So UM plucked Rodriguez out of WVU despite the fact that he had recently signed a contract to remain head coach there. The fans at WVU were truly disgusted at the ease with which Rodriguez was able to switch his allegiance despite being under contract and that he was a homegrown West Virginian.  That alone made many Wolverine fans nervous. Now let’s switch directions. Now this continued news out of Columbus, Ohio.  Coach Tressel and OSU had produced a real winning tradition in recent years.   We know that the winning margin is very thin these days between university and university and even between smaller college programs and major universities as we see these smaller schools more and more giving larger schools a good game as they face off early in the season. Sometimes even defeating them! Perhaps that winning margin is provided by being able to recruit someone that another school can’t touch.  What devices are used?  What is used to finally sway that highly recruited quarterback to choose your school over another?  What’s a little twisting of the rules after all? At any rate, I suppose we shouldn’t expect much out of major universities that are dedicated to secularism, humanism and relativism.  But somehow we do.  So we stand in amazement when we find that a favorite school has not been ethical in their “behind the sceneâ€Â operations to achieve “greatness.â€Â There are many lessons in this story.  One that is very clear is this.  We live in a fallen world.  We, too, need to guard ourselves from compromise that will elevate us for a season but will later lead to the destruction of our testimony before a watching world. This kind of betrayal in our schools of higher learning fosters cynicism for education, honesty and truth.  It gives a sense of “everybody’s doing it so in order to succeed I need to too.â€Â May it be different with you and me. Here is the article I’m referencing above: Ohio State's Jim Tressel failed to self-report NCAA rulebreaking as early as 2005, reports show COLUMBUS, Ohio — An evaluation of former Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel’s job performance in 2005-06 rated him as “unacceptableâ€Â when it came to self-reporting rules violations in a timely manner. In addition, Tressel was issued a letter of reprimand barely 6 months into his tenure for giving a Buckeyes jersey to a recruit in violation of NCAA bylaws. He was also warned that he and his staff needed to do a better job of monitoring the cars the Buckeyes players were driving — an issue that would arise years later as the NCAA investigated the football program. http://www.freep.com/article/20110715/SPORTS06/110715022/Ohio-State-s-Tressel-slammed-05-06-failing-report-rules-violations?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE ========================================================== Register for our summer event featuring Gary Bauer, Friday, July 29, at 7:00 pm https://secure4.afo.net/ada/registration.php?eventno=28 ****************** Your support is important to our ability to make a difference. Donate online at: https://secure4.afo.net/ada/donate.php American Decency Association is a member of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability. American Decency Association Bill Johnson, President P.O. Box 202 Fremont, MI 49412 ph: 231-924-4050 www.americandecency.org http://www.twitter.com/billwjohnson

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