matcar;1913297; said:
I've said this before, but what bothered me so much about this, wasn't so much the initial transgression (which while serious and deserving of punishment, I could live with on it's own if it didn't happen again) but the really poor efforts to cover it up and shift blame and generally act as if he was doing anything other than something self-serving for the players and football team. Ownership that he got sucked up into the machine that is college football, would mean a great deal to me...any many I've spoken with.
But think how hard that really is. He seems to be a very good man, as evidenced by the outpouring of support since this happened. But any man, even a good man, can be swayed by the thousands and thousands of people telling you 24/7 how great you are. Not only how great, but how honest, and straight shooting, and Christian, and "doing it right" kind of guy. Tress gets more adulation in one month than you or I get in a freaking lifetime. I can easily see how even a good man can be blinded a little into thinking that he has it all figured out, and that he is the epicenter of knowing what to do. So when he f-s up, that is hard to take. When he finally realizes that - ya now - I might have screwed up big time, what does that mean? This may sound trite, and self serving, but he also knows that if he rats himself out that now only will
he get in trouble, the kids get in trouble, tOSU maybe get in trouble, but that he will disappoint maybe millions of tOSU and Tressel fans.
And I have to think that Tress is not in practice of mea culpa's for what is at worst intentionally lying to gain an advantage, and at best making a horrible call on trying to keep his kids out of trouble and handle it himself, despite being aware of the technical violation. I mean, his past and character shows that he has very little practice defending himself from charges that he lied and behaved unethically....mostly because he seldom lies and acts unethically.
So you have the horse abortion of a presser with the scared, don't know what to do, multiple use of drug drug, FBI FBI, confidentiality, etc, which seems to be a whole lot of bull. I really think he did not want to disappoint everyone by his admission. Maybe he has problems dealing with why he did it himself. But the NCAA are sort of evil in an ingenious way. They like to go after that which the [strike]victim[/strike] person they are targeting most cherishes. With Bobby Bowden, they did not go with the multiple scholarship reductions everyone thought was the probable punishment. Instead, they took his beloved wins away so that he could never win the battle with JoPa. That was such a blow to him that he got his school to appeal that, even though if he won the win vacation appeal his school lost more schollies. They hit him where it hurt.
With Tress, his soft underbelly seems to be his perception as ethical and standup guy. So the NCAA used the harshest of terms to attack his character personally in the NOA. I think, just surmising, that his persona as the "Winners Manual" "right way" ethical saint is what the NCAA is trying to hit the hardest. And I think they are doing it intentionally, as his presser tried as much as possible to maintain that, giving up silly or questionable reason after silly and questionable reason for his failure to tell compliance. Even now, many think he is jumping on the grenade for the team.
They say Pride goeth before a fall. I think Tress was and is a great guy who was told that he was great and smart and moral and always the right thinking and doing guy every day for ten years until he made a mistake. A bad one. And his pride was such that he had, and has, a hard time admitting it. And given what he has achieved, the good he has done, and the fact that 99% of the stuff said adoringly about him is true, I can forgive him his lapse, as God only knows what kind of as ass I would be with that much adulation. The fact that he has a problem admitting it publicly, given everything, makes sense to me. I think Tress did not have anyone to take him aside and dress him down and tell him the hard truths that he needed to hear. Hell, as Gee jokingly (and ill-advisedly) said, he "was worried about Tress firing him!"
As much as Tress let tOSU down in April thru January, I think from Jan thru March they may have let Tress down by the way they handled it, and that the NCAA is making sure that everyone knows that it is Jim's faults - almost an Amish shaming - because he and tOSU did not show sufficient contrition in March. Anyway, just musing like I do on this to everyone's delight.
:)