Ohio State Athletic Program Violations

[jlb1705]

I wasn't comparing them. I was saying that I don't consider 46 violations, whether reported or not, to be a good thing as suggested by the article. And I would hope that these ridiculous violations don't warrant any NCAA action, but at this point, can you say the NCAA makes ANY SENSE in what they do?

I was also saying I don't think the NCAA gives two [Mark May]s whether the violations are self-reported or discovered by investigation. Not sure why some people are assuming that I'm saying the sky is falling. I guess I shouldn't have created a thread about an article about Ohio State football and secondary violations on a message board about Ohio State football. Silly me Sally.

Of course the secondary violations are not a good thing. They're not a "bad" thing either. What's the worst thing that comes of a secondary violation? Somebody gets letter from the NCAA that isn't even worded sternly.

The NCAA not making sense doesn't become a factor if the Athletic Dept. does these two things:

• report everything, no matter how minor
• don't commit major violations

Jim Tressel is no longer around because the football program failed to do those things. By all indications so far, the football program IS doing those things now under Coach Meyer.

And of course the NCAA cares about whether or not this stuff is self-reported. The biggest charge brought in the whole damn mess was Jim Tressel's 10.1 violation, which was a failure to report.

I think people assume that you are overreacting to this because you started the thread with a slightly sensational title and called for the AD to be fired over the (non-) issue.

 

[JBaney45]

I don't disagree- a better "context" would be to compare the number of violations against the number of programs "sponsored" by each school. Sadly, I'm not privy to that info.

Likewise - one has to assume that each athletic department is equal in finding secondary violations, determining that those events were violations... and so on.. point is.. there's a lot of "discretionary decisions" at play here too.

Yeah, there are a lot of variables to consider, the way I vaguely remember it is that the important consideration on the NCAA's side would be the number of athletes vs the number of violations (you'd expect a sport like football with more athletes to = more potential violations then a sport like basketball so even just looking at the # of sports is incomplete). Now not all of the athletes at tOSU are playing NCAA sponsored sports so I suppose those wouldn't count? (We were always told to treat them the same, but I kind of imagine that was just for simplicities sake).

Ideally a compliance department would want to be within a certain number..you don't want to have TOO many but you don't want to have too few either or it looks like you are letting things slip through the cracks.

 

[Steve19]

Articles like these show a significant misunderstanding of the relationship between school compliance offices and the ncaa. When I was in school I worked as a tutor for student athletes..it would have been deemed a violation to let one of them borrow a pencil or to let them use my phone to call someone for a ride home and they were absolutely anal about staying on top of these horrific violations that may have occured.

The schools with compliance offices that are doing their job take the approach of having an absolutely inflexible interpretation of the rules, but these things have basically no consequence and are little more then some additional paperwork.

This is not new. I remember once that Tom Skladany and I were doing a group assignment and his pen ran out of ink. I handed him mine and he immediately handed it back, saying that it would be an NCAA violation. I laughed, thinking it was a joke, but then I saw he was serious. It was the first time that I realized how silly the NCAA was.

 

[Bucknut24]

Well, i guess I take that back about ESPN...it's now on there

 

[redguard117]

Well, i guess I take that back about ESPN...it's now on there

I'm not going to say I told you so but...

 

[BuckeyeNation27]

Yes. Anything available ONLY to student athletes, but not offered to the general student population, is apparently forbidden.

Kinda like access to your locker room. Or your athlete weight room. Or your training table, treatment staff, film room, indoor practice fields, etc.

I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to ask you to disband your football program, Buckeyes. Clearly you're giving your athletes "impermissible benefits" by allowing them access to the things that make them athletes in the first place.

On a sad note, Nebraska will also have to disband its program (we'll use Memorial Stadium to park blimps or something), because we also allow our student-athletes access to things that the regular student population doesn't have access to.

God bless the NCAA. Their rules and enforcement thereof makes perfect sense.

you know what's bullshit? they won't let me be the starting QB either.

 

[darbypitcher22]

I think what is bothersome in all of this is when you see what some of the violations are, you basically get penalized for being nothing more than a human being or responding to an information request( which gate do I use? I'll help you out because you ran out of money).

 

[OH10]

I think people assume that you are overreacting to this because you started the thread with a slightly sensational title and called for the AD to be fired over the (non-) issue.

The thread title is entirely factual. I think OSU fans just want to jump all over the messenger. Doug Lesmerises even had fans criticizing him for having the nerve to write the article.

The Gene Smith violation was an utter act of incompetence. How could an athletic director at a major university NOT know that he couldn't make a video for a recruit? Again, I'm not saying this is stuff that the NCAA should be giving a [Mark May] about. But it is absurd that Gene Smith didn't know better. And taken in a vacuum, not a fireable offense. Taken into account with everything else, and it makes me as an alumnus question if he knows what he is doing.

 

[JBaney45]

Doug Lesmerises even had fans criticizing him for having the nerve to write the article.

Lesmerises deserves to be criticized, he wrote a sloppy article that provided little or no context to the reader and now it's been piggy backed by USA Today and ESPiN. If you're going to write something like this at least provide some data from other schools to give some context.

Obviously there shouldn't be criticism for posting that article here though.

 

[ORD_Buckeye]

Almost all of this stuff is nickel & dime nonsense. That being said, we should be working diligently to minimize (it's never going to be eliminated) it.

That's kind of hard to do when the most serious of these violations is committed by the guy in charge. Given our current standing with the ncaa, how frickin' difficult is it before deciding to go through with the video, to pause for a moment and pick up the phone and have somebody in your department whose entire job revolves around making sure this doesn't happen green light it.

That's just plain frickin' incompetence. Here it's in a relatively harmless realm. We've unfortunately seen what happens when it's brought to bear on far more important issues.

 

[ORD_Buckeye]

Lesmerises deserves to be criticized, he wrote a sloppy article that provided little or no context to the reader and now it's been piggy backed by USA Today and ESPiN. If you're going to write something like this at least provide some data from other schools to give some context.

Obviously there shouldn't be criticism for posting that article here though.

Seriously. How difficult would it have been to break down our numbers on a per sport, per coach and per athlete basis. Then do the same for a group of peer universities (say half the Big Ten, Florida, Texas, USC and UCLA) and compare those numbers. That might actually provide the basis for an interesting and valid article--regardless of whether we ended up looking good or bad.

Christ, he might have to actually use fourth grade math!

 

[Buckeye86]

you know what's bullshit? they won't let me be the starting QB either.

the best part is that the rock bottom foundation of the entire NCAA is scholarships to the athletes that allow them to go to school for free... last time I checked, going to school for free was a benefit not available to the general public

 

[Zurp]

Back to the Plain Dealer article, I find this line funny:

http://www.cleveland.com/osu/index.ssf/2012/05/ohio_states_urban_meyer_ad_gen.html

So Ohio State will keep reporting, still knowing that anything to do with NCAA violations doesn't help its cause.

It makes it sound like there's something Ohio State can do that will make it possible to play in a bowl game this year, or get some scholarships back, or something.

Stupid NCAA.

 

[Dryden]

the best part is that the rock bottom foundation of the entire NCAA is scholarships to the athletes that allow them to go to school for free... last time I checked, going to school for free was a benefit not available to the general public

Yes, going to school for free is available to the general public ... for those that are smart enough or musically gifted enough or whatever it happens to be that a sponsoring organization and University see those individuals as an asset to the institution. Carrying a 4.0+ GPA in advanced high school courses can get you a free ride just like carrying a football will. The problem is the book worms generally don't make highlight videos of themselves destroying a calc final and don't seek scholarships like athletes do.

 

[jlb1705]

The thread title is entirely factual. I think OSU fans just want to jump all over the messenger. Doug Lesmerises even had fans criticizing him for having the nerve to write the article.

The Gene Smith violation was an utter act of incompetence. How could an athletic director at a major university NOT know that he couldn't make a video for a recruit? Again, I'm not saying this is stuff that the NCAA should be giving a [Mark May] about. But it is absurd that Gene Smith didn't know better. And taken in a vacuum, not a fireable offense. Taken into account with everything else, and it makes me as an alumnus question if he knows what he is doing.

The NCAA rulebook and the precedents and interpretations that go with it are vast and full of inane bullshit. It's quite easy, and even excusable to not know whether something like that is against the rules or not. Even the compliance officers who work with this stuff as 90% of their job function often have to pore over the manual and databases to figure out if something is against the rules or not.

Archie Griffin participated in the same violation in the video. He is a former Associate AD. Was his act one of utter incompetence too?

I'm no fan of Gene Smith, and I don't disagree with your overall characterization of what he brings to the job. I just don't think it applies in this particular instance.

I think the article was interesting. It was fair, and I think Lesmerises and the people he quoted put things in their proper context. It took me back to some of the more amusing situations, questions and interpretations that I ran into when I was a compliance intern and reminded me why I wanted no part of working with NCAA rules as a career. While the title of this thread is 100% factual, gives me the impression of an overreaction because of the emphasis on the number of reported violations and your reaction in the post that followed.