THE Ohio State Blackeyes

As news of Jim Tressel's resignation broke this morning, I believe I was somewhere around Paducah, Kentucky fleeing the cicada-infested Middle Tennessee Valley for the friendly confines of Kansas City for the summer. Luckily, I picked up a feed of ESPN Radio and the Colin Cowherd morning program somewhere in between three guys trying to sell me Drano in Spanish and an angry and misguided evangelical pastor explaining the inherent sin present in miniature golf on the AM radio dial in rural Kentucky. Cowherd conducted several thought-provoking interviews this morning (as he is, I'll admit, wont to do) in response to the resignation, and the positions of three men in particular ran the gamut of the subsequent public response I have gleaned from perusing the sports blogosphere.

As expected, Kirk Herbstreit came quickly in defense of both the program and Tressel. Arguing that Tressel's actions (or, rather, inaction) was inspired be a conscious effort on his part to "protect his student-athletes," Herbstreit further went on to say that both the coach and the team would be able to land on their feet, and Ohio State would still have a successful year with a QB who is likely to take a shelling from the local media for driving out an extremely popular head coach and an interim head coach who has zero experience in the position at any level, and certainly not as head coach of one of the premier programs throughout Division I college football. In other words, Herbstreit gave the predictable interview of a hopeless, partisan fan--the same illustration of either a subconscious or poorly hidden favoritism that often bleeds into his work for Gameday throughout the college football season on ESPN. I will grant Herbstreit, however, the honor being the least senile of the two-man broadcasting team of himself and Brent Musberger for Saturday Night Football. But that's a lot like bragging about being more sane than the guy who has shoes made of pennies on the street corner and still believes in the tooth fairy.

Robert Smith (not "Close to Me" or the guy who killed Mecha-Streisand, the former stand-out running back for the Minnesota Vikings in the early 90s and current college football analyst for ESPN) went to the other end of the spectrum, painting Tressel as a lone disingenuously pernicious influence on the sanctity of college football that needed to be dealt with in this manner. To his credit, Smith admitted that the kinds of infractions that allegedly occurred at Ohio State are probably occurring simultaneously at institutions throughout the country. However, Smith argued that Tressel's blatant disregard for protocol showed favoritism to his starters, rather than a genuine attempt to protect all of his student-athletes from the disciplinary hand of the NCAA, and that his lie of omission exceeded by degree numerous other recent and historic violations of NCAA rules.

To his credit, Colin voiced his own opinion as somewhere in between the unquestioning reverence of Herbstreit and the jilted antagonism of Smith, both Ohio State alums. As the old saying goes, this is likely where most of the truth lies. More will inevitably come to light as the investigative piece on Ohio State athletics is published in Sports Illustrated in the coming weeks and the NCAA intensifies its probe into the program (ESPN is already reporting the NCAA will launch a separate investigation into potential individual violations by Terrelle Pryor). As just another in a series of high-profile blackeyes for college football in recent years, however, Tressel's resignation and the subsequent sanctions on the Ohio State program simply illustrate a sign of the times in college athletics, and illustrate (just as South Park so brilliantly did last week) the lack of easy answers in the designation between amateur and professional as determined by the NCAA.