FanPost

Buckeyes Haven’t Hit Bottom Yet

Back in March I said Gee, Smith, and Tressel would be gone within 12 months. Tressel's gone, so I was partially right. But now I think I was substantially wrong. Here's why: Gee and Smith will be gone within six months. Why?

It's ugly already, but OSU has not yet hit bottom. This story doesn't just "have legs" -- it is a giant fearsome centipede which is now dotting the "script" Ohio. Pryor just walked out the back door. New people are talking all the time. Smith and Gee have now done a one-eighty, and have thrown Tressel and Pryor overboard during the last 10 days. But the water's still rushing over the rails, and Gee and Smith (and the Board of Trustees) are yanking the lifeboats off the davits. (And Gee's never pulled a real oar in his life - I think he might've been a cox with a conical bullhorn at his bow-tie school --- plus, I'd guess he can't swim.) It's over. Here's why:

No one's taken account of some other interesting deductions from the facts as we know them. For example, it may be true (as one father of a player named by SI said) that some of the players named did not, in fact, trade "memorabilia" for tattoos. It may be (and this is only speculation, pending more information), that the trades were memorabilia for "weed", or other contraband. The feds tend to have a strong interest in those kinds of transactions, and they sometimes express their displeasure by generating income tax evasion charges (i.e., claims that the seller did not appropriately list as "income" on a tax return some monies received in a transaction.) There have been reports that the feds are interested in Mr. Rife for tax evasion reasons.

But any seasoned observer also has to speculate that when tax evasion issues arise there is some possibility that "games of chance" might somewhere have been occurring - Gambling, the "Big G" (and I don't mean Gordon) which spooks every college Board of Trustees and President. That's why Gee has so completely blown this entire thing: he is so oblivious that he could not see the potential for severe and dark taint which swirls around these events.

Many, if not all of these dark events may not come to pass. But the mere prospect of them -- along with the NCAA's jumpiness about having the feds investigating while the NCAA is supposed to be investigating [which means that the NCAA has to actually do a complete good-faith investigation, for once!], means that OSU knows that some tsunami is out there, but no one knows when, where, or how wide the path of destruction is going to be.

The common sense view at this point is that Gee and Smith had better get in that lifeboat and row for land --- dry, safer footing, which they can get to only by immediately tendering their own resignations.



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