Josh Benner

Category: Commentary

  • Stop making excuses for Tressel

    The NCAA was aware of the rules violations of five Ohio State football players and affirmed five game suspensions for them earlier this year.

    Then things got much worse. It came to light Tressel knew about the violations and lied, and now there are reports that even more players had done the same thing.

    Pryor and everyone else who got this started should just be kicked off the team! Right?

    No. That’s crazy. If we do find out that there were additional violations by Pryor of which the NCAA was unaware, then that may be justified. But the NCAA has already decided what the appropriate penalty is for these guys based on what they did. A week ago, most Buckeye fans would have been happy with the penalty they received, but now that the situation seems so much worse than we had originally thought, those guys deserve to be punished to a greater degree?

    I just don’t see how that logically follows and that this is a knee jerk reaction.

    Well…. Tressel had to resign for what they did. If he can’t coach, they shouldn’t be able to play.

    Actions of the players were definitely the original sin in this debacle of a situation, but the scale to which people were breaking rules and high profile players were breaking rules with Tressel fully aware and lying to the university and to the NCAA on multiple occasions and running a program over which he had lost control was one in which he could no longer reasonably remain as the head coach.

    The players are isolated entities in themselves. They broke the rules and that was wrong, but those who had already been caught have received their punishments for the rules they had broken individually.

    The fact that this was rampant in the program with Tressel at the helm doomed him.

    But some make the mistake of viewing Tressel as a martyr or the one who took the fall. If it is ever found that university president Gordon Gee or athletic director Gene Smith knew this was going on, they too will be forced out.

    Tressel built a program around integrity with a philosophy of teachable moments through the game. When he found himself in a situation where he could have (and should have) done the right thing, he lied and misled again and again.

    Even now as he resigns. It’s not because he suddenly became honorable. It’s because the university was tipped off by Sports Illustrated  that another shoe was about to drop, and you can be sure that they told him to take himself out like how the Nazis took down Erwin Rommel.

    People are making too many excuses for Tressel. It’s not because of some tattoos that he no longer gets to be coach. It’s because he lied and withheld information. There is no excuse for that. This program was never going to seriously regain credibility with him at the top.

    Throughout Tressel’s career, players had issues with rules. While I know that no program is perfect, when there is proof that he lied and it was rampant, how many more chances were we going to give him?

    In a couple of years when someone else got in trouble, was that going to be the time he was fired? It was going to be an inevitability.

    While I don’t think these players should be kicked off of the team unless more information about them comes to light, I do think Luke Fickell needs to lay down the law that from this day forward, any player caught selling personal items will be thrown off of the team.

    Earlier in this post, I said that the punishment for players should not suddenly be made more severe because more information is coming out about more rules violations from other players. But I do think that Tressel should be out.  Am I not guilty of the very thing about which I am complaining? No. Because I don’t think Tressel should have resigned over these latest details about the scandal. He should have resigned in March when it initially broke that he knew and lied, just to protect start football players.

    jrb

  • Reaction to resignation of Tressel

    For Ohio State football fans, this morning’s news that Jim Tressel has resigned as football coach is the Buckeye Nation’s, “You remember where you were when you found out…” moment. While I was surprised to find out this morning of his resignation, ultimately this is someting which I believe was inevitable. And while I said that Tressel should have resigned months ago, this is something that I cannot celebrate. It’s just the conclusion that had to occur.

    After the initial news of this scandal, and the heat that came on the program, the digging was going to continue. To think that Tressel was ever going to legitimately get this program back under control and restore the sense of pride which Ohio State fans expect was always just wishful thinking.

    For the good of the program, there was no other way. Even though I think his handling of this situation lacked integrity, I still think he’s a good guy. These events cannot diminish the wonderful impact that he has had on so many young football players, and the great joy which all Ohio State fans have experienced in watching his team’s success over the last decade.

    I don’t feel sorry for Tressel. Today’s news is the result of bad decision’s he made. He lied to the NCAA on multiple occasions. And he lived a lie every single day that he was aware that he had players who had broken the rules, while he carried on with a program with the facade that they were obiding the NCAA’s guidelines when he was fully aware that they were not.

    While I don’t feel sorry for Tressel, one person who I do have mixed emotions over is Luke Fickell. Not in the fact that he’s interim coach. There is no one better suited for that roll at this time. Fickell being a former Buckeye football player, and a Columbus native (from my hometown of Westerville), who started 50 games as a defensive linemen from 1993-96, culminating in his final career game where he played with a torn pectoral muscle in the 1997 Rose Bowl win over Arizona State.

    I would assume Fickell has dreamed about becoming the Ohio State football coach for a very long time. And now he has it under the worst of circumstances. He has be the interim head coach in a program that is struggling with constant questioning and speculation of who Ohio State will pursue to be the permanent head coach. Meyer? Stoops? Gruden? Pelini? The list continues.

    When Ohio State does bring a new coach, will it be a possibility for Fickell to remain on the staff? Even if he’s interviewed for the position and not selected? I would say no. It’s the end of May, he’s become the head coach, but now he may very well have less than one full year to be the top man before being forced out.

    It will be interesting to see. For many Buckeye fans, this is a horrible day. The program is going to be all right. Tressel could have left now, or he would have been forced out later as the program kept declining as he continued to lose control. I say now is a better time than in the future, because with him leaving now, the rebuilding process can start and there is one less distraction.

    O..H..

    jrb

  • Review: the Hangover 2

    With the immense popularity of the Hangover, its sequel which hit the screens this week could not have been anything other than a box office smash hit. Many wondered if it could possibly live up to the original, and while I knew that this was not going to occur, I at least expected there to be a few scenes in the Hangover 2 that had the audience rolling. Unfortunately, the humor was not even in the same realm as the original Hangover.

    I don’t think I’ve ever seen a sequel that had the same plot as its original. I have also never walked out on a movie, I didn’t with this one either, but two thirds of the way into the movie, when it was obvious how it was going to end, and as I came to the stark realization of, ”This movie is not funny, and that is something that is not suddenly going to change,” I strongly considered leaving.

    I really wanted to like this movie, it simply had no redeeming qualities. It was much darker than the original. In the original Hangover, part of the charm was the weirdness of Alan’s character, played by Zach Galifianakis. For the first half of the Hangover 2, I felt that they were trying to have bizarre comments and actions of Galifianakis comedically carry the movie. Even as much as I like Galifianakis, I don’t feel that can work for a major comedy. It certainly did not work for this one.

    Some people will disagree with me, and I have even heard people say it was almost as good as the original.

    Could they be right? No.

    This movie had so much hype and people were so excited to see the sequel to the beloved Hangover, that for many, the opinions of this movie are skewed. It’s also important to consider the context in which people watched this movie. Across the country, moviegoers packed theatres, and eagerly watched this movie, ready to laugh. In that type of festive atmosphere, and in a crowd, it is much, MUCH easier to find something funny than it would if a person were to rent a movie and watch a DVD alone.

    To that end, people who have seen this may recall laughing and having a good experience, but I firmly believe that is much more a product of the festive theatre environment than it is of this movie actually being funny.

    I think the reasons people are saying this movie was good are from a subconscious desire to be seen as normal instead of out of an objectively favorable view of the movie. Plain and simple, the Hangover 2 was horrible. I don’t know how much more clearly I can express that opinion. It is not worth seeing. And in the coming weeks when the initially large theatre crowds wane, it will become abundantly more clear over time just how unfunny this movie was.

    As I have already said, the sequel has the same plot as the original. The only real difference is that the original was funny.

    jrb

  • OSU football scandal deepens

    No one likes a snitch. At the very least, this is what the movie Goodfellas taught us.

    Last night, it was reported in the Ohio State University newspaper that former Buckeye wide receiver Roy Small admitted to selling personal effects including as Big Ten Championship rings while he was a student at Ohio State, which is a violation of NCAA rules.

    When it rains it pours.

    In the article, Small talks about how numerous players were doing the same things as him, as well as getting discounts on cars, and while they were aware of the NCAA rules, he claims that they did not care.

    This is just another installment in a saga of rules violations for the Ohio State football program that dates back to the end of last football season. But why would Small talk now?

    I really hate it when former college athletes start running their mouths after they have left the program. With the issues already sounding the Ohio State football program, this just makes things look worse, and to what ends?

    Ray Small broke the rules and he got away with it. He will never be punished for what he did. But now, a couple of years removed from being in the program, he takes it upon himself to say that he and numerous other players were all selling items and breaking rules. Why? All that this does is hurts the people who are currently in the program.

    Just so he can get a couple of minutes in the lime light that he was never going to get on the football field because he was a mediocre wide receiver who didn’t know how to field punts and who could be considered a poor man’s Devier Posey, he has to turn into a rat and bring more scrutiny on the program.

    If Jim Tressel would have resigned from the beginning, I think this story would carry significantly less weight. Ever since it has come to light that Tressel had been aware of players selling memorabilia and getting discounts which were in violation of NCAA rules, I believe that he should have resigned. I do not have anything against Tressel, certainly I know he’s a great coach, but with remaining as coach, the credibility of the football program is getting pounded.

    jrb

  • Tressel should resign

    I’ve put a lot of thought into this, and I believe that Jim Tressel should have resigned last night. His actions and Ohio State’s handling of this are an embarrasment. He lied, he broke the rules, he went against the honor to which he holds his own players, he failed to adequately own up to his mistakes yesterday, he failed to apologize for what he did. I’ve never been embarrassed to be an Ohio State fan before this event. This is unacceptable. He didn’t break the rules once, he broke them every day by knowing the right thing to do and refusing to do it. He lied about it multiple times, and lied as recently as yesterday when he said he hadn’t known to whom to go and implying that he was bound by confidentiality (neither of which being true.)

    jrb