Jim Tressel, The Game and Paradise Lost

I've not said much about the allegations mounting against Ohio State's football program and coach Jim Tressel.  Partly because, for all the football animosity between Michigan and Ohio State, I respect the rivalry and the whole situation kind of stings.  This rivalry is the reason I became an avid college football fan.  It's why I love the maize and blue.  It is, above all else, the reason my social awareness falls to debilitating depths from September to January.  To overstate what Michigan vs. Ohio State means to college football is not possible.  It is a rivalry steeped in tradition and lore, one that draws it's history from territorial disputes between the states of Michigan and Ohio over the Toledo Strip.  It saw the meteoric rise of one of college football's most respected coaches in Bo Schembechler and set off the Ten-Year War with Woody Hayes at Ohio State.  And most recently the rivalry has resulted in the longest winning streak for Ohio State (7 games) in it's more than 100 year history and herein lies the problem.  It seems that, for about 10 years now, Jim Tressel has been running a program that has been competing on a level so far removed from the loosest standard of fairness that even Bruce Pearl would laugh.

If you want to look at a pretty comprehensive laundry list of Tressel's issues at Ohio State, feel free.  But for me, it's not about the growing landslide of evidence (Sports Illustrated is coming out with even more information this Tuesday), it's about The Game.  For the past seven years Buckeye fans have moved from reveling in Michigan's losses to being bored by Michigan's inability to field a competitive team (which, fine, the Rodriguez era left something to be desired for everyone involved).  And they've done it all by cheating both off the field and on the field.  But perhaps most importantly, they've cheated themselves out of the longest winning streak against Michigan in rivalry history.  Because anyone who's honestly paying attention knows that the Tressel era will forever be painted with this brush.  The NCAA will undoubtedly force the University to vacate a truckload of wins and in the end it's the seven year win streak that'll no longer be a part of the lore of the rivalry.  It's a shame, not least because Michigan still leads the series by 13 wins, or that Michigan's consecutive win record stands at nine and, after the expunging of the Tressel era, Ohio State's will stand at four.  It's a shame because it seems the majority of Buckeye fans and administration at Ohio State seem to be okay with the whole cheating thing (perhaps not endorsing what happened, but ambivalent towards it).  And so, I have to ask myself, what's the point in competing against a rival (or for that matter even considering someone a rival) if they don't want to compete on a level playing field?  It's like trying to play a board game with younger siblings that don't understand why cheating is a problem.  Eventually you stop playing with them until they grow up.

The joke over the past seven years has been that The Game has been uncompetitive because Michigan has failed to win.  The reality is that Ohio State, under Jim Tressel, has sullied the mystique of the rivalry.  An entire decade of Ohio State football (a decade in which they accomplished so much) will forever be marked with a giant red asterisk.  As a Michigan fan proudly indoctrinated from birth I can only share my disappointment that Jim Tressel never found a more important standard to live up to other than winning.

UPDATE: (May 30, 2011) Per the Columbus Dispatch Jim Tressel  has resigned as the Head Football Coach at Ohio State. Obviously I'm taking full credit.