Sports Illustrated is out with its highly anticipated story on the Ohio State football program, a story that apparently precipitated the resignation of head coach Jim Tressel.
The story starts by describing what a religious man Tressel is, noting, "He has been lauded for his sincerity and his politeness, and people who admire his faith in God often mention the prayer-request box on the desk in his office at Ohio State."
And then we get to the gory details about what a corrupt coach Tressel was.
From Sports Illustrated:
SI learned that the memorabilia-for-tattoos violations actually stretched back to 2002, Tressel's second season at Ohio State, and involved at least 28 players -- 22 more than the university has acknowledged. Those numbers include, beyond the six suspended players, an additional nine current players as well as nine former players whose alleged wrongdoing might fall within the NCAA's four-year statute of limitations on violations.
One former Buckeye, defensive end Robert Rose, whose career ended in 2009, told SI that he had swapped memorabilia for tattoos and that "at least 20 others" on the team had done so as well. SI's investigation also uncovered allegations that Ohio State players had traded memorabilia for marijuana and that Tressel had potentially broken NCAA rules when he was a Buckeyes assistant coach in the mid-1980s.
Obviously, trading memorabilia for marijuana is a rather big no-no, but what's really telling in the Sports Illustrated profile is what a personal hypocrite Tressel is. For instance, Sports Illustrated uncovered that Tressel would sell raffle tickets to young players at a football camp and then rig the results of a raffle.
"In the morning he would read the Bible with another coach," an anonymous source who worked with Tressel told the magazine. "Then, in the afternoon, he would go out and cheat kids who had probably saved up money from mowing lawns to buy those raffle tickets. That's Jim Tressel."
And that's one of the most corrupt coaches the corrupt world of college football has seen.