Tressel wants bigger suspension

Jim Tressel/Courtesy: File

Which we respect the idea and premise....if we didn't think it was motivated by the idea of lessening the potential penalty from the NCAA.

Here's the deal. Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel decided...or it was recommended to him to fall a little harder on the sword. His employers initially slapped him with a two game suspension for essentially lying to them...for several months. Tressel or his advisors came up with the idea of making it 5, like the 4 players he essentially protected by not telling his bosses that he knew about them selling their memorabilia to a local Ohio State booster.

Read more from the Columbus Dispatch RIGHT HERE

By the way, the school also got a decision from the NCAA on Thursday about their appeal of the player suspensions. It was denied. They'll still sit for the first 5 games this upcoming season.

You can read more about this from Ohio State, their ownselves RIGHT HERE

Here is Tressel's entire statement from Yesterday:

"Throughout this entire situation my players and I have committed ourselves to facing our mistakes and growing from them; we can only successfully do that together. I spoke with Athletics Director Smith, and our student-athletes involved, and told them that my mistakes need to share the same game sanctions. Like my players, I am very sorry for the mistakes I made. I request of the university that my sanctions now include five games so that the players and I can handle this adversity together."


And the follow up from the embattled AD, Gene Smith:

"Coach Tressel has requested that he sit out the first five games of the 2011 season. I have accepted his request and we are taking action to notify the NCAA. Until the NCC has completed its investigation, we will not be publicly discussing the details of this case."


Again, we reiterate that this is planned to lessen the impact of any potential NCAA sanctions. And while we don't fault the school...or the coach for attempting to do this, we still believe that they are trying to deflect from a deliberate act.

Through intermediaries, Tressel has floated the idea that he lied because of a fear of the after affects of saying something. That it would endanger the student-athletes. And while we think it is a pathetic joke that everyone under the sun--except the athletes get to profit from their memorabilia, the bottom line is, in our opinion, Tressel lied to protect the 2010 season. We could be wrong, but we don't believe that we are.

Both he and the players will miss games against Toledo, Akron, the University of Miami, Colorado and Michigan State. However, if you look closely, that's only 1 conference game. We aren't suggesting that they came up with a plan to minimize their losses, but we would say--"Take a look at the evidence at hand".