Coaches responsible?

To answer the first topic "Are college sports coaches responsible for too much?", my answer is typical MBA in, it depends.

Part of me says, how in the hell do they get blamed for the antics of 18-21 year olds they are already sticking their necks out for in the form of scholarships, room, board and booster handouts. I mean, how much more should these coaches be responsible for keeping track of? I can imagine how hard it is to instill "culture" or "common sense" into the lives of kids who are wholly unfamiliar with either of those ideas. At a certain level it seems to me that coaches should set up a system of plausible deniability where full time babysitters are hired to look after the athletes. Let the coaches coach and recruit, let the babysitters (i.e. HR function) keep the kids in line (and be responsible for the off the field antics).

On the flipside, coaches are being paid well enough to sell their soul, so shouldn't that include taking responsibility for what the team is doing, on and off the field of play? As a taxpayer (and, hence, employer of some major college coaches - I'm talking to you Tubby Smith) I think coaches should be held responsible for who they bring in. Their team represents who they are. That much is clear.

Making this all relevant to last week's news, what should Tressel be responsible for? In my mind, all of it. The reasoning - he knew last April and tried to hide it. Sorry Jimbo, you were clearly made aware via email by an alum lawyer (http://a.espncdn.com/media/pdf/110310/Ohio_State_Letter.pdf), you sat on it and now are trying to play it off. Who would want someone with as low of morals/ethics as those leading young men? The state of Ohio loves class acts like Bob Huggins and Jim Traficant (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQ5Os1400uc) - I shouldn't be surprised.

What concerns me most about Tressel is the fact Dantonio is part of his coaching tree. Makes me wonder what's awaiting my fine Spartans. Hopefully our fate isn't anything as bad as Michigan's self imposed "RichRod" punishment. That was harsh.

The First Topic....

Way to jump the gun Nut. As always, yet another Buckeye that just can't follow directions. This does explain why you get a small fry instead of a large fry when you go to McDonald's. But of course, he is talking about the huge monkey in the room - the violations that occurred at THE ohio state university.  No one can be happier than the Weasel since his dirty boy was sent packing. And lest we forget HIzzo-ner up in Spaty-ville who isn't so squeaky clean either (http://on-msn.com/eW8rsp).

Former Texas Tech coach Bobby Knight (might have coached somewhere else but not too sure about that) who for some reason feels the need to cover his upper arms with red sweaters has said that NCAA rule book for coaches is so thick and so complex, everyone is violating some rule. So the first topic to throw out there is this:

Are major collegiate sports coaches responsible for too much?

Hero to Zero

I'm not going to talk about our first scheduled topic. Rather, I'm going to talk about the big shit smear that is all over Ohio State.

I've already gone through a range of emotions, most of which don't need to be rehashed here. But after reading countless articles of the Yahoo! Sports story, the press conference, columnists opinions, and the damning emails themselves, it seems pretty clear that Tressel tried to pull a fast one. I would have been disappointed if he had properly reported the email back in April, which would have likely resulted in a couple-game suspension of the 2 players mentioned. I had a bad taste in my mouth when the 5 players were allowed to play in the BCS game. But after discovering that Tressel essentially lied to NCAA investigators in December during their investigation, I'm done. His system, his program, and his reputation held people to higher standards. Or so we thought. I still believe that Ohio State is an outstanding academic institution. But retaining an employee who knowingly violates program bylaws and effectively creates double standards sends the wrong message and tarnishes the reputation of the institution, faculty, students, and alumni. Jim Tressel must go.

What was harder to hear than these facts, or that Tressel never really apologized for these mistakes, was that Dr. E. Gordon Gee and Gene Smith said they absolutely planned to keep him. Clearly the expected loss of income would be harder to deal with than repairing the institution's reputation... That's the message, anyway. I am truly embarrassed.

Just to be clear: I actually like Jim Tressel, and I have tremendous respect for him as a coach. I never cared for his sweater-vests or conservative coaching style, but I thought he truly did try to create an atmosphere where his athletes could get an education and have a better place to mature than they might at some other football factories. His personal style seemed to represent Ohio well. But this conduct is unacceptable... even if the mistake could be considered honest. Retaining him as a coach does lasting harm to the reputation of the university.

My only hope is that the NCAA, in their investigation, finds all the fault with Tressel, and not the University or Athletic Department. And I hope, that upon reading the NCAA report, that the university has the gumption to fire Tressel for cause, pointing to any found NCAA violations and his contract.

I suspect that the Jim O'Brien (basketball coach) firing has left OSU rather gun-shy. O'Brien was fired for cause, as he had acknowledged giving $6000 to a Serbian player's mother back in his home country. While this was acknowledged in the press as a nice humanitarian gesture, it was clearly a major violation of NCAA bylaws. Ohio State fired him. O'Brien took OSU to court for "wrongful termination," and won. OSU had to pay the remaining $2.4M of his contract. Why? A former Chairman of the NCAA Rules Infraction Committee testified O'Brien had not violated any rules. Go figure. At this point I gotta believe that the University will axe Tressel for cause if the NCAA deems that major violations happened. But they'll sit tight and act all lovey-dovey until the NCAA makes its decision.

Regardless, OSU Football has been knocked from it's perch atop the Big Ten. We just don't know how far down it will land. With or without Tressel as coach, I forsee several years in the wilderness, USC-style.

Go Bucks. :/

Introduction

This blog is your typical debate focused blog, with a minor twist.  The three panelists each represent one of three rival schools: Michigan, Michigan State and Ohio State.  To say were passionate about the issues we discuss is certainly true, but to say we are passionate about our schools is an understatement.  You'll see that while we do try to debate each other on the facts, we view the best argument is made while making fun of our rivals, whether the argument is true or not.  In fact, in a totally fictitious scoring system (think Who's line is it Anyway) made up by our moderator, the winner will typically be the one who best insults their rivals, not necessarily the best argument related to the topic at hand.

Now, more about us and why were are doing this.  This blog is written by four members of the Ross School of Business (University of Michigan for those not in the business world) class of 2006.  During our two years of school together we found out two things: (1) We all love debating each other (particularly with sports) and (2) with three of us representing three rival institutions with our undergraduate degrees, the debates can become quite entertaining (at least to ourselves).

Since graduation, we've lost that routine contact with each other to continue these important discussions.  Sure, we have the occasional e-mail discussion on related topics, but we lack the one common place for our viewpoints to clash in a public forum.  So, why not create a blog?  We'll at least amuse ourselves with it, but we do hope others enjoy the banter as well.

Onto the introductions (from the prospective of "The Weasel," so outside of each person's title, undergraduate school and the fact that all of these guys are as good as people as you will find, little is probably true):

The Greek: Matt McRitchie came to the University of Michigan in a program designed to give our little brothers of MSU a chance for a real education.  Matt was the best of the best coming out of East Lansing, which put him comfortably in the pass / low pass grade level at Michigan.  Although Matt is the only non-engineer of the group, he does have three redeeming qualities (all true): (1) He truly is one of the nicest people you will ever meet, (2) Matt is a great Tiger's fan even while living in Twin country and (3) despite his arrival in Ann Arbor, Matt always remained truly loyal to the Spartans no matter what was happening around him.

The Nut: Ben Obrock was a child prodigy.  Remember Doogie Howser?  Ben was smarter.  And then tragedy struck.  Ben went to Ohio State.  Sure he got an engineering degree, but he earned that on his first day in Columbus (to get an engineering degree from OSU, you just need to spell "engineer."  Needless to say, Ben was the first and only engineer graduate from THE ohio state university).  After four years in Columbus, Ben's IQ dropped several hundred points (when Ben first arrived in Ann Arbor, he was not able to tie his own shoe laces....little did we know that would have made him the big ten offensive player of the year if he played football).  Ben was given admission as part of an experimental program.  The experiment? Is it possible to rehabilitate an OSU graduate and make them a contributing member of society?  Due to the superior intellect in Ann Arbor and the fact that Ben is an incredible person (despite his mistake of going to OSU), Ben has been completely rehabilitated.  If only his loyalty to OSU would disappear as well...

The Weasel: My name is Mark Ascione.  I had the privilege of growing up in Ann Arbor and continuing on for my undergraduate and graduate education at the University of Michigan (where I eventually learned that there was in fact a world outside of Ann Arbor).  I've always been a passionate fan of the Wolverines and I always will be, no matter how sarcastic I have to be in order to watch Michigan football games these days.  I had the privilege spending two years with Matt, Ben and Rob (introduced below) who all are some of the best people to get in a debate with, or have a drunken heart to heart at Jimmy John's after a long day of tailgating. I'll leave the rest of my bashing to my esteemed colleagues with their comments to this post.

Finally, The Moderator: Robert Jericho came to Michigan from some school.  Being that it wasn't even in the Big Ten, the rest of us stopped listening to his past.  Frankly, we think he made it all up.  I'm pretty sure I saw him serving fries to me at McDonald's when I was in undergrad.  But, we needed a neutral voice and Rob was willing to do the work for free.  So, we figured, we couldn't get rid of him in business school, why try now?  In all seriousness though, Rob does add a more moderated voice to the discussion (though he is loyal to Michigan) and an excellent ability to bash all of us at one time.  In addition to being one of those amazingly great guys as I described everyone else as, Rob has an excellent debate ability that provide great insights while being incredibly insulting at the same time.

And that's the crew.  We will have guest voices from time to time both representing our schools in others, but we plan on being the main...er...victims...with this experiment.  We hope you all enjoy!