Eleven summers ago, Ohio State drug five black “student-athletes” in front of a media firing squad to atone for their cardinal sins of trading their hard-earned memorabilia for tattoos and stone cold cash.
The NCAA and national media’s witch hunt was farcical even by 2010 standards. Yet that didn’t stop Ohio State from prostrating before their altar, which didn’t even have subpoena powers. We shuffled Jim Tressel’s kindly but over-the-hill ass into the pasture before lampooning black athletes who had brought the university millions of dollars through their success.
I mean, my god, here’s how the university student paper covered the affair:
Hell, the uproar resulted in the NFL suspending Tressel and Pryor when they inevitably accepted professional jobs. It hasn’t been so strict with rookie coaches and draftees that have committed actual crimes.
Now that Terrelle Pryor and the rest of his criminal conspiracy rightfully want their records back, you can expect a flood of Ohio State fans concurring.
They’re right to say that. But there is about to be an massive erasure in how much vitriol the Tate Five experienced from our own fan base. Any piece from the Buckeye-Takes Industrial Complex that doesn’t reckon with that is engaging in a figurative whitewashing of what transpired at the time.
Fans at least have the defense of being your average idiot sports lover. (It’s a technicality from which I’ve benefitted numerous time.) But the Ohio State University Athletic Department was supposed to be above that mob mentality and yet it had no problem throwing the players under the bus immediately after it gave the white football coach a golden parachute for “retiring” like the good soldier he was.
Ohio State can’t build a time machine and correct their institutional errors. Lord knows Tatgate wouldn’t be the first scandal they’d blot from existence if they did.
The good news is the local university can still do what’s right, which is immediately saying “Fuck whatever the NCAA says” and reinstating the team and individual records of Terrelle Pryor, DeVier Posey, Solomon Thomas, Mike Adams and Boom Herron. There should be an on-the-field ceremony honoring them before or during the Oregon game, as well.
The Tat Five deserves to have their names officially pardoned by the university and frankly, given their direct contributions to hiring Urban Meyer and the 2014 title, they should be given a collective statue outside the Woody Hayes Athletic Center.
Blessing the Tat Five’s name to sign endorsement deals with normie Central Ohio businesses is the least the university can do. A decade late is better than never.
THOSE WMDs. GoPuff’s business model shouldn’t be considered gig work at all… Everything was going wrong in his life; then he won D.C.’s vaccine lottery… The push to clear homeless camps in Venice Beach… Mommies of Instagram… The best camp ground in every state… The failures of Ian Flemming.