I Want to Fight Ohio State Compliance

Jim Tressel did not die for another player to be thrown under the bus on some bullshit.

Once upon a time I used to be in-the-know about pending Ohio State suspensions. Not anymore.

I woke up Friday blindsided like most of y’all. Whole inbox full of my friends demanding I do some digging like I’m connected anymore?

Turns out The Ohio State University self-snitched on its best player for the high crime of accepting air fare so his family could travel to Pasadena to watch the Rose Bowl.

Like seriously what the fuck is next? Free drinks at a bar?

I should be thankful.

Back in January I said hmmm haters be damned I think the local team might be a contender if Ryan Day makes the defensive staff walk the plank and we stop running the quarterback up the middle 25 times a game.

Fast forward 11 months and my fiancée left me but on the flip side I financed a coast-to-coast midlife crisis by betting on the Bucks because the nerds in Vegas thought my team played the same sport as stiffs like Nebraska and Northwestern.

Yes the local team is now Numero Uno so I agreed to spend Christmas in Mexico City with Ana de Colombia while also planning a safe wager of exactly $50 on the Bucks due to the janky 42-point spread this weekend against the turtles who don’t even know karate.

But again I should be thankful because free money is back on the menu since Ohio State threw our best player under the bus. The Terps are turtles that don’t even know karate. They’re about to get clobbered.

Instead I’ve been vibrating with rage for 24 hours because if any Buckeye fan listens closely they’ll hear Dabo Swinney and Nick Saban laughing together in an unlocked circle of Hell.

Imagine a staffer walking into Saban’s satanic cubicle and said sir we’re going to self-suspend our star player because he accepted money for his family to attend the bowl game. Saban would spit in that guy’s face, throw him out of his office and blackball him from the industry.

At Ohio State it seems Gene Smith is the only athletic director with an elite football team who is dumb enough to sincerely believe the sham mysticism surrounding “amateurism.”

Nine years ago next month Gene Smith decided the best way to cut the NCAA Pinkertons off at the pass was to hold a press conference where five black Buckeyes had to sit in front of assembled media and pretend trading trinkets for tattoos was a felony.

As Jim “El Chaleco” Tressel knew all along… trinkets for tattoos is elementary-level black market stuff in big-time college athletics.

Yet somehow one of the richest universities in the country is the only one making its “student-athletes” perp walk for NCAA pimps. We even backed up the bus on future Grey Cup MVP DeVier Posey three times to make sure he was properly punished for accepting like $80 someone offering it to him.

In true brain genius fashion none of the masochism satisfied the ghouls at the NCAA that profiteer on these players’ labor.

Not even hundreds of thousands of Buckeye fans watching the 2011 TaxSlayer.com Bowl was a satisfactory punishment. The NCAA whacked us from the 2012 postseason and denied freshman Braxton Miller a chance to tap-dance on Notre Dame in the title game.

Three years later Johnny Manziel of Texas A&M is literally caught on tape signing autographs for money in a hotel room and he only misses a half a game against Rice. Did Ohio State learn anything from either episode? Absolutely fucking not.

Klatt doesn’t mean it this way (or maybe he does on account of being a MAGA chud) but look at the paternalistic language involved here.

Usually this script is reserved for a father lecturing his big-headed toddler about why shoplifting a candy bar from a multinational corporation is bad.

Instead we’re talking about a 20-year-old man who is already elite enough at his craft that all 32 professional teams in America would sign him tomorrow if they could.

I used to think Ohio State would throw anyone under the bus to protect their brand. But then I watched university trustees balk at firing Urban Meyer for lying to protect an unqualified psychopath like Zach Smith.

And that’s all without mentioning how a pedophile like Richard Strauss was allowed to hold a prominent position in the university with access to athletes for three decades.

Suddenly for some reason I’m not so sure about how firmly I believe that everyone is expendable for the Buckeye brand.

But what is clear is Ohio State has no problem with throwing a black athlete under the bus to prop up the sham of amateurism and/or protect the brand. Which is ironic considering Smith would make nowhere close to $420,000 a year to overlord over an athletic department devoid of Chase-Young-caliber athletes.

In fact now that I think about it all these shake-down artists in suits in the compliance department wouldn’t have anywhere close to the salaries or benefits if guys like Young were paid their worth.

No doubt the university’s apologists will assume our heroes in the bureaucracy are playing the long game. These nerds love looking up obscure laws and rulings and using big words like “precedent” to say our player will be back for the big game as if the jackals at the NCAA aren’t making it up they go.

“A Kentucky player committed a similar offense and only missed one game!” Shut the fuck up nerd! Ohio State and Kentucky football in the same sentence? Are you serious? I’m embarrassed for you.

There’s a reason why Alabama and Clemson never have this problem and it’s because their athletic departments aren’t dumb enough to self-snitch to a clown cartel that plays by their own rules and nobody else’s.

Gene Smith’s administration will never go to the mat for its breadwinners so in my humble opinion it’s time for the players to take direct action.

ONE WEIRD TRICK THE BOSS WON’T LIKE

I know Urban Meyer said he was “shocked” by Chase Young accepting airfare money but I’m not.

Mainstream Buckeye blogs would never publish this opinion but my message to the football team is my god y’all!!!!!!! The university threw CHASE YOUNG THE DAWG HIMSELF under the bus. What do they think they can do to the rest of you?

Chase Young was going to be the first defensive player in Ohio State history to win a Heisman. And the university threw that campaign in the trash to protect its brand against a gang of zealots with no actual legal power. (Compare Ohio State’s response to how Auburn handled similar accusations against Cam Newton.)

We’re lucky Young didn’t say fuck you nerds I’m going pro. Had that happened there would be blood in the Olentangy River right now and it wouldn’t be mine.

Buckeye fans love to praise Ryan Day. I know I do. Buckeye fans love to praise Brian Hartline. I know I do. Buckeye fans love to praise the Horseshoe. I know I do.

But at the end of the day Buckeye fans aren’t coming to watch Ryan Day. They aren’t coming to watch Brian Hartline. They also aren’t coming to sit in the overcrowded and decrepit Horseshoe.

They’re coming to watch Justin Fields. They’re coming to watch Chase Young. They’re coming to watch J.K. Dobbins. They’re coming to watch Master Teague.

The curmudgeons can pretend it’s about the logo on the front of the jersey but let y’all go 5-7 for one season and see how many empty seats sprout around The Shoe.

My point is the players have more power than they can possibly know. But only collectively.

So how long will the team be pacified by okie-doke gimmicks like unlimited snacks and player lounges? None of that noise will pay your family’s light bill or fly them to Pasadena to watch their son ply his trades.

Talk of The Brotherhood only goes so far when one side is spilling time, blood and sacrifice while the other side gets all the money and decides when it’s appropriate to throw one of your brothers under the bus.

The course of college football would be changed immediately if No. 1 Ohio State refused to take the field against unranked Maryland. The team has nothing but the shackles of amateurism to lose by forming a union.

While Buckeye fans would no doubt have some opinions on young laborers recognizing their power, I promise the administration’s days of arbitrarily preying on football players for mundane violations would be over.

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