ESPN.com put up some pretty hard-hitting articles today centered on Maurice Clarett’s claims that Ohio State paid him money, gave him cars, put him in joke classes and faked his grades. Pretty big time accusations.
You can read the overview here and the detailed Clarett interview here. Ohio State’s non-response is here. There is a related story about Maryland running back Sammy Maldonado, who transfered from tOSU with only 17 legit credits after two years. Lastly, this article quotes some other players corroborating some of Clarett’s stories.
To sum it up, Clarett claims that he got cash, lots of cash, from boosters for doing very little to no work on odd jobs. He says that when his grades were tanking, the coaches fixed them up for him. He took gimme classes designed for football players and then had tutors and professors do his work for him. Car dealers loaned him car after car for a week or two at a time.
Basically, according to Clarett, the program is as corrupt as they get.
The most obvious response from anyone is that Clarett is not a guy whose stories you can trust. The guy was in trouble from nearly the instant he stepped on campus. He had academic troubles, he took improper money and benefits while in high school and he had that whole reporting-his-car-stolen-but-it-wasn’t-really-his-car fiasco. How can we believe this guy? Clearly he’s a disgruntled ex-Buckeye, pissed that they kicked him off the team and didn’t get his back when the NCAA came investigating.
You could say the same thing about one of the other guys, Marco Cooper, who corroborates much of what Clarett says. Cooper was suspended from the team after being arrested twice for drug possession. Not exactly a star witness.
But here’s the thing. The only way you are going to find out about this sort of thing is from someone who’s pissed. It’s gonna be a disgruntled player, booster or tutor. That’s just the way it is. A happy player isn’t going to rat out the team that’s paying him cash and giving him cars. It doesn’t work that way.
No, what you need to do is balance the source with the story. Does it make sense? Is there any hard evidence? Any corroborating stories?
In this case, most people will look at Clarett, always in trouble, and then look at Coach Jim Tressel. Tressel won a national championship! He’s an old school guy. He doesn’t crack jokes with the media. He wears sweater vests, for God’s sake. This guy can’t be a cheater!
Well, the thing is, six months ago, you could have said the exact same thing about another Ohio State coach, basketball coach Jim O’Brien. O’Brien was a very well-respected, straight-laced guy. Or so we thought. Then, we found out that he (and his staff) too was paying players, setting up gimme classes, providing tutors who actually did the work, pressuring professors into changing grades, etc. Sounds pretty familiar, huh?
We may never know for sure about the money and cars. According to Clarett and Cooper, there is no money trail. They were paid cash, signed no papers, and never did any of this in front of witnesses.
What we do know about is the classwork. From Maldonado’s story (corroborated by Curtis Crosby), we know that Ohio State’s academic program for football players is a joke. It’s a fraud. They are propping up a fake education for their players to keep them eligible. A sampling of the classes listed – Officiating Basketball, Coaching College Football (taught by Professor Tressel, of course), Officiating Tennis, Remedial Math, Remedial Reading (shouldn’t reading be a requirement of graduating high school, much less getting into college?) and Issues Affecting Student Athletes.
To me, any program that’s willing to steal the one direct value that players get from their scholarship, their eduction, would see no problem breaking other rules. If you are willing to trick your football players into thinking that they are getting real educations and degrees, it’s a pretty small ethical step, maybe even a step backwards, to get them nice rides and cushy jobs.
I think we’re gonna be hearing a whole lot more about this story. ESPN clearly put a bunch of work into it already and they aren’t going to let it die. If more evidence comes out and it looks like Clarett, Cooper, Crosby and the others are telling the truth, the NCAA needs to be firm and swift. Blow them up. If Ohio State is that corrupt, make them an example. Give them the harshest penalties the NCAA can, so that the Alabamas, Oklahomas, Nebraskas and Michigans (I’m just picking big football schools here – no accusations) of the world get the message – cheat and pay. Screw your athletes by stealing their educations and you pay.
Who ever would have thought that in the 2002 national title game, Miami was the clean program?