The System: The Glory and Scandal of Big-Time College Football (24 page)

It’s a new day in Columbus. Under Urban Meyer the school had a renewed energy and fresh commitment to learn from past transgressions. A stellar 2013 recruiting class and a slew of returning stars, like quarterback Braxton Miller, had the Buckeyes on the short list of teams with legitimate BCS title hopes in the 2013–14 season.

But those inclined to plumb the “tattoo-gate” scandal at greater depth discovered that what happened at Ohio State offered sobering lessons in how the system could be used and abused. Used to protect those familiar with its levers of power and control. Abused to punish those caught up in its clutches. A system where the athletic director who can’t remember in an NCAA interview what month it is (“Where we at? October?”) and cannot,
for the life of him, remember specific times and dates, is allowed to slide on his answers. While a student-athlete is expected to have an extraordinary memory—to reconstruct days and hours worked two years past. Where cell phone records read one way confirm guilt, while read another confirm innocence; a place where the qualifiers “around,” “near,” “likely” and “estimates” are strung together to devastating effect.

Two days before Easter Sunday 2010, Jim Tressel received an e-mail from someone named Chris Cicero. It arrived at 2:32 on Friday afternoon. As best Tressel could remember, Cicero was a former walk-on football player, a mid-1980s guy when Tressel served as an assistant coach under Earle Bruce. Tressel could not recall Cicero’s position—linebacker, it turned out—but knew he was a local criminal defense attorney. Five or six years earlier, he recalled, Cicero had been part of a group that put on a seminar on law enforcement issues for his team.

Ten months later, on February 8, 2011, Tressel was interviewed for five hours by NCAA investigators Chance Miller and Tim Nevius. Several Ohio State legal and compliance officials and outside enforcement consultants were also in attendance. About a half hour into the interview Tressel was asked about Cicero’s first e-mail. Tressel said one of his first thoughts was, “What in the devil are you sending this to me for? This is not in my league.”

But then he looked at the bullet points, and the words “Federal government raid” registered. At the bottom of the e-mail he noticed the words “homicide” and “drug trafficking.” And this: Cicero said he had been told the federal government had hit the house of a former client, Edward “Eddie” Rife, owner and operator of Fine Line Ink. In 2001, Cicero said, Rife had been convicted of felony forgery and possession of criminal tools. Cicero wrote he was being told Pryor and “other players” had taken signed Ohio State memorabilia (shirts, jerseys, footballs) to Rife, who was selling them “for profit.”

At 11:20 a.m., Tressel responded to Rife: “I hear you!! It is unbelievable! Thanks for your help … keep me posted as to what I need to do if anything. I will keep pounding these kids hoping they grow up … jt.”

In the NCAA interview Tressel described himself as “scared” and “frightened” at the “magnitude” of the e-mail.

“This is frightening,” he said. Because what he was reading, he said, “was way beyond” an NCAA rule.

“I mean, it was a security issue,” he said, according to the 139-page transcript
of his interview. “It was a federal criminal issue. It was a narcotics issue … where do you turn?”

Where to turn? At this point Tressel had been the head football coach at Ohio State and Youngstown State and in the college game for decades. Of all the things The Senator was, naïve wasn’t one of them.

The NCAA would later point out that Tressel could have turned to it, to local law enforcement, to university legal counsel or to his compliance department for help or guidance. Tressel did not see it that way. He told investigators the “gravity” of the situation involving Rife “trumped” any such action. A cynic might suggest the sale of a boatload of memorabilia to a suspected drug dealer by several current players—including his star quarterback—trumped
every
other action. But spring practice was about to begin. The Buckeyes were one of the favorites to win another national championship, and starting quarterback Terrelle Pryor was being hailed as one of the best ballers in the country.

But that’s not to say Tressel took no action. The next day he forwarded Cicero’s e-mail to Ted Sarniak, a trusted adviser and mentor to Pryor. The two had met during Pryor’s freshman year in high school in Pennsylvania, a relationship that in 2008 earned a serious look by the NCAA. Tressel expressed concerns about Pryor’s safety, and Sarniak was the only person, he believed, capable of telling Pryor “the right things for the right reasons.”

Here’s what Tressel told Sarniak: “Hey, look, you know, I heard [Pryor] was out, you know, and he’s got to—he’s too visible. You gotta remind him, you know, that he’s under the microscope. And, you know, it—I know it’s not fair ’cause forty thousand other students are allowed to be out and all that. But life’s not fair. You know, just, you know, bring that one into the discussion, you know?”

NCAA investigator Chance Miller, a former claims litigator for the City of New York, asked Tressel if he ever thought of following up with Cicero to determine whether Pryor or other players were involved with criminal issues.

“You know, I didn’t,” Tressel answered.

On April 16, Tressel received two more e-mails from Cicero. The first came in at 9:43 a.m., the other at 2:24 p.m. Two weeks had done little to calm Tressel’s sense of fear and helplessness. Now Cicero was telling him Rife had been in Cicero’s office for ninety minutes the night before and he “really is a drug dealer.” What’s more, Rife had about fifteen pairs of cleats (with signatures), four or five jerseys (all signed) and nine Big Ten championship rings and a national championship ring in his possession.

Four bullet points down in his morning e-mail Cicero had written this sentence: “What I tell you is confidential.”

“And in there, he said, you know, ‘What I tell you is confidential,’ ” Tressel said in his NCAA interview. “And so now I’m thinking, ‘Okay, I gotta ask him what the heck, you know, what should I do? Now you’ve—you know, you pulled me into this operation.’ ”

That led to this exchange with NCAA associate director of enforcement Tim Nevius:

Instead, Tressel said he began “pounding” away at his team in “awareness” meetings, telling them he was hearing things, bad things; they had to “stay away from the wrong people.” He admitted to the NCAA he never mentioned just who those wrong people might be; never once mentioned the seized memorabilia, the tattoo parlor and potential NCAA violations. Or Rife.

Asked why, Tressel responded: “Not sure. Probably reluctance of—I wanted it to be vague about, you know, who we were talking about yet. I guess I wanted it to be all-inclusive.”

“Did you ever ask them [players] if they sold their memorabilia?” asked Nevius.

“No, no,” answered Tressel. “And why didn’t I? I don’t know? I didn’t really didn’t ask ’em anything. It was not an asking situation. It was a ‘Hey, I’ve heard.’ ‘This one’s serious, you know … You better stay away.’ ”

About three-quarters of the way through the five-hour interview, Nevius cut to the chase.

On September 13, 2010, Tressel signed what turned out to be his own death certificate. It came in the form of the NCAA’s certificate of compliance. By signing and dating the form submitted by Ohio State to the NCAA, Tressel declared he had informed “appropriate individuals” of his knowledge of any violations of NCAA rules.

He had no knowledge.

Again, Nevius bored in.

“When you signed it, did you think about the e-mails and the—all the discussions with Cicero?” asked Nevius.

“Probably not.”

Then, a few questions later:

Tressel’s attempts to skirt the truth almost certainly would have worked if not for a letter the Department of Justice sent to Ohio State in early December 2010. As part of their investigation into Rife, the feds informed the university that dozens of signed football-related items had been seized during a raid of Rife’s home and office. That certainly was news to Ohio State. Did Tressel know? No, he said. He didn’t. At that time Ohio State was 11-1 and ranked No. 6 in the country. It was on its way to a BCS matchup with Arkansas in the Sugar Bowl, a game it would win. Pryor was named MVP.

On page 114 of the transcript, Miller bluntly asked Tressel the following question: “If that letter would have never been received by Ohio State, would you have come forward with these violations?”

In response, The Senator offered an answer straight out of a Washington filibuster, truly worthy of the Hypnotic Hall of Fame.

“Never is a long time. I don’t know. I don’t know,” Tressel began.