<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">COLUMBUS, Ohio -- The NCAA notified Ohio State on Monday of nine alleged rules violations, including cash gifts, improper academic assistance and failure of the school and coaches to monitor the men's basketball program. Seven of the violations involved men's basketball, including a school booster allegedly giving cash and academic help to a former player. The others involved a booster allegedly giving $500 to a football player, and an orthodontist providing free and discounted services to five women's basketball players. Ohio State previously said it was looking into many of the alleged violations, including a cash gift to a recruit from former basketball coach Jim O'Brien, who was fired after acknowledging the payment. "The allegations set forth in this report are consistent with what we expected," Ohio State president Karen Holbrook said at a news conference. The school must respond to the allegations by July 26, and an infractions committee will hold a hearing before determining whether sanctions are warranted, NCAA spokesman Erik Christianson said. Ohio State's athletic department has faced a series of NCAA investigations of its high-profile sports since the football team won the national championship in 2002. In December, the school imposed a one-year postseason tournament ban on its men's basketball team after O'Brien acknowledged he gave about $6,000 to recruit Alex Radojevic in 1999. O'Brien, fired on June 8, is seeking up to $6 million in a breach-of-contract suit against Ohio State.</div> Source 7 against the basketball team, ouch! This might scare Oden and the rest of the Thad 5 recruitees away.
Holy s***! This could really be damning for OSU. It seemed like they finally got the right guy to clean up the mess in Thad Matta, and they were on the way up. Wow. Between Clarett and O'Brien and everything, OSU is looking like one of the dirtiest programs in recent memory all of a sudden. Wow.
Hi guys, I'm Damage Control. I'm here to tell you that this isn't bad news at all. In fact, it's good to finally be having the NCAA announce their findings. Now we can get on with things, like recruiting for the class of 2006. Were the NCAA's findings bad? Yes. Did Ohio State commit violations? Absolutely. It sucks, but it happened, and some of the stuff that went down was rather bad. Yes, Ohio State has had more dirt dug up than most other programs. However, it was nearly a decare ago, OSU fired the coach, and OSU already imposed a one-year ban. Now, Ohio State is being charged with "failure to monitor" its basketball program. But they did not find the program to be in "failure to control" (think Michigan, Georgia). None of the NCAA's findings were a surprise to the university. The university had become aware of all of these violations, and had self-reported them. With both Georgia, and Michigan, the NCAA decided that one year was necessary as far as postseason ban. For Michigan, it was actually two, but the university was able to repeal that to just one season. Since Ohio State's violations were less severe, and since they've already punished themselves with one postseason ban, it's not likely they'll see another. They could lose scholarships, they could lose their Final Four banner (it sucks, Boban was meaningless to that team ) and some Big Ten banners, and they could be put on probation. But the program shouldn't be much worse for the wear at the end. If we can just confirm the final punishments, we can close in on the greatest recruiting class of all time (according to experts, not my own optimism; Conley/Oden have basically confirmed they're coming to OSU if the program is going to be clear for them, "We're trying to hold off to see what's up with the NBA (which wants players to be at least 20 to play in the league) and the NCAA sanctions (against OSU).").
Ohio State was going to have one of the best classes coming in for the next couple years. Greg Oden had OSU narrowed down to one of his final choices and Daequan Cook already agreed to OSU both players were coming in 2006 just to name a couple. I am not sure what this does for them really, we will have to wait it out and see if the players look elsewhere.
All these charges are new, because the school hadn't been formally been charged with anything. The only infraction that made big news was O'Brien's payment to a recruit, so it was a common misconception that the payment was the only violation Ohio State was aware of. That wasn't the case, as they were investigating many other claims all brought to the surface by an Ohio woman's lawsuit, which was also the source of the information that O'Brien paid a recruit. The new recruits of future classes already were aware of the problems facing the program. Cook (and Lighty, who you didn't mention) committed despite that, so this probably won't shake them. Oden and his buddy Conley also knew about the problems, and are kind of waiting to see what sanctions OSU will face. This is definitely bad for recruiting, but somehow Matta has been working through it. It is very likely Oden and Conley would already be committing to OSU if there wasn't the doubt of what punishment might be. Hopefully the school will figure out what it's going to do quickly, and convince the players it's safe to come - even though they won't know whether their self-imposed punishments (the postseason ban, plus anything new) will be accepted by the NCAA until October. For what it's worth, they're saying there will be very little punishment on future classes. '05 could face something in a worst case scenario, but '06 really shouldn't face anything. The school is trying to hit the past programs, from when the violation occurred, with penalties instead (stripping the Final Four, the Big Ten championships). I just have to say, it's pretty shocking how much dirt the program had, when O'Brien was known for being a clean guy and didn't even pursue top tier recruits. But it turns out they were doing all kinds of crap to try to build a Serbian pipeline.
