While We’re Waiting… Brantley’s Ceiling, Goodell’s Bold Move and Tomlin Securing a Role
March 18, 2011Fausto Carmona Looks Ready to Go
March 18, 2011
On the eve of the Buckeye basketball team’s opening game of the NCAA Tournament, the Buckeye football team once again stole the spotlight. As you can imagine, that isn’t good news.
The NCAA ruled that the five players (Pryor, Herron, Adams, Posey and Thomas) who appealed suspensions will not have any games reduced from their original penalty. That means they will indeed miss the 4 non-conference games and the Big Ten opener against Michigan State. They will be eligible again for the Nebraska game.
They did learn shortly after that they will have company for those first five games. Head Coach Jim Tressel.
After learning of the NCAA’s decision, Tressel asked the University to increase his penalty from the two games originally planned, to the full five games that his players will miss-
“Throughout this entire situation, my players and I have committed ourselves to facing our mistakes and growing from them; we can only successfully do this together. I spoke with athletics director [Gene] Smith, and our student-athletes involved, and told them that my mistakes need to share the same game sanctions. Like my players, I am very sorry for the mistakes I made. I request of the university that my sanctions now include five games so that the players and I can handle this adversity together.”
What we must keep in mind regarding this new development is that the five game hiatus is still part of the University sanctions. In other words, the NCAA can still add additional games or worse to the penalty that OSU must pay for Tressel’s role in not disclosing the violations.
I still expect the NCAA to impose harsher penalties.
But there is still more going on in Columbus. According to this report, 97.1 The Fan’s highest rated host Bruce Hooley left the station because of pressure put on the radio station by the University-
A station source told me today that Hooley was called into a meeting at WBNS last Wednesday. The meeting was expressly timed by station management to catch Hooley before he was able to first comment on Ohio State’s press conference the day before in which it announced its NCAA violation. I was told today that Hooley was instructed by WBNS management not to “scorch the earth” when giving his thoughts on what turned about to be an OSU public relations botch job of epic proportion.
Also during the Wednesday show, Hooley noted a comment his former radio partner Spielman made on an OSU fundraising cruise in February in which the Buckeye legend pointed out that the school is not just the football program .. “it’s the cancer hospital, the business school .. it’s a lot bigger than football.” (Spielman’s wife Stefanie died of breast cancer in 2009.)
Speaking of Spielman, at the end of 2010 the OSU icon himself left as a regular WBNS presence after most recently co-hosting a weekday talkshow with Hooley. Before effectively leaving the station, Spielman had appeared on the station regularly for the previous 10 years, even as his wife Stefanie endured her excruciating, protracted battle with cancer.
What happens at a sports talk radio station in Columbus is certainly not nearly as important to our audience as what happens between the lines on the field in Ohio Stadium, but what in the world is going on in Columbus?
(AP Photo/Amy Sancetta)
14 Comments
A radio troll got fired for being a radio troll. That’s a shame, except not.
I still don’t find Hooley’s remarks offensive. He gave his opinion that as an OSU alum, he is embarrassed and doesn’t feel his degree is viewed as highly anymore.
Others have said he has an agenda and is intolerable, but I always found him much more listenable than Cowherd or Mike & Mike.
Jim Tressell burned his foot on a Foreman Grill.
More important Ohio State problem: Jim Tressell tried hopping to work and now he has a protuberance on his elbow.
Hooley is sort of a blowhard. Some people love to pile on in situations like this and moralize or make absurd totalizing statements (ie. OSU IS LOSING ITS MORAL FOUNDATION!!). Mistakes were made and they are being rectified in a fair manner, so everyone can just settle down.
I didn’t have a problem with Hooley’s opinion and he certainly had the right to express it. What I have a problem with is his continued (and unjustified/nonapologetic) attack on The Lantern and student journalism in general. I do think he crossed a line at some point in the coverage, but it wasn’t for saying that he was disappointed in the University’s handling of the manner. Others have been able to express this disappointment and not come under fire from the fan base / sponsors (see: Chris Spielman, Common Man and Torg, Anthony Rothman, etc.)
That being said I’ve never been able to stand the guy as a solo host and really didn’t listen much when Spiels wasn’t on so I’m not sad to see him go. Boy did he hate Eric Wedge.
You’re trusting a Sports By Brooks report, after all the false and inaccurate reports he’s had regarding Ohio State? Really?
From what I’ve heard, it was the sponsors and readers who put the pressure on WBNS to fire Hooley, not the university, and that it was his comments on Wednesday and Thursday after the press conference that got him into hot water. The SbB report is revisionism.
This is getting ridiculous. We’re going to have one head coach and one offense for the first half of the season, and another for the second? When Pryor, Posey, and Herron return, do they just waltz back into the starting lineup while the guys who replaced them get a hearty “Thanks, now get lost”?
I don’t know what OSU was thinking when it forced these guys to come back this year. We’d be much much better off without them.
“what in the world is going on in Columbus?”
A town that is unhealthily obsessed with Buckeye football and winning at all costs is facing the natural consequences of it’s obsession and the unrealistic expectations placed on the program.
I am as big of a Buckeye fan as the next guy, but there were times over the past few years that the Buckeye football coverage in Columbus bordered on insanity. I couldn’t believe some of the ridiculous things that would make the front page of the Dispatch, or the lead story on the Columbus TV stations.
Despite playing it off, I’m sure that Coach Tressel heard all of the criticism when they only won by 20, or heaven forbid…even lost. It’s my guess that this ridiculous pressure that the unreasonable fans placed on him drove him to make this bad decision to placate them. He knew that this year was “championship or bust” and he decided that the risk of possibly winning a championship was worth covering this whole mess up and hoping nobody found out about it.
Anyway, I think it’s time for the insanely, unreasonably rabid Buckeye fans to tone it down a notch. You are making us all look bad. When someone like Kirk Herbstreit feels like he can’t live in Columbus anymore because of the idiots, we have a problem.
I love Buckeye football, but there are other things in life than Buckeye football. Maybe this whole mess will inject some much needed perspective back into Columbus for a while. Woody Hayes once said “Nothing cleanses your soul like getting the hell kicked out of you.” Well, we are getting the hell kicked out of us in the court of public opinion right now, and frankly, we probably deserve it. Being humbled from time to time is good in the long run.
He should be fired and they players should have their scholarships revoked and be blacklisted at any other university.
These are supposed to be role models?
Cool story, Chris.
@Chris
No, they’re not supposed to be role models. You’re an idiot if you think football players at major football schools should be or are role models.
As a Columbus resident with a slightly odd and somewhat recent fascination with sports radio I’m not sure if there are as many “facts” as there are “ideas” regarding OSU’s involvement in Hooley’s dismissal. Mike and Scott of the same station parroted Hooley’s comments the same day, and were still aroun as of this morning to go on air and proclaim that OSU had “nothing to do” with it. I believe them. Bar-patronizing radio station types point to the long-term silliness of having a guy who sort of isn’t a Buckeye fan in this market as well as the departure of Spielman as far simpler reasons to can the guy. The reactions to the tattoo scandal may have just made the decision convenient.
What I am sick of is the non-stop Buckeye bashing by Aaron (Goldie) Goldhammer at WKNR. It NEVER stops. Trying to listen today and get fired up for OSU hoops…forget about that. Goldie had to cut down Jim Tressel relentlessly over and over. Rizzo just takes it and complains to Goldie, but it never ends. Funny thing is they are the Buckeye affiliate up here in Cleveland and they just rip them up. Maybe it’s the only way they think they can get ratings? Talk about lame. Denver is calling Goldie!
GO BUCKS!!!!!
@12
Joe, just do what I did. STOP LISTENING TO THOSE IGNORANT JACKALS. I stopped, and I’ve been a happier person ever since.