Personally, I think people are vastly overestimating the damage this scandal will have on the Ohio State football program. First of all, the NCAA hardly has the reputation of coming down hard on their elite institutions. Second, Tressel was allowed to resign, but he was, in reality, forced into this decision by the powers that be at Ohio St. and they will use this to their advantage. They will point out that, yes, some of their student athletes committed some secondary infractions by selling their possessions for tattoo discounts, but the major violation was committed by Tressel and, of course, we fired him. Ohio State is a program that is "too big to fail" and I suspect they will get the same type of sanctions that USC did, i.e. loss of a few scholarships and most likely a bowl ban for a year. The scholarship loss will be negligible because they already have blue chip recruits that never get into the games and a ready supply of recruits that just want to be Buckeyes no matter what. The bowl ban will hurt their pride, but they will be back in a year with hardly a beat missed. I would love to be wrong about this because I truly believe that OSU is the only Big Ten team that cheats at a level on par with their SEC brethren, but I will be surprised if the NCAA has the stones to really rock their world.
