Jim Tressel: Is Cheating the Worst Thing He or Any Coach Can Do?

If you write a book titled The Winners Manual to the Game of Life, which talks about doing the morally right thing, then do the exact opposite of that in your own life, it doesn’t end up good.

Jim Tressel, the author of that book, did just that and was caught doing it. He has since resigned as coach of the Ohio St. Buckeyes.

The question is will he ever recover from this tragedy?

He could be a successful coach at another program, but will another program be willing to take a chance on him? This mistake will follow him where ever he goes from here.

If he does get hired again, the first question asked will be what happened at Ohio St.

But is that fair?

Not really, when you realize that every coach in college football cheats the way Tressel cheated. Most coaches haven’t been caught yet. But if you do get caught, you cannot lie about it.

That’s the big issue that—he lied to the NCAA. He should have learned from Bruce Pearl that lying to the NCAA is the worst thing you could do.

Let me clarify cheating. There are several NCAA rules that seem ridiculous. For example, giving a player $5 to eat lunch so that he doesn’t have to skip lunch because he can’t afford to eat. Those rules are there to punish coaches that would abuse it if it wasn’t a rule, but most of the time coaches are just being human.

There are coaches that abuse the system. I played with an All-American cornerback in high school that later played in the NFL. Not only did he receive a convertible car from a booster of the school he went to, but our high school team was given stuff from the team’s assistant coaches that were there to recruit him as well. When your job depends on 18 to 22-year-old kids, you have to get the best ones out there. If that means doing things that are technically illegal, but will help your team out, you’ll do what you can.

Jim Tressel was simply looking out for what he thought was best for his star players. It backfired big time for him.

Will he get another job somewhere in the future? Absolutely. But it will never be at a school that is as big and as prominent as the Ohio St. Buckeyes.