Michigan Football Tuesday: Buckeyes Prefer To Test-Drive Cars Than Buy Them

I wrote a few times over the last couple years that if you let the press and NCAA inside your football program they will find something wrong with it. We saw that example in play when the Free Press made some fairly "wild" accusations of the Michigan football program that led to an NCAA investigation.

Most of the accusations were found to be false but the NCAA did find the Wolverines to have practiced too long a few times and some of the football staff were acting like coaches. Michigan lost some practice time and was put on probation.

Ohio State now has a ton of its own problems. First came Tattoo Gate and the Tressel cover-up. Now old wounds get reopened from the Clarett days regarding cars that the Buckeye players have been driving. If you don't want to read the entire article, the red flags are:

• OSU players have bought a ton of cars from one guy at two different dealerships in Columbus.   
• He got player passes for home games and bowl games.
• He also sold cars to players' family members who didn't even live in Ohio.
• He gave Pryor multiple-day test drives so he could go home.
• Public records show that in 2009, a two-year-old Chrysler 300 with fewer than 20,000 miles was titled to then-sophomore linebacker Thaddeus Gibson. Documents show the purchase price as $0.

Like the Tressel situation, it seems OSU is seeing no evil or hearing no evil. "We'll take a step back, we'll take a look at the transactions and the values, and we'll make some determinations in consultation with the (Big Ten) conference office and go from there," said Doug Archie, associate athletic director and head of compliance at OSU. "I have nothing to believe a violation has occurred," he said.

It's not an NCAA violation to do business at one place. It is a violation if the players can get deals that are not available to any consumer. There is a lot of smoke here with these deals with one salesman who even sold cars to players' families. Would you drive, say, eight hours to buy a car in a different state to get the same deal you could get in your hometown? It seems this was the worst-kept secret in Columbus.

This guy is also in trouble with the IRS and his expensive home is in foreclosure. He no longer sells cars in Ohio and Doug Archie believes no violations have occurred. Good take, Doug.

• Speaking of poor decisions with a vehicle: Darryl Stonum is expected to be arraigned on a charge of operating while intoxicated—second offense—at 8 a.m. Friday in the 15th District Court in Ann Arbor.
• There continues to be strong speculation that instate CB Terry Richardson will make his announcement this week.
• Royce Jenkins-Stone is No. 87 on the Rivals' Top 100.