Colts Hire Jim Tressel: Should He Serve Same Suspension as Terrelle Pryor?

According to the Associated Press, the Indianapolis Colts have hired former Ohio State head coach Jim Tressel as a game-day consultant.

Aside from the implications this has for the Colts, from a coaching and personnel standpoint, this also has an interesting twist regarding NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and his discipline policies.

Considering that Tressel resigned from Ohio State for his direct involvement with quarterback Terrelle Pryor's NCAA impermissible benefits violations, he should be subject to the same type of discipline as Goodell meted out to Pryor—five games.

Pryor was initially suspended for five games by the NCAA because of his misconduct, and they applied that same standard to Tressel.

Pryor's NFL suspension ostensibly was handed out under the assumption that his intention to withdraw from Ohio State in order to enter the 2011 NFL Supplemental Draft somehow damaged the legitimacy of the supplemental draft process.

If that is the case, then we are also free to assume that Tressel chose to step down from his head coaching position, rather than taking his five-game NCAA suspension, in order to search for a position in the NFL where the NCAA's discipline could not touch him.

This is the type of logical leap that Goodell made in his decision to suspend Pryor, so it stands to reason he should follow suit with the Colts' hiring of Tressel.

If what Pryor did was damaging to the NFL, then surely Tressel's behavior is just as damaging. In that case, he should obviously be subject to the same five-game suspension.

More than likely, Goodell sees Tressel as a victim of Pryor's misconduct. However, Tressel is as much to blame for what Pryor did; he was aware of it, and he enabled it by turning a blind eye to the clear NCAA violations.

What was so shocking about the Ohio State case was not the violations themselves, but the complicated process of withholding information and covering up internal investigations of the violations, which falls to not just the whole Ohio State Athletic Department, but most certainly Tressel as well.

If Pryor's actions undermined the integrity of the NFL by attempting to game the supplemental draft, then Tressel's actions leading up to his hiring by the Colts should also fall under Goodell's disciplinary purview.

A five-game suspension for Tressel would be fair, and it would be the right thing for Goodell to do. However, we all know that won't happen.

Goodell's disciplinary practices are arbitrary and without reason; it would fit his patterns perfectly if we see Tressel prowling the Colts sideline on Week 2, while Pryor watches from home.