Ohio State Football Booster Takes Scandal Blame, but NCAA Need To See Through It

The booster that paid Ohio State players Jordan Hall, Travis Howard and Corey Brown for attending a charity dinner back in February has finally come forward to shoulder some of the blame for the incident.

Robert DiGeronimo confessed to the Columbus Dispatch that he was indeed the one behind the payments.

The long-time booster confirmed that he had given the money to now disgraced former Buckeye Terrelle Pryor, who then forwarded it to his teammates, because he wanted to cover their travel costs to the Cornerstone of Hope fundraiser in Independence, Ohio.

DiGeronimo, who has been involved with the program for over 30 years, has said that this is the only infraction that he’s committed.

The result was a two-game suspension for all three players involved.

The Buckeyes fared fine without them, and each will now be eligible to return for the upcoming Miami game, but that’s not the point.

The point is, this is just another example of Ohio State lacking all-important institutional control.

These payments occurred in February, over a month after the ‘Ohio State Five’ tattoo parlor scandal hit.

After that went down, the program should have went into lock down mode to make sure no more illegal activity was taking place.

It’s true that it was hard for school officials to stop these types of payments from happening, but these players should have been warned and they should have learned from the mistakes of their teammates.

As soon as the memorabilia mess went down, if I were running the program, I would have enacted a rule that said if any player is caught taking a payment from here on out, they're gone, plain and simple.

The Buckeyes players are already guilty of being repeat offenders, taking money when they know they aren’t supposed to, and the crazy part is, they haven’t even been punished for the first offense yet.

It’s great that a booster finally came forward from the other side and finally took some responsibility for his actions, instead of pulling a Nevin Shapiro and throwing everyone under the bus. But just because DiGeronimo owned up, it doesn’t change the fact that the players had to know not to accept the money, especially after everything that had just gone.

The NCAA needs to see through the sugarcoating and realize that Ohio State has a problem and it needs to be fixed with some serious sanctions.