Yahoo: Why the OSU case is worse than that of USC

[Bob_The_Cat]

Among the latest avalanche of allegations surrounding the Ohio State football program here’s the one that could be the kill shot, the one that, if true, should cause the NCAA to level sanctions against the Buckeyes far in excess of even the carpet bombing it delivered to USC last year.

The website SportsByBrooks reported that the NCAA enforcement staff has discovered “dozens of payments [quarterback Terrelle] Pryor received in past years from a Columbus sports memorabilia dealer. … the NCAA violations were discovered when the name of the local memorabilia dealer, Dennis Talbott, was seen on checks Pryor was depositing in his personal bank account.”

Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith declared in December that there was not a systemic problem inside his program. That is looking less and less likely.

Checks? Seriously, checks? In the long, illustrious history of NCAA violations, the existence of a paper trail of deposited checks is almost unprecedented. Bags of cash? Absolutely. Tricked-out car registered in grandma’s name? Standard operating procedure. Downtown condos where the rent is never due? Of course.

Checks? Oh, my.

If this is true then it’s the big one for Ohio State because there is nothing the NCAA likes more than the irrefutable evidence that documents provide. It’s why so many cases involve seemingly minor violations such as excessive phone calls. Cell bills don’t lie.

The checks would be more than just proof that Pryor, who left the program on Tuesday, was accepting compensation for signing memorabilia, which is a violation of NCAA rules.

It could be the smoking gun that proves Ohio State’s 11-day investigation last December into Pryor and his teammates profiting off memorabilia sales was nothing but a shallow show designed to sweep the scandal under the rug and get the players back on the field for the upcoming Sugar Bowl.

It’s the proof that the school, and its highest leaders, not only failed to monitor the behavior of its star athletes, but even when tipped off by federal authorities of a major scandal, failed to find out what was actually going on.

While it may be Gestapo-esque, Ohio State always had the ability to access Pryor’s bank records. That’s one of many rights student-athletes are forced to give up in exchange for a scholarship and it’s how the NCAA could get them during its current investigation into the program.

“At the beginning of each school year student athletes sign a statement that gives consent for that information to the school,” said NCAA spokesperson Stacey Osburn, who would only confirm there is an ongoing investigation at OSU.

(For the record, let’s reiterate our disagreement with this, among other NCAA policies, which are mostly designed to maintain some veneer of amateurism so schools can profit from not paying either players or taxes. However, these are the rules the schools themselves created and should be on the hook to obey.)

If there are deposited checks from a memorabilia dealer in Pryor’s account, then the school should have found them in December. There is simply no excuse for not uncovering them. This isn’t a hundred-dollar handshake in a back alley somewhere. It’s all there in black and white. All they had to do was look at the statements.

Instead, 11 days later, a time frame that included repeated lobbying to the NCAA reinstatement committee in an effort to maintain a full roster for the Sugar Bowl, the school concluded its investigation with no such discovery.

“There are no other NCAA violations around this case,” athletic director Gene Smith implausibly declared. “We’re very fortunate we do not have a systemic problem in our program. This is isolated to these young men, isolated to this particular incident. There are no other violations that exist.”

In fact, there were many other violations. Sports Illustrated has since found nine other players tied to the tattoo parlor. The Columbus Dispatch has since raised questions of why more than 50 players and family members purchased automobiles from the same local used car lots.

And now there is word that sitting in Pryor’s bank records all along were checks from a memorabilia dealer and part-time photographer that SportsByBrooks claims was banned from attending games by OSU in the middle of the 2010 season.

Throughout this case it’s been the cover-up, not the crime, that’s ruined everything. What could’ve been brief suspensions for a few players has, courtesy of mismanagement, snowballed into a scandal that could level the program.

First coach Jim Tressel resigned last month because he failed to alert his bosses of the memorabilia deals back in April of 2010.

Now here comes an even bigger problem.

USC was drilled with a two-year bowl ban and the loss of 30 scholarships for not keeping tabs on star player Reggie Bush and his dealings with two separate sports marketing agencies. A key part of the case came down to the NCAA claiming that the school (through one assistant coach) either did know or should have known about the relationships. It also leaned on a concept that claimed “high-profile players demand high-profile compliance.”

The initial news of Bush receiving impermissible benefits didn’t come out until three months after the Heisman winner had left school and turned pro.

The word on Pryor came while he was still a student-athlete. It was followed by the push to keep him eligible for the Sugar Bowl.

If USC was guilty of not acting on allegations that weren’t made until after a player’s career was over, then Ohio State faces the more significant problem of not fully acting on allegations made while a player’s career was still active. Plus there are more players than just Pryor involved.

This is on Gene Smith. And it’s on school president E. Gordon Gee and Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany, both of whom rubber stamped the investigation that even those uninitiated in NCAA procedure knew was ridiculous. Gee and Delany have no excuse for playing along with such a whitewash.

If Ohio State and the Big Ten were really committed to following NCAA rules, Smith, Gee and Delany would’ve given up on the reinstatement process, conceded a likely loss to the hated SEC in the Sugar Bowl and dug in for a true exhaustive look at the situation. At the very least it would have taken a look at Pryor’s bank account.

When it comes to the NCAA, the issue isn’t usually the initial violation (those happen everywhere). It’s how the school responds.

For Ohio State, it was another form of the cover-up Tressel started nine months prior. This is college sports’ highest-paid AD (Smith), highest-paid president (Gee) and arguably most-powerful person (Delany), millionaires one and all, making a mockery of the very NCAA statutes and procedures they create, enforce and claim to hold dear.

In one purposefully weak internal investigation, they managed to put the proud Ohio State football program directly in the NCAA crosshairs, debased decades of honor from former players, coaches and fans and all but begged for sanctions even more crippling than the Trojans received.

Hope that win over Arkansas was worth it, guys.

Yikes...certainly sounds like this could be what finally brings a LOIC charge if the checks are sitting in Pryor's account.

 

[Maximus]

b00bie isn't buying it...

 

[AZ_]

By their own admission, it is very Nazi-esque to go on a witch hunt of Pryor's bank records to find a "memorabillia dealer."

Then they go on to outline the thought that Ohio State's penalties will be worse because of the BS Sports Illustrated article that has yielded little or no more allegations against Ohio State aside from the POTENTIAL of one player who may have received a discount on tatoos.

As evidenced here:

James said he is "100 percent certain" that at least eight of the nine current additional players mentioned in a Sports Illustrated report who are alleged to have sold autographs or memorabilia to a tattoo shop owner will be cleared. There is some uncertainty about the ninth.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=6644544


Furthermore, they go on to tell us that USC got what they got "for not keeping tabs on Reggie Bush"....As I've outlined in the other thread, this is about 1/3 of the reason they got in trouble with the NCAA. And even if that was the only thing, they did a horrible job of explaining what actually happened. They left out the part of...you know....an assistant coach FACILITATING the relationship between said sports marketer and Reggie Bush.

Nice little detail they forgot to mention, along with the other 2/3 of the USC case including having only one compliance officer on the payroll during the time of the incident.




So yea, aside from all the holes in this guys line of thinking....it's perfect logic.

 

[fudd]

Is it because the sold key chains instead of living in houses they didn't pay for?

 

[Wulfgar1224]

I guess the USC vs. OSU thing is just how you want to look at it. They're different things so it is a bit of an apples and oranges comparison. People seem to be making the mistake that all USC did wrong was focused on just one player in the name of Reggie Bush. The reason why USC's investigation didn't begin until Bush was out of school is that they didn't self report it. OSU did self report it. I don't like how they handled the press conference or their investigation either. But, USC flat out stonewalled the NCAA for years.

Also, the author conveniently forgets to mention the OJ Mayo fiasco and the issues with improper benefits to the women's tennis team. Just because no one cares about women's tennis, doesn't mean the NCAA doesn't factor them into punishment when considering the athletic department as a whole. Those all played a huge role in USC getting slapped with the LOIC and the severe sanctions on the football team.

Obviously there is more to go in terms of the OSU investigation so we can't know how it will play out for sure. But, I can't understand why the national consensus seems to be that OSU should get more severe sanctions than USC. It is premature to make that suggestion.

 

[CPK]

This is bull-fucking-shit. I'm sorry but No.

 

[calleger]

In addition to Pryor’s past NCAA transgressions, today I confirmed that Ohio State was recently cited by NCAA enforcment officials for dozens of payments Pryor received in past years from a Columbus sports memorabilia dealer that are considered outside of NCAA rules.

The NCAA violations were discovered when the name of the local memorabilia dealer, Dennis Talbott, was seen on checks Pryor was depositing in his personal bank account.

During Pryor’s time at Ohio State, Talbott paid him tens of thousands of dollars to sign Ohio State Buckeye memorabilia. Talbott currently lists a Pryor-signed item for sale on his Ebay sellers account, which is identified by the account name “infickellwetrust.”

Talbott, who has sold hundreds of sports memorabilia items on Ebay, recently switched to that account name from his old handle: “ntresselwetrust.” Talbott currently lists 250 items for sale on the auction site, including Ohio State Buckeye football memorabilia.

Talbott, who also happens to be a professional sports photographer who has shot images appearing on SI.com and ESPN.com, often obtained media credentials from Ohio State officials that gave him undue access to Buckeye football players.

Midway through the 2010 football season, Talbott was ordered by Ohio State officials to completely disassociate himself from the program. That move by the OSU athletic administration may indicate that members of the school’s athletic department knew of Pryor’s activities involving Talbott long before the NCAA recently discovered the payment paper trail from Talbott to the former Buckeye quarterback.

http://sportsbybrooks.com/

 

[calleger]

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio State backup quarterback Kenny Guiton allegedly visited the same business that is at the center of an NCAA investigation involving players exchanging their memorabilia for tattoos.

Until this point, Guiton's name has never been associated with the tattoo shop at the center of suspensions for six of his teammates, but 10 Investigates obtained a photo of Guiton, who was allegedly there in December.

A woman who spoke with 10 Investigates last week said that while she was at Fine Line Ink tattoos on Dec. 7, several Buckeyes were there, including Guiton, who she photographed in the tattoo chair.

"We saw something we probably shouldn't see," said the woman who requested anonymity.

The NCAA has already suspended starting quarterback Terrelle Pryor and others for swapping memorabilia at the shop but the infraction occurred before April 2010, 10 Investigates' Paul Aker reported.

The incident the woman described allegedly took place after the infractions occurred and a full eight months after former coach Jim Tressel first learned of his players swapping memorabilia at the shop.

"I feel bad it's all going on," the woman said. "It's a shame to see everything that has come out."

The woman said that someone at the shop told her players had swapped an autographed football for tattoos. It is not clear whether Guiton took part in the alleged trading.

10 Investigates attempted to contact Guiton for several days but could not reach him.

A Fine Line artist who refused an on-camera interview confirmed that players visited the shop in December but he said the allegations of swapping are mistaken.

Ohio State administrators continue to say that the university has an active investigation with the NCAA "and are working jointly with them until the investigation is resolved."

The university said it would not release any details about its investigation until the NCAA has completed its work.

Stay with 10TV News and 10TV.com for continuing coverage.

http://www.10tv.com/live/content/teninvestigates/stories/2011/06/07/story-ohio-state-kenny-guiton-tattoo-shop.html?sid=102

 

[DDJ7777]

I'm ready for the Akron Zips dominance of Ohio-based college football. Bring it on!

 

[AZ_]

"I can tell you on the record that there were no checks from Dennis Talbott in any Terrelle Pryor bank account," James said. "And there was no money from Dennis Talbott to Terrelle Pryor."

http://www.dispatch.com/live/conten...attorney-no-cash-checks-to-pryor.html?sid=101

So much for the whole "going through Pryor's bank accounts" theory.

In a article with nothing but holes and shoddy logic, this might take the cake.

 

[calleger]

A denial... must not be true

 

[AZ_]

A denial... must not be true

This denial, the fact at least eight of nine have been cleared from the tattoo scandal, the car deal investigation coming up short....

Looks like it's adding up.

 

[aldashex86]

http://sportsbybrooks.com/

I love how all of those pictures of people signing are obviously at an autograph signing event......Except for Pryor.

 

[Maximus]

Guy Paying Pryor Hides Buckeye Memorabilia Biz


Posted by Brooks on Jun. 10, 2011, 3:01am


Tuesday I reported that the NCAA had discovered checks passed from Columbus freelance photographer Dennis Talbott to former Ohio State quarterback Terrelle Pryor in exchange for signing Buckeye memorabilia while Pryor was still in school. (At the beginning of each school year, the NCAA has all student-athletes sign a consent form which allows the intercollegiate governing body to access their bank records at any time.)

(Top Left Pryor Photo Has Ebay Watermark (Bottom Right Of Image))

Talbott, who was formally banned from associating with the Ohio State football program by the school last year and owns a Buckeye-themed vehicle with the vanity plate “T PRYOR”, was also seen selling autographed Pryor memorabilia on Ebay as recently as three days ago.

Using the Ebay screen name “infickellwetrust“, Talbott has since pulled all 250 items he had listed off the website. Among those items was signed memorabilia from Pryor along with game-used, autographed items from multiple former Ohio State Buckeye football players.

In the 48 hours since I reported those revelations, I’ve learned of an additional, stand-alone operation that Talbott has used to sell Ohio State football memorabilia. Talbott calls the business, which is unregistered in the state of Ohio, Varsity O Memorabilia.

A current “Varsity O Memorabilia” Facebook page, last updated in April, features some of the product procured by Talbott over the years from dozens of Buckeye football and basketball players. Many of the items seen signed in the Facebook photos came from then-current Ohio State players like Terrelle Pryor and Ted Ginn, Jr.

In the top-left photo Ginn is seen signing an Ohio State football helmet which may have seen game action while the above Pryor photo features an Ebay watermark in the bottom right corner of the image.

Also seen in the Facebook photos either signing memorabilia for Talbott or posing for photos later autographed by the subject are A.J. Hawk, James Laurinaitis, Maurice Wells, Greg Oden, Mike Conley, Chris Wells, Mike D’Andrea, Troy Smith, Quinn Pitcock - among other former Buckeye football and basketball players.

Some of the photos of Talbott’s memorabilia procurement were taking at officially-sanctioned Ohio State events, so newly-ousted OSU coach Jim Tressel is seen on more than one occasion signing various items for Talbott.

In the montage above, the Tressel-signed photo Talbott was selling on Ebay last Wednesday was identical to the photo Tressel was seen signing for Talbot in the above Facebook picture uploaded on March 29, 2011. The same-looking signed image was also seen framed in a “Limited Addition” album as part of Talbott’s Varsity O Memorabilia Facebook page.

In one particular photo, the former Ohio State football coach is seen signing an Ohio State mini helmet. At the bottom of the picture is the web address VARSITYOMEN.com.

The cell phone number listed for Talbott on his photographer media credential for the Columbus-based This Week In Football publication and in Federal and Delaware County, Ohio, court documents matches the telephone contact number for the only person ever registered as owner of the VARSITYOMEM.com website. The site URL, which was first purchased in 2007, is no longer operable.

On August 14, 2007, a person with the screen name “VarsityOMem” posted a promotional message for an Agonis Club of Columbus event in which the Ohio State Buckeyes football team would be appearing.

A public records search this week for Dennis Talbott confirmed that he has served as a board member for the same organization.

While the extent of the relationship between Talbott and Pryor is not known, at the very least it has now been verified that he was recently selling Pryor-signed merchandise on Ebay. In addition to that, I can now confirm that Talbott sold photos and footballs signed by Pryor in 2008.

Worthpoint.com, which archives Ebay auctions, has records of at least three Pryor auctions in late 2008 executed by Talbott’s Varsity O memorabilia operation. Talbott’s unregistered business - in the state of Ohio - also auctioned off a signed photo of Buckeye football players Smith, Ginn, Donte Whitner, Jamario O’Neal, and Curtis Terry in 2006, a Wells-signed football in 2007 and an autographed picture of DeVier Posey and Lamar Thomas in 2008.

Many of the photos signed by Buckeye players for Talbott - if not all - were taken by Talbott himself. Until recently, Talbott was granted full media access to the Ohio State football and basketball teams by the school’s athletic department as a photograper. Though, in his work for Icon SMI, Talbott was not paid for his assignments - only for the individual photos he sold to media outlets.

It was that same, unfettered access by Ohio State compliance that also allowed Talbott for many years to obtain autographs from innumerable Ohio State football and basketball players, which he subsequently benefited from financially and otherwise.

That’s precisely the reason why he was - finally - cut off from those high profile Ohio State athletes and placed on blacklist by OSU athletic department officials I’ve confirmed as reserved for those officially disassociated from the program.

 

[Lee]

Max, I talked to Boobie and none of this is true. OSU had one bad apple and had no way of knowing any of this. No way OSU gets anything close to USC.