The System: The Glory and Scandal of Big-Time College Football
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At 11:20 a.m., Tressel responded to Rife: “I hear you!! It is unbelievable! Thanks for your help … keep me posted as to what I need to do if anything. I will keep pounding these kids hoping they grow up … jt.”
In the NCAA interview Tressel described himself as “scared” and “frightened” at the “magnitude” of the e-mail.
“This is frightening,” he said. Because what he was reading, he said, “was way beyond” an NCAA rule.
“I mean, it was a security issue,” he said, according to the 139-page transcript of his interview. “It was a federal criminal issue. It was a narcotics issue … where do you turn?”
Where to turn? At this point Tressel had been the head football coach at Ohio State and Youngstown State and in the college game for decades. Of all the things The Senator was, naïve wasn’t one of them.
The NCAA would later point out that Tressel could have turned to it, to local law enforcement, to university legal counsel or to his compliance department for help or guidance. Tressel did not see it that way. He told investigators the “gravity” of the situation involving Rife “trumped” any such action. A cynic might suggest the sale of a boatload of memorabilia to a suspected drug dealer by several current players—including his star quarterback—trumped every other action. But spring practice was about to begin. The Buckeyes were one of the favorites to win another national championship, and starting quarterback Terrelle Pryor was being hailed as one of the best ballers in the country.
But that’s not to say Tressel took no action. The next day he forwarded Cicero’s e-mail to Ted Sarniak, a trusted adviser and mentor to Pryor. The two had met during Pryor’s freshman year in high school in Pennsylvania, a relationship that in 2008 earned a serious look by the NCAA. Tressel expressed concerns about Pryor’s safety, and Sarniak was the only person, he believed, capable of telling Pryor “the right things for the right reasons.”
Here’s what Tressel told Sarniak: “Hey, look, you know, I heard [Pryor] was out, you know, and he’s got to—he’s too visible. You gotta remind him, you know, that he’s under the microscope. And, you know, it—I know it’s not fair ’cause forty thousand other students are allowed to be out and all that. But life’s not fair. You know, just, you know, bring that one into the discussion, you know?”
NCAA investigator Chance Miller, a former claims litigator for the City of New York, asked Tressel if he ever thought of following up with Cicero to determine whether Pryor or other players were involved with criminal issues.
“You know, I didn’t,” Tressel answered.
On April 16, Tressel received two more e-mails from Cicero. The first came in at 9:43 a.m., the other at 2:24 p.m. Two weeks had done little to calm Tressel’s sense of fear and helplessness. Now Cicero was telling him Rife had been in Cicero’s office for ninety minutes the night before and he “really is a drug dealer.” What’s more, Rife had about fifteen pairs of cleats (with signatures), four or five jerseys (all signed) and nine Big Ten championship rings and a national championship ring in his possession.
Four bullet points down in his morning e-mail Cicero had written this sentence: “What I tell you is confidential.”
“And in there, he said, you know, ‘What I tell you is confidential,’ ” Tressel said in his NCAA interview. “And so now I’m thinking, ‘Okay, I gotta ask him what the heck, you know, what should I do? Now you’ve—you know, you pulled me into this operation.’ ”
That led to this exchange with NCAA associate director of enforcement Tim Nevius:
NEVIUS: And you’ve pointed to specific names or references to potential criminal activity. The e-mails from Mr. Cicero appear to emphasize the sale of memorabilia, though.
TRESSEL: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
NEVIUS: … There’s nothing in the emails that mentions or references that any of the Ohio State football student athletes were involved in criminal activity.
TRESSEL: Right. That’s right.
NEVIUS: Did you follow up with him [Cicero] in any regard to inquire as to whether or not they were involved in criminal activity?
TRESSEL: No. ’Cause, I mean, I don’t know that I thought this through from that standpoint.
Instead, Tressel said he began “pounding” away at his team in “awareness” meetings, telling them he was hearing things, bad things; they had to “stay away from the wrong people.” He admitted to the NCAA he never mentioned just who those wrong people might be; never once mentioned the seized memorabilia, the tattoo parlor and potential NCAA violations. Or Rife.
Asked why, Tressel responded: “Not sure. Probably reluctance of—I wanted it to be vague about, you know, who we were talking about yet. I guess I wanted it to be all-inclusive.”
“Did you ever ask them [players] if they sold their memorabilia?” asked Nevius.
“No, no,” answered Tressel. “And why didn’t I? I don’t know? I didn’t really didn’t ask ’em anything. It was not an asking situation. It was a ‘Hey, I’ve heard.’ ‘This one’s serious, you know … You better stay away.’ ”
About three-quarters of the way through the five-hour interview, Nevius cut to the chase.
NEVIUS: Do you understand that it is an NCAA violation not to report information concerning violations?
TRESSEL: Yeah.
NEVIUS: —you thought the most appropriate thing was not to do anything?
TRESSEL: Right. It was to let the federal investigation happen, you know …
NEVIUS: And you felt that even though you knew that NCAA violations had occurred, and that you were gonna go forward with those student-athletes participating in the 2010 season.
TRESSEL: Yeah.
NEVIUS: I guess what the problem is that there was no action taken on either the NCAA issues or the federal investigation.
TRESSEL: Right.
NEVIUS: So despite the concern that one of these issues being more problematic than the other—
TRESSEL: Mm-hmm.
NEVIUS: —the facts are you didn’t address either.
TRESSEL: Right.
NEVIUS: But it is important for a head coach to recognize that if student athletes had engaged in violations and they’re aware of that, that that information needs to be reported, and the student athletes have to go through the appropriate channels to be reinstated before they can participate in competition. You’re aware of that, too, right?
TRESSEL: I am, yeah.
NEVIUS: And you were aware of that at the time?
TRESSEL: Yeah. I don’t know that I was thinking of it that way.
On September 13, 2010, Tressel signed what turned out to be his own death certificate. It came in the form of the NCAA’s certificate of compliance. By signing and dating the form submitted by Ohio State to the NCAA, Tressel declared he had informed “appropriate individuals” of his knowledge of any violations of NCAA rules.
He had no knowledge.
Again, Nevius bored in.
“When you signed it, did you think about the e-mails and the—all the discussions with Cicero?” asked Nevius.
“Probably not.”
Then, a few questions later:
NEVIUS: You know, you’ve acknowledged that you didn’t report the information. But then you suggest, though, that that might have had to do with the fact you anticipated consequences.
TRESSEL: Mm-hmm.
NEVIUS: And you anticipated NCAA consequences.
TRESSEL: Right.
Tressel’s attempts to skirt the truth almost certainly would have worked if not for a letter the Department of Justice sent to Ohio State in early December 2010. As part of their investigation into Rife, the feds informed the university that dozens of signed football-related items had been seized during a raid of Rife’s home and office. That certainly was news to Ohio State. Did Tressel know? No, he said. He didn’t. At that time Ohio State was 11-1 and ranked No. 6 in the country. It was on its way to a BCS matchup with Arkansas in the Sugar Bowl, a game it would win. Pryor was named MVP.
On pag
e 114 of the transcript, Miller bluntly asked Tressel the following question: “If that letter would have never been received by Ohio State, would you have come forward with these violations?”
In response, The Senator offered an answer straight out of a Washington filibuster, truly worthy of the Hypnotic Hall of Fame.
“Never is a long time. I don’t know. I don’t know,” Tressel began.
I mean, the easiest for me to say is, “Yeah, I had set a deadline of, you know, whatever, January 14, 2011.” I hadn’t. I had confidence in the federal government that they were gonna do what they were supposed to do. They didn’t need my help to do it, nor did they need my interruption to do it.
And that when that was completed, that I had confidence that they weren’t gonna throw our stuff in the dumpster. I had confidence that they weren’t gonna confiscate it and put it in their own man caves. You know, that they were gonna return it to us. And we were gonna deal with it, you know, from that standpoint.
You know, I suppose things could take two years. It wasn’t my impression on June 1. My impression on June 1 was, “Hey, they said this guy’s going to prison,” you know. Now, obviously, as the days got closer to him going to prison, he said, “No, no, wait a minute. Let me tell you—I’ll help you.” And so I guess that’s what happened.
So I don’t know the answer to your question.
The litany of lies that began on Easter weekend 2010 lasted until Memorial Day 2011. At that point Tressel had outlasted additional violations involving extra benefits, a five-game suspension and $250,000 fine and a knockout March 2011 Yahoo! Sports investigation by Charles Robinson and Dan Wetzel charging Tressel knew about the scandal in April 2010. But in the end, he could not survive a withering Sports Illustrated cover story that opened another huge can of worms. The linchpin of the piece: the memorabilia-for-tattoos party had started as far back as 2002 and involved at least twenty-eight players—twenty-two more than previously acknowledged by the university.
Tressel was out the door by Monday.
In their official response to Notice of Allegations, Case Number M352, Tressel’s attorneys finally acknowledged he broke a cardinal rule of coaching—Unethical Conduct Bylaw 10.1. Tressel offered “no excuses” for his decisions.
In its official response, Ohio State said its former coach had paid a “terrible price” for his mistakes.
In February 2012, Tressel was hired by the University of Akron as its vice president of strategic engagement, a position created just for him. His main focus at the school would be working with students and alumni to foster better relationships with the community. His base salary was a reported $200,000 a year, some $3 million a year less than he earned annually at Ohio State. At his introductory press conference Tressel made clear he felt fortunate to have this opportunity.
“This,” he said, “is a second chance.”
“I fix shit”
They are the unseen, unsung heroes of college football. Seated up front on every bus or plane, walkie-talkie in hand, eyeing the road, checking a watch and anticipating trouble. Getting things done.
The official title of these problem-solving point men is director of football operations (DFO). It might as well be director of detail operations. For eighty hours or more a week they are consumed with nothing but details. Team travel. Game management. Seating charts. Rooming lists. Hotel buffets. Academic support. Law enforcement. Ten thousand and one things in their hands alone.
“We’re facilitators,” said Mike Sinquefield, the highly respected DFO at Texas Christian University. “That’s what we do. Coaches expect things. Athletic directors expect things. You can’t anticipate everything, try as you might, [but] you just have to be ready to think on your feet.”
In 2012, Stanford’s DFO Matt Doyle was honored as the Operations Director of the Year by his peers. It said something about the nature of his job that Doyle could not remember how old he would be in May of that year—thirty-six, it turned out. But he knew precisely the number of goblets (two) and drinks (six) and the type of bread (sourdough) and ketchup (Heinz 57) he wanted set on a breakfast table at away hotels.
“For the most part it’s because we want to eliminate distractions that exist,” said Doyle. “What we don’t want is for things to be different. We don’t want a guy after three weeks finally getting into a routine of eating eggs and cheddar for breakfast and all of a sudden we don’t have eggs and cheddar. Sounds silly, but that’s how it is.”
That’s exactly how the game is run these days, because if you can’t systemize life for coaches consumed by Xs and Os, by one thing and one thing only—winning—you’re working Division IV football, which, by the way, does not exist.
“I always think if something goes wrong, somehow it’s my fault,” said Doyle. “If the sprinklers come on in the middle of practice, that’s probably my fault. If the plane is delayed, there’s nothing I can do about it. But it’s nobody else’s fault but mine.”
In the spring of 2012, about one hundred and fifty DFOs from across the country converged on the Omni Fort Worth for their annual convention. Had some wayward soul stumbled into the second-floor ballroom and listened to a panel discussion, he would have thought it was a taping of the Dr. Phil show.
“I don’t see my family, ever,” said Luke Groth with a sigh, then in his second year as DFO at Division III power Wisconsin-Whitewater. “I don’t see my mom. I don’t hardly ever talk to my mom. I feel terrible.”
Like virtually every other member of his profession, Doyle had paid a steep personal price. A few days after the Fort Worth meeting, during a two-hour drive to speak at a donor luncheon in Sacramento, Doyle laughed at the notion he was enjoying his so-called downtime.
“Downtime is an interesting definition because right now I’m traveling like fourteen of the next eighteen days,” he said. “So that’s not really my downtime.
“This is fun for me; I like doing it,” he added. “But the reality for me is what would I be doing if I decided not to go to Sacramento to speak? If I don’t speak, I’d be teeing off at two o’clock. Or heaven forbid, I might pick up my daughter at lunchtime.”
After graduating from college, he found work as a teacher and coach at his alma mater, St. Francis High in affluent Mountain View, California. Several of his students had parents who were coaches or worked at Stanford, including the son of then Cardinal head football coach, Tyrone Willingham, and the daughter of former athletic director Ted Leland. A member of the football staff was leaving and wondered if Doyle would be interested in the job. He was. Doyle applied, got it and over the years, through five head coaches, had seen his role steadily expand into assistant AD, director of football operations.
From the first of August 2012 and the start of training camp until the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day 2013, Doyle had worked 153 days in a row. “There’s no day off to go to the dentist,” he said. “There’s no mowing your lawn. You can only get a haircut because Supercuts stays open until ten. But for the most part there’s not all this stuff that regular people do on weekends.”
Instead there was a list of duties and responsibilities Doyle had compiled in the winter of 2012 for national comparison with other DFOs:
PRIMARY DUTIES
Day to Day Management of the football program
Team Travel
Budget Manager
Summer Camps and Clinics
Summer Jobs Program
Summer Housing Program
Football Alumni Coordinator
Support Coaches and Staff in all areas of need
Supervise Office Staff, Interns and Volunteers
Pre-Season Training Camp
Bowl Game Management
Event Management/Stanford Football
• Alumni Relations (Fall and Spring)
• Season Kickoff Dinner (Aug)
• Starting 11 BBQ (May)
• LOI Reception (Feb)
• Pro Timing Day (March)
Stadium Design Projects
MISCELLANEOUS DUTIES
Game Day Management
New Hire Coordination
Future Scheduling
Pac-12 Conference Championship Committee
Big Game Committee
Rose Bowl Advisory Committee
Football Operations National Committee
LIAISON DUTIES
Strength and Conditioning
Equipment Room
Sports Medicine
Facilities
Marketing
Ticket Office
Football Sponsorship and Trade Out
Development Office
Media Relations Department
Faculty and University Staff
Campus and Community Police
Dean’s Office
Office of Judicial Affairs
NFL/Pro Scouts
Agent Relations
Pac-12 Officials
Pac-12 Office
Parent Organization
Housing and Dining
For those scoring at home, that is forty-five different areas in which Doyle had some control or input. In answer to the frequent “What do you do?” question posed three years earlier, he had compiled another list. Jim Harbaugh was the Stanford head coach at the time. “A Day in the Life” was how Doyle described it. The day in question, a Monday following a heartbreaking loss on the road at Arizona. He had already worked his regular twelve-hour day on Sunday. Monday had started bright and early, at 7:00 a.m., with a quick stop for coffee. By 7:04 he had unlocked some meeting rooms for NFL scouts who wanted to watch film. Nearly sixteen hours later, at 10:45 p.m., Doyle’s list ended with this notation: “Day is done, heading home.” In between his timeline showed no fewer than a dozen different meetings ranging from game management to the equipment manager, head trainer, offensive and defensive coaches, to finally Harbaugh himself, at 10:00 p.m. Sprinkled throughout was a daily dose of multitasking combined with crisis management—making sure the ryegrass inside the stadium looked just right for the upcoming game against Arizona State on national TV; tracking down a player’s lost wallet; responding to a flood of e-mails that had poured in overnight; helping a graduate assistant fill out an application to a coach’s academy. Just one more day of driving the locomotive that was only picking up speed. Fueled by what Doyle saw as a “major inflation of self-importance” rippling its way through top-tier programs.