TRESSEL REALLY CAN'T DANCE

TRESSEL REALLY CAN'T DANCE, (Scout.Com, Buckeye Sports.Com)

I knew it all along, Ohio State's football coach couldn't dance and I give two main reasons, number 1, he's a white 50 something guy with absolutely no rhythm, and number 2, he's white. With his resignation yesterday as Ohio States football coach, it became obvious that Tressel had made mistakes during his coaching tenure that simply could not be overlooked. To say that he, "Tressel" had made some poor decisions during his time at the Big Ten university, would be an understatement.

Jim Tressel got caught up in his own infallibility, his perception of his football squad, his program and lived deeper and deeper in a world that existed exclusively in his mind, his coaches minds and those of his young football charges. Tressel, his coaching staff and his football team  were allowed to go about their business without  oversight, without questions, and with impunity, they became to big to be questioned. Not only were they legends in their own minds, they were legends to everybody else connected with the program and the community at large.

Implicit in whatever cover up there was, were Athletic Director Gene Smith as well as school president E. Gordon Gee, unless they admit to being totally ignorant to what was happening with their football team, in which case were they not only implicit, they were galacticly stupid. This kind of crap goes on all over the country in big athletic programs as well as small ones.

In the days and weeks that follow, people from every walk of life will come forward to defend Jim Tressel the man. In addition, Tressel will be surgically dissected by every sports expert in the country, by every sports section, by every sports editor, by every sports reporter, by many athletic directors and by many of his coaching peres.

In the end, his association with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and the Athletes in  Action, his work in the community and his image as a good solid husband and father will overshadow by Tressel's dark side. Ultimately Tressels inability to follow the rules, no matter his opinion of those rules, or how silly they might seem, those rules were part of what governed football at the college level in the United States.

Jim Tressel now joins a long list of foolish men and women who rose to the pinnacle of their chosen profession only to somehow forget what got them to that high point and to fall all they way to the depths of the very profession that they once dominated. No matter what happens to Jim Tressel from this point forward, there will always be a part of Tressel that will no longer be there. It will be an empty feeling felt by Tressel the man and also by those around him.