Yesterday, the axe finally fell on Jim Tressel, when it was announced that he was resigning his post as football coach at Ohio State University.
And while speculation has already begun that Urban Meyer will be the next coach, the football program will be leaderless until 2012.
With Tressel waiting until now to tender his resignation, he appears to have left Ohio State coachless for the 2011 season. With the recruitment period already passed, Ohio State announced that assistant coach Luke Fickell will serve as interim coach for the upcoming season.
Ohio State may have been better served to force Tressel out sooner. While the resignation does come as a shock to most, the numbers suggested Tressel had little hope of returning as coach of Ohio State.
A recent study showed that, of the last 81 cases in which a coach was accused of providing false or misleading information to NCAA investigators, 78 (96.3%) either resigned or were fired. That is a tough trend to buck, even if you have a national championship and are 9-1 versus Michigan.
And let's not forget, this was not Tressel's first rodeo. Despite the squeaky clean image, Tressel has a history of getting in trouble with the NCAA. While the head coach of Youngstown State, the university was cited by the NCAA for "lack of institutional control."
So where does Ohio State from here? The name being bounced around the most is Urban Meyer, who won two championships (2006, 2008) in six seasons as the head coach at Florida. And hey, he is from Toledo, Ohio, went to the University of Cincinnati and his first coaching gig was as an assistant at, you guessed it, Ohio State.
But wait. Didn't Meyer resign from the University of Florida just six months ago, to spend more time with his family? Will one year on the sideline, working at ESPN be enough time with the family?
In a statement released following the resignation of Tressel, Meyer said he "will not pursue any coaching opportunities this fall." Well, that was carefully worded to fuel the speculation.
So maybe waiting a year will help The Ohio State University get their guy. But if they can't land Meyer, it also increases the chances that they miss out on plan Bs like Jon Gruden or Bo Pelini (who played at Ohio State) who will now have a year to find other gigs or renegotiate their current deals or Tony Dungy, who will be a year older.
OSU may indeed land their coach in 2012. But in the meantime, the football program is essentially without a head coach for the 2011 season. And that doesn't seem like the best thing for a program that is desperately in need of leadership in a time of crisis.
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