A note from Management

Earlier today MotSaG contributor Jeremiah posted some of this thoughts on the topic of Morals vs. Wins. In that post he stated his opinion rather frankly and that rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. I want to state that his views, while they are valid (they are opinions, people), are not the views of this site. Jeremiah acknowledges that he is speaking for himself and not for MotSaG as a whole.

When I started MotSaG and invited people to contribute, I always wanted their contributions to stand on their own and I didn’t want to stop anyone from posting how they feel about the Buckeyes. But this post stepped over those bounds and I feel that it doesn’t reflect properly what MotSaG is and stands for.

I read this post after Jeremiah posted it and I didn’t think the reception would be so vitriolic. Jeremiah has told me he wishes he could have expressed himself more eloquently. He likes to pose questions that cause people to stop and think but sometimes those questions come out awkwardly. I know him personally and know where he’s coming from but you readers don’t know him the way I do. You can only infer what his point of view is through what he wrote. He wanted to pose a question about the dilemma college football fans are faced with but went about it in an abrasive way. It’s just how he is.

Jeremiah stands behind his statements. We debated taking the post down but decided it should be kept up for posterity. Comments have been closed but the post will live on. We may revisit this topic in the future with a more nuanced post. But for now we are going to move with our lives. Life is too short to get worked up.

Comments

  1. Maybe I’m cynical or apathetic, but I don’t really see the big deal about that post. I don’t necessarily agree with it – to be honest I read it as his opinion and thought “that’s an interesting way to look at it” and moved on. Then I got some cryptic tweet from some random PSU guy, looked over the post again, and … I still don’t see the big deal.

    I think we can all agree that most programs – if not all of them – cheat in some way. It’s virtually impossible not to given the byzantine regulations the NCAA requires member schools to abide by – and the major point I took away from Jeremiah’s post was “how much does that matter to you?” No reason to take it personally. People need to lighten the hell up.

    But that’s me. I’m (thankfully for once) in OSU hibernation mode since it’s baseball season and not yet football season, so I haven’t gotten as worked up over all this as most people have.

  2. Guess I really do need to post more often. I would have sworn a year ago that I’d be the one writing posts that would piss off the entire free world.

  3. I think he brings up a fair question. It’s not just college sports either. Look at pro sports. Everything from steroids to Bill Belichick video taping opposing teams signals for years.

    Ever heard the saying “if you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying?”

    Jeremiah is right, it does happen at every level in sports. Especially at the major college and pro levels where millions upon millions of dollars can be yours depending on if you win or not. A friend of mine played football at Cincinnati in the late 80’s. They sucked. He had every test taken for him and he barely went to class. He was a freshman and never saw the field. If that was going on with a team that sucked with a freshman that never played….well….you do the math. This same guy also asked his own father for money for steroids because he couldn’t compete…more cheating. So for those of you that say it doesn’t happen everywhere…I ain’t buying it.

    I think we all would love to live in a utopian world were everyone’s achievements are on the up and up. But folks, lets not be naive. This year Auburn won a National Title and their star player won the Heisman along with every other award under the sun. This player was payed to play at Auburn and his father is on record admitting as much to the NCAA. The team they played against in the title game is also under investigation for some shady dealings.

    Team after team is under investigation for breaking the rules.

    Why?

    MONEY. Sure, it’s fun to win and all…but with those wins comes lots and lots of money. Tressel will make another 14 million on his remaining contract. Did he get that contract for how clean of a program he runs? No…he got that because he wins football games.

    His job is to win football games…lots of them. Pretty low on the list is to run a clean program. This is the same with every other coach in his position. We all saw Blue Chips.

    However….with cheating comes a risk/reward situation. Everyone that cheats does so to attain a certain level of competitive advantage. However, if they are caught not only does that competitive advantage go away, the penalties could be crushing to on field performance.

    These problems aren’t going anywhere and will only get worse. Most cheating will never see the light of day. Some will and those who are not caught will sit in judgement of the very few that do get caught.

    Every time OSU goes on the road this year opposing fans will ridicule OSU coaches, players and fans. But deep down they have to know that this sort of thing happens everywhere.

    Does that make it right? No. Cheating is wrong. I hate what Tressel did. I hate what his players did. I’m not happy they cheated. But I understand why they did it and why many like them continue to do it.

  4. Well said. It doesn’t have to be some kind of black and white thing. You can point out the obvious fact – that massive and almost unthinkable incentives exist that encourage cheating – without excusing the people and programs that cheat in response to those incentives.

    It’s similar to politics. Massive incentives exist that encourage politicians to be dishonest pieces of crap, but we still despise the 99.8% of politicians who are dishonest pieces of crap.

    Some might call that hypocrisy or naivete; I’d call it human nature.

  5. what about the dorian bell roids post that’s sitting in my rss feed but apparently no longer exists?

    where’d the pics come from? don’t look like him

    the fuck is going on?

  6. The problem with that post is that it makes a tired, desperate arguement.
    Let’s look at the 3rd stage of Grief:
    3. Anger & Bargaining – lashing out to lay the blame on someone else
    I could summarize that post as: Everyone else is cheating so we have to and ours isn’t as bad, and look how many fights those dastardly Nittany Lions get into!
    Guess your fanbase only has 4 more stages to go!

  7. @John – I don’t think your summary is accurate. To me, the argument seems to be: We cheat but everyone else does too. It doesn’t assign causality, merely correlation. It is also a fairly accurate, if uncomfortable, statement.

    “Cheat” is probably the wrong word, and that’s been discussed here before, but all programs/coaches/fanbases look the other way when it comes to some kind of unseemly behavior at times. Often it’s in the name of A Second Chance (which is fine, but how many terrible players get second chances?). Jeremiah’s post was intended to start a discussion on to what degree that bothers us as fans.

    Unfortunately, he pointed out that PSU had a large number of player arrests despite not having major NCAA violations and many took that as an equation between the two programs. Understandably, no one really wants to be equated with Ohio State right now.

    The issue is one that would be nice to discuss reasonably some time though. ESPN exonerates Cam Newton because of his declared ignorance while they scoff at Pryor and Co. over theirs. The NFL punishes an accused (but not convicted) rapist and pot-smokers but barely even acknowledges multiple drunk drivers and domestic abusers.

    I understand that bringing this up now on an Ohio State blog looks like whining or whatever. But it’s a worthy topic of discussion and it happens to be on our minds right now, as it would be on any other fans’ whose program was going through something like this.

  8. @nick – that post was not meant to go live. I apologize for the mix up.

  9. Jay Roubini says

    @el Kaiser~MotSgG is the best, don’t change anything particularly your mgt style.

  10. @Jay – Thanks for the kind words. They’re appreciated.

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