From Stewart Mandel at SI.com
Dirty deeds
OSU could face harsh fate for ex-coaches' actions
Allegations that for the past 11 months were largely discredited in Columbus, Ohio, as the crazy rantings of a disgruntled housekeeper gained considerable legitimacy Monday. According to the NCAA, the Ohio State men's basketball program did some bad things in the late 1990s. In particular, formerly revered head coach
Jim O'Brien and respected assistant
Paul Biancardi (now the head coach at Wright State) did some very bad things.
And for that, current head coach
Thad Matta -- his reputation to date seemingly clean as a whistle -- and a group of players who were in middle school when most of the transgressions occurred could soon be paying a severe price.
The NCAA on Monday sent Ohio State the initial findings of its investigation into the men's basketball, the women's basketball and the football programs. While the latter two were limited to a single allegation each of improper benefits given to athletes (in the case of football, a $500 payment by a booster to a player, assumed, based on previous reports, to be QB
Troy Smith), the O'Brien-era Buckeyes were nailed with seven allegations. The most serious charges are that O'Brien and Biancardi knowingly withheld knowledge of NCAA rules violations in which they were involved, and that O'Brien and the university failed to properly monitor the conduct of the program.
Nearly everything in the 19-page portion of the report relating to men's basketball corroborates allegations made more than a year ago by Columbus-area housekeeper
Kathleen Salyers. The suit, dismissed by a judge last week, claimed
OSU boosters
Dan and
Kim Roslovic reneged on an agreement to pay her $1,000 a month plus reimburse expenses if she would provide for Buckeyes player
Boban Savovic during his 1998-2002 career. Savovic lived with the Roslovics upon arriving in Columbus in June 1998, but was forced to move out when Ohio State learned about the arrangement. He then moved in with Salyers, the Roslovics' housekeeper and babysitter.
Though she knew almost nothing about basketball before Savovic arrived in her home that summer and says she never previously attended an
OSU game, Salyers, due to her relationship and arrangement with the Roslovics, became, by NCAA definition, a booster. To that end and largely in keeping with her own description of the relationship in her lawsuit depositions, the NCAA report lists 31 impermissible benefits Salyers provided Savovic during his time in Columbus, everything from food, transportation, clothing, air fare and spending money to Kohl's and Structure gift certificates and a Nintendo Game Boy. One of the NCAA's other alleged violations involves similar benefits Salyers provided for one-time recruit
Alex Radojevic.
The first allegation on the list also involves Radojevic, and it's the one to which O'Brien previously admitted and was fired for: his $6,700 payment to assist Radojevic's struggling family in Yugoslavia. At the time of his firing last June, O'Brien was portrayed far and wide as a long upstanding coach who was being harshly punished for a well-intended gesture, albeit an illegal one.
The NCAA findings released Monday show several other instances of O'Brien's warm-hearted kindness. Unfortunately, those instances were also accompanied by what was either extreme naivete or outright abuse of NCAA rules.
For instance, according to the NCAA, O'Brien gave Salyers two
OSU season tickets during Savovic's four-year career. When asked about it by school investigators, he said he was "... doing something nice for somebody [Salyers] that was nice to him [Savovic] when he needed it."
Furthermore, the NCAA said both O'Brien and Biancardi were aware of Salyers' relationship with the Roslovics when they attended a meeting with Ohio State compliance officials in July 1998 to determine where Savovic would live for the rest of the summer. While conveniently failing to mention the Salyers-Roslovic connection, Biancardi suggested Savovic move in with a friend he'd made at a summer basketball league. That friend happened to be Salyers' son,
Rob Huston. Savovic was explicitly told he would have to pay rent wherever he moved, but no one from the
OSU compliance office ever followed up to see if that was the case because of Biancardi's "assurances that the arrangement was permissible." Meanwhile, Biancardi, who university phone records show was in constant contact with Salyers during Savovic's career, even instructed her to make certain payments on behalf of the player, according to the NCAA.
Finally, the NCAA said O'Brien "did not appropriately monitor the continuing relationship between [Salyers and Savovic] to ensure compliance with NCAA legislation."
Asked Monday about the competency of his compliance office -- which failed to discover the true nature of the Salyers-Savovic relationship even after an article about it appeared in
OSU's own game program during the player's sophomore season -- newly hired athletic director
Gene Smith instead deflected blame to the coaches. "There are no systemic problems in our compliance area," he said. "The reality is, you cannot legislate integrity."
Both Smith and university president
Karen Holbrook made a point of continually emphasizing Monday that the transgressions took place a long time ago; that the school took swift action upon learning of them by firing O'Brien (he has since sued the school for wrongful termination) and imposing a voluntary postseason ban last year; and that almost all the violations disclosed Monday were self-reported by the school.
Of course, they have to say these things.
It's all part of the ongoing process by which the school essentially begs for leniency from the NCAA's Committee on Infractions, which is expected to hear the case in September and will ultimately determine any further sanctions, by being as cooperative and proactive as possible. The school may even impose its own additional sanctions -- like forfeiture of wins and removal of records from the two Big Ten championship teams and 1999 Final Four team for which Savovic played -- but will try to convince the NCAA to spare future teams of further restrictions.
Historically, however, the NCAA has shown little compassion for the innocent in dealing with the violations of their predecessors.
The most comparable recent case to Ohio State's took place at Michigan, where a joint investigation by the NCAA and the FBI found that booster
Ed Martin used funds from an illegal gambling operation to lavish four ex-Wolverines with money and gifts.
While the Michigan scandal involved much bigger player names -- such as
Chris Webber and
Robert Traylor -- and larger amounts of money -- reportedly $616,000 in total benefits -- an examination of NCAA case precedent indicates the Ohio State findings may actually merit harsher sanctions than the Wolverines'.
For one thing, the Michigan case solely involved the issue of booster payments, while the Ohio State findings also delve into academics (one of the violations is that Salyers wrote numerous academic papers for Savovic) and the alleged use of NBA agents in recruiting (university phone records show hundreds of calls from O'Brien and Biancardi to
Semi Pajovic, who, at various points, represented himself as being Savovic's "uncle" and Radojevic's "guardian" but is actually a partner of NBA agent
Marc Cornstein, and who, according to the NCAA, served as a middleman for the $6,700 payment to Radojevic).
More importantly, though, is the direct involvement of O'Brien and Biancardi in several of the violations.
While investigators in the Michigan case did conclude that ex-coach
Steve Fisher had befriended Martin and given him free tickets and various other perks, they never found any proof that Fisher knew of Martin's payments to the players. In this case, the NCAA has phone records and witness interviews supporting the contention that O'Brien and Biancardi not only knew of Salyers' relationship with Savovic but also that Biancardi helped orchestrate it. They even have O'Brien's own testimony regarding giving the tickets to Salyers.
In Michigan's case, the committee elected to add a second year to the school's self-imposed one-year postseason ban, extend its probation from two years to four and take away four scholarships (the school had already voluntarily forfeited wins and removed all banners and records from the teams involved and returned money from its postseason appearances).
The school, however, successfully appealed to have the second-year postseason ban revoked. In rendering the decision, the head of the NCAA's Infractions Appeals Committee wrote, "A review of [past] decisions ... which upheld a postseason ban revealed the presence of one or more of the following factors in each case: repeat violator status, lack of institutional control, or academic fraud. None of these factors is present in this case."
It's entirely possible that in this case the committee will ultimately determine a presence of academic fraud, and while "failure to monitor" doesn't carry the same severity as "lack of institutional control," it certainly indicates a belief that school officials could have prevented at least some of the transgressions.
The NCAA report couldn't come at a worse time for Matta, who has been successfully assembling one of the nation's top recruiting classes for next year. Matta, whose first team at
OSU was the surprise of the Big Ten, winning 20 games and handing Illinois its only regular-season loss, has already landed commitments from two in-state top-25 recruits in the Class of 2006, shooting guard
Daequan Cook (Dayton) and swingman
David Lighty (Cleveland), and recently hosted an official visit from the consensus top prospect in the country, Indianapolis 7-footer
Greg Oden.
Ohio State will spend the next several months trying to convince the NCAA that it's corrected its ways and that the worst is behind it. Matta will have to convince the recruits of the same thing.
