Well, knowing Gee's mentality as I do...Ok, scratch that, no one can, given his unpredictability and penchant for putting his foot in his mouth...but...
Perception, right or wrong, is reality in the public world of college athletics. There is a national perception that JT was a dirty coach and ran a dirty program, and that OSU is a dirty program. That will not change in terms of JT, no matter what the FBI might say, because the fact of the matter is whether he lied or not, or had to or whatever, the kids still traded stuff for tattoos and all the rest. Now, the Oakland Raiders renegade in a lot of Ohio State fans will say: [censored] 'em, we want our coach back, we don't give a [Mark May] what ESPN or fans of other programs say, he wins a lot and he didn't personally do [Mark May] wrong. However, there is donor money to think about, which in this economy is more important than ever before, there is recruiting to think about, which this will all be used against him if he ever were to come back...and let's not forget that JT himself had indicated several times that he would soon voluntarily retire anyway. All this did was speed up the process...OSU was going to be trying to find a new coach and writing a new chapter in the very near future regardless.
I guess what I am saying boils down to this...if he was still the coach, any kind of FBI exoneration would be reason for the University to have an excuse to throw their support back behind him and keep him where he is while trying to shore up the compliance department and shifting the blame to the kids involved exclusively...but at this point, re-hiring him to be the highest paid employee in Ohio, with all of the national baggage that would bring, when he will walk out on his own terms in a couple of years anyway, just doesn't seem to make a lot of sense from a number of standpoints. At least to me.
