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I would like to begin by apologizing to all of the fans of The Ohio State University. While we are very proud of what we accomplished as a football program over the last 11 years, I have now brought disgrace and shame to a once proud institution. Whatever it is that I did wrong, my advisors have assured me that it is much worse than when Woody Hayes attacked an opposing player during a game, and for that, I have the gravest of regrets.
My time at Ohio State has been a roller coaster ride. When I began, I did not think there was any way I would be able to fulfill the sky-high expectations that the program had for me. When we started winning one
Big Ten title after another, I thought that life could not possibly get any better. Over the last few months, I have experienced the lows that correspond to those previous highs. When I was in the staff cafeteria last week, the school's mascot would not even say hello to me, and I couldn't help but thinking to myself, “Et tu, Brutus?” But then I realized that my career and my life were crumbling around me, and I should probably focus on something other than making a bad Shakespeare pun.[RIGHT: The vest's the thing!]
The reason I am writing this letter to Buckeye Nation is not to make excuses for my actions. It is to explain what really happened- to shed light on a mysterious situation so everyone can know how our program went from being one of the most revered in the nation to being tarnished by impropriety. The fall is not the responsibility of the players. It is not the fault of the boosters, nor is it the fault of the University administrators. No, the fault lies with my trademark sweater vest. Once the sweater vest gets its tentacles in you, it is a parasite that dominates your entire life. It will take your well-intentioned plans and your moral rectitude and wipe its ass with them. It is a horrible beast, and it deserves all of the blame for the fall of the Ohio State football program.
Things were not always this bad for me. When I started out, I thought the sweater vest was just a professional garment that would garner respect from the players while simultaneously displaying my team spirit. For many years, it worked wonderfully. I was able to keep all of the negative side effects and the temptations that go with the sweater vest at bay. I wore sweater vests dating back to my time at Youngstown State. Those days look so innocent now. Who knew that it could have been the root of something so vile and reprehensible? We were known as the Penguins, for crissakes!
But the sweater vest is a greedy and desirous mistress. The sweater vest will never leave well enough alone. Even if I was able to win a 1-AA National Championship and move on to be the coach of one of the nation's great programs, the sweater vest always pushed for more, more, more. In many ways, the sweater vest is like heroin, because you always think that you are so close to where you want to be, but you never get there. In another way, it is like one of those weird science fiction movies where the villain invents a brain control device and makes the hero do evil things, even though the hero's friends don't know that he is being controlled by the villain. Yes, I realize that I just described the plot to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, but I don't deserve to be compared to Indiana Jones these days. The sweater vest, though, bears more than a passing resemblance to that freaky voodoo priest kid, at least in his sinister ways.
For a very long time, I thought that I could keep wearing the sweater vest but control its evil powers. Sometimes, I would put a windbreaker over it so my reliance wouldn't be so obvious, but my friends could always tell when I was using the sweater vest. They told me that I was more aggressive, more cutthroat, and not my usual, thoughtful self whenever I put it on. Hell, when I first found out that my star quarterback Terrelle Pryor was receiving illegal benefits from a car dealership, I wanted to immediately suspend him and report the story to the rules committee. But before I knew it, the sweater vest had me forwarding the emails to Pryor's advisor so he could try to cover up the story before the NCAA would find out and cause us to lose our star player for a big game. A lot of people said it seemed fishy that all the players who broke the rules were allowed to play in our bowl game last year and had their suspensions delayed until the following year for lower-profile games. Do you think I didn't realize that? I'm not a complete moron. I know that everything I was doing was completely hypocritical and dishonest, but that's just the way people act when they wear the sweater vest.
I'm not the first person to fall victim to the curse of the sweater vest. Look at Bobby Knight. Everyone that knows the guy says he is an upstanding and exemplary human being. He even started his career at West Point. He was able to recruit star players for a system that deemphasized individual achievement because the players' parents knew that he was a great role model. Even Bobby Knight eventually lost control of the sweater vest, though, and saw his career come crashing down as he berated officials, choked his own players, and threw chairs at referees. Enough is never enough with the sweater vest. Just ask Bobby Knight.
Some people would say that my career has unraveled over the past several months. If only it was that easy. If this sweater vest had unraveled, I would have been left with an Ohio State polo shirt and a solid, respectable program. Sure, we wouldn't have had the same level of success and we would have gone back to the 7-5 days of John Cooper. The sweater vest can take you far in life. Almost to the top. It can take a bunch of slow white guys from Ohio and Michigan and get them all the way to a BCS bowl year after year where they get crushed by more athletic SEC teams. But is it worth it? Is all the glory of getting to the Fiesta Bowl every year and being disemboweled by Florida or LSU really worth it? Even wise men will never know the true answer to that question.
The bottom line is that I have learned my lesson from this disaster. I now know that the sweater vest is not the way to build a great football program. I have learned that trying to give players improper benefits then covering your tracks will never take you to the top of the mountain. The only way to build a truly great college football team is through hard work, dedication, and openly, unapologetically paying the best players to come to your school, like Auburn did to win the national championship.
If the country takes anything away from this experience, I hope it is this: young coaches may think that they have control of the sweater vest, and they may think that they are able to reach the pinnacle of their profession with the help of that damned piece of clothing, but at the end of the day, no one is immune to the evil powers of the sweater vest. If you wear it long enough, it will corrupt you, and you will become as evil as the shirt that you wear on the sidelines.
The reason I am writing this letter to Buckeye Nation is not to make excuses for my actions. It is to explain what really happened- to shed light on a mysterious situation so everyone can know how our program went from being one of the most revered in the nation to being tarnished by impropriety. The fall is not the responsibility of the players. It is not the fault of the boosters, nor is it the fault of the University administrators. No, the fault lies with my trademark sweater vest. Once the sweater vest gets its tentacles in you, it is a parasite that dominates your entire life. It will take your well-intentioned plans and your moral rectitude and wipe its ass with them. It is a horrible beast, and it deserves all of the blame for the fall of the Ohio State football program.
Things were not always this bad for me. When I started out, I thought the sweater vest was just a professional garment that would garner respect from the players while simultaneously displaying my team spirit. For many years, it worked wonderfully. I was able to keep all of the negative side effects and the temptations that go with the sweater vest at bay. I wore sweater vests dating back to my time at Youngstown State. Those days look so innocent now. Who knew that it could have been the root of something so vile and reprehensible? We were known as the Penguins, for crissakes!
But the sweater vest is a greedy and desirous mistress. The sweater vest will never leave well enough alone. Even if I was able to win a 1-AA National Championship and move on to be the coach of one of the nation's great programs, the sweater vest always pushed for more, more, more. In many ways, the sweater vest is like heroin, because you always think that you are so close to where you want to be, but you never get there. In another way, it is like one of those weird science fiction movies where the villain invents a brain control device and makes the hero do evil things, even though the hero's friends don't know that he is being controlled by the villain. Yes, I realize that I just described the plot to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, but I don't deserve to be compared to Indiana Jones these days. The sweater vest, though, bears more than a passing resemblance to that freaky voodoo priest kid, at least in his sinister ways.
For a very long time, I thought that I could keep wearing the sweater vest but control its evil powers. Sometimes, I would put a windbreaker over it so my reliance wouldn't be so obvious, but my friends could always tell when I was using the sweater vest. They told me that I was more aggressive, more cutthroat, and not my usual, thoughtful self whenever I put it on. Hell, when I first found out that my star quarterback Terrelle Pryor was receiving illegal benefits from a car dealership, I wanted to immediately suspend him and report the story to the rules committee. But before I knew it, the sweater vest had me forwarding the emails to Pryor's advisor so he could try to cover up the story before the NCAA would find out and cause us to lose our star player for a big game. A lot of people said it seemed fishy that all the players who broke the rules were allowed to play in our bowl game last year and had their suspensions delayed until the following year for lower-profile games. Do you think I didn't realize that? I'm not a complete moron. I know that everything I was doing was completely hypocritical and dishonest, but that's just the way people act when they wear the sweater vest.
I'm not the first person to fall victim to the curse of the sweater vest. Look at Bobby Knight. Everyone that knows the guy says he is an upstanding and exemplary human being. He even started his career at West Point. He was able to recruit star players for a system that deemphasized individual achievement because the players' parents knew that he was a great role model. Even Bobby Knight eventually lost control of the sweater vest, though, and saw his career come crashing down as he berated officials, choked his own players, and threw chairs at referees. Enough is never enough with the sweater vest. Just ask Bobby Knight.
Some people would say that my career has unraveled over the past several months. If only it was that easy. If this sweater vest had unraveled, I would have been left with an Ohio State polo shirt and a solid, respectable program. Sure, we wouldn't have had the same level of success and we would have gone back to the 7-5 days of John Cooper. The sweater vest can take you far in life. Almost to the top. It can take a bunch of slow white guys from Ohio and Michigan and get them all the way to a BCS bowl year after year where they get crushed by more athletic SEC teams. But is it worth it? Is all the glory of getting to the Fiesta Bowl every year and being disemboweled by Florida or LSU really worth it? Even wise men will never know the true answer to that question.
The bottom line is that I have learned my lesson from this disaster. I now know that the sweater vest is not the way to build a great football program. I have learned that trying to give players improper benefits then covering your tracks will never take you to the top of the mountain. The only way to build a truly great college football team is through hard work, dedication, and openly, unapologetically paying the best players to come to your school, like Auburn did to win the national championship.
If the country takes anything away from this experience, I hope it is this: young coaches may think that they have control of the sweater vest, and they may think that they are able to reach the pinnacle of their profession with the help of that damned piece of clothing, but at the end of the day, no one is immune to the evil powers of the sweater vest. If you wear it long enough, it will corrupt you, and you will become as evil as the shirt that you wear on the sidelines.
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