Jim Tressel, head coach of The Ohio State University football program, has resigned, the school said in a press release.“After meeting with University officials, we agreed that it is in the best interest of Ohio State that I resign as head football coach," Tressel said in a statement.
Assistant coach Luke Fickell will serve as interim coach next season, the school said. The search for a new head coach won't begin until after the 2011-2012 season ends.
The school fined Tressel $250,000 in March and suspended him after learning he failed to acknowledge that some of his players may have violated NCAA rules.
“In consultation with the senior leadership of the Board of Trustees, I have been actively reviewing matters attendant to our football program, and I have accepted Coach Tressel’s resignation,” President E. Gordon Gee said in a statement. “The University’s enduring public purposes and its tradition of excellence continue to guide our actions.”
Ohio State Athletic Director Gene Smith said the school had been investigating Tressel since January.
"Obviously I'm disappointed that this happened at all," Tressel said in a press conference in March. "I take responsibility for what we do at Ohio State tremendously seriously ... and obviously I plan to grow from this. I'm sincerely saddened by the fact that I let some people down, and that I didn't do some things as well as I could possibly do."
Tressel brought the Buckeyes seven Big Ten titles in ten years, as well as a national championship. But the truth of the matter is that he bent the rules to the point of fracture doing it. His guys were selling Ohio State championship merchandise under the table, and Tressel was clearly looking the other way.
The larger problem is the NCAA itself and the billion dollar business of college football, of which the athletes see basically nothing. Tressel's sacking is only a symptom of a much deeper infection in the sports world.
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