So, some of you may or may not remember that ESPN threw a bit of a hissy fit when Ohio State wouldn’t share confidential emails during Tatgate. They threw this hissy fit all the way to the Ohio Supreme Court. In a nutshell, OSU didn’t release these due to FERPA. So, it’s not like they were just not releasing things out of spite or bad feelings towards ESPN, they were citing a Federal privacy law.

ESPN disagreed, which should come as a shock to no one.

Well, The Ohio Supreme Court agreed with Ohio State. Because I am a huge fan of poetic justice, I am going to link ESPN’s article on this where they have to talk about losing.

Ohio State receives more than $919 million, approximately 23 percent of its operating dollars, from federal funding, which the court cited in the ruling.

“Therefore, Ohio State, having agreed to the conditions and accepted the federal funds, was prohibited by FERPA from systematically releasing education records without parental consent,” the court said.

The reasons cited above are why pretty much every expert cited on this case thought ESPN might lose. I’d really tried hard not to buy into the ESPN vs. OSU conspiracies early on, but stuff like this is why I am now all-in on the theory. SI, FoxSports, USA Today, and a host of other media outlets who were likely also denied these records did not take it to court. ESPN, however, felt it necessary to drag this on and on.

Oh, and by the way, it took me forever to find this article on ESPN. Had Ohio State lost the court battle, I imagine it would have been plastered all over the front page, possibly written in Comic Sans and likely worthy of a breaking news blast on Sportscenter. They would have featured their anchors popping champagne and reenacting every P-Diddy video ever made.

This puts one more element of the nightmare behind Buckeye Nation. Perhaps someday ESPN will get over their…well…their whatever. Until then, we’ll always have this win.

I present to you the room full of people who still care about Tatgate, Talbott, etc:

If someone can explain to me the point of this article, I’d appreciate it. Also, if someone can point me to the articles involving the other 30 or so institutions being investigated that are NOT Ohio State, I’d appreciate that as well.

Thanks in advance,
Krista

Yesterday I was out of the loop on most everything except celebrity gossip. It was an eventful day at the day job, I was furiously scrambling to get this page launched and after that I was more interested in sleep than in paying a lot of attention to the news. So, I wasn’t aware until much later that ESPN had breaking news on the NCAA investigation of Ohio State. As soon as I’d gotten wind of this, I did what any rational human being with a love of all things Buckeye should do.

I dropped an F bomb and promptly logged onto Twitter.

When the Tatgate updates were breaking harder than Joe Theisman’s leg, they would fill my twitter feed for hours and hours over several days. I had to go back 9 hours to find anything on this “breaking news” and it was a tweet from, of course, ESPN. Really? That’s it? Ok.

When I don’t see anything there my phone is generally blowing up. When bad things happen, I get 500 text message from friends telling me how screwed the Buckeyes are. I was camping the weekend that Tressel stepped down. I knew this had happened in less than 5 minutes because 5 people texted me the news. I had no TV, no internet, nothing. I still knew before some of the actual members of the team. Yesterday, I got nothing. In fact I’m pretty sure the only text I got was asking me if I wanted to know about my secret crush. I don’t.

I actually had to Google it. How archaic. I have multiple social media platforms and a smart phone and I had to do all of the legwork myself.

Lame.

The first article I stumbled upon was from ESPN. Title is ominous, but not really clear.

Ohio State still under scrutiny.

Well, yeah. Even when they are not under scrutiny they are under scrutiny.

The NCAA notified Ohio State by letter last week that it is still investigating other issues involving the program.

Hmmm…well that’s weird since they just sent a letter a couple of weeks ago saying they were done…wow new allegations…that would be…

The result could be a second notice of allegations and a second trip through the NCAA justice system.

OSU spokesman Jim Lynch said president Gordon Gee got a letter from the NCAA on Aug. 3 but that it said “absolutely nothing about additional allegations.”

“The university has not received any additional allegations from the NCAA.” Lynch said. “As a member institution, we are committed to working together with the NCAA to examine any information concerning potential violations of NCAA legislation. We do not anticipate discussing any additional allegations with the Committee on Infractions on Friday other than those self reported in March, 2011.”

Wait, what? So, what exactly is the breaking news? ESPN is reporting that the NCAA sent a letter investigating other allegations but there are no other allegations presented and they really don’t know what is actually in the letter? What in the…

Among the reports since then: an ESPN “Outside The Lines” story alleging that former Ohio State quarterback Terrelle Pryor was paid thousands of dollars in exchange for signed gear by local memorabilia collector, photographer and Buckeyes fan Dennis Talbott; an “OTL” report about Pryor and other Buckeyes playing free rounds of golf with Talbott at a Columbus-area country club; and a Columbus Dispatch report that scrutinized dozens of automobile sales to Ohio State athletes and family members from a pair of Columbus-area dealerships.

Ohhh…there it is. So, even though neither NCAA or OSU are stating there are other allegations, ESPN is assuming that the NCAA is looking into what was reported on their “Outside the Lines” show.

Most of this crap revolves around Pryor and a handful of others who spent a lot of time with him. So, like, 6 people have been proven to have screwed up. Even the additional alleged allegations, a term I am fairly certain is grammatically incorrect on a level few can comprehend, as put forth by ESPN revolve around him. This will likely not increase violations to “Lack of Institutional Control” level unless they found out that everyone all the way up the chain knew and did nothing. I doubt that happens as even if someone alleges it, Tressel is standing firm on his statements to the contrary and, thus far, the NCAA has no evidence proving otherwise.

The day Pryor signed with OSU. Or, as I like to call it, "Buckacalypse now"

This article from CBS Sports sums it up well with this:

For as much as this reported letter is, it’s also important to emphasize what it isn’t: another notice of allegations. As Ohio State announced, there have been no new allegations brought against the school, and ESPN’s report doesn’t make clear what’s in the actual letter sent from the NCAA to OSU. So from a material standpoint, Ohio State is in no worse shape right now than it was before it received the letter.

That cannot be emphasized enough. They are still meeting Friday. That has not changed and likely will not change in the less than 24-hour window remaining. They are closer to deciding the penalty for the known allegations. It’s likely that if anything else is found after that, the infractions committee won’t discuss the new allegations until a later date. This likely (though not definitively) means those penalties (if they exist, which no one seems sure about as ESPN has no idea what was in the letter) won’t apply in 2011. We also still don’t know what they will do about Tatgate. Many think the letter stating this is pretty much on Tressel means the program won’t get hammered, many others are walking around with giant signs saying “the end is nigh”. It’s the NCAA so you never know. Tomorrow will be a big day.

There is one thing I know, however, and that is that I want this crap over and done with so we can talk about actual, real, on the field football stuff. I’m tired of this junk.

And lets all admit it, Buckeye fans, we are all dying to know what is in that letter and we are hoping it is something positive so we can be all “in your face” to the haters.