When the Indianapolis Colts announced last week that they’d hired former Ohio State head coach Jim Tressel as something called a “game-day coordinator”, we openly wondered whether The Vest, like his former quarterback Terrelle Pryor, would be suspended for the first five games of the NFL season.
As it turns out, the league did one better.
It was announced Monday morning by the Colts that Tressel will not be allowed to perform his duties for the first six games of the upcoming NFL season. Tressel will be permitted to begin working with the team, work that will mainly consist of replay reviews on game day, the seventh game of the upcoming season.
“After the announcement of Coach Jim Tressel’s agreement to join the Colts as a game day consultant, questions were raised with respect to the equity of his appointment as opposed to suspensions being served this season by present and former Ohio State players,” Colts vice chairman Bill Polian said in a statement released by the team.
“Over the weekend Coach Tressel, Mr. Irsay, Coach Caldwell and I had a discussion of the issue. In addition, we had a conversation with league officials to apprise them of the details of Coach Tressel’s employment and the issues we were reviewing.”
The statement adds that it was Tressel’s suggestion to sit the first six games. Boy, that sounds awfully familiar...
Tressel had initially been suspended for the first two games of OSU’s 2011 season before he decided to tack three additional games on top of the initial penalty to match that of five of his other players. He ultimately “resigned” on Memorial Day earlier this year under a cloud of controversy, and now that cloud will follow him into the NFL.
And, you know what? Good for the NFL, if for nothing more than, if you’re going to sit a player for something that happened at the collegiate level, you’d damn sure better do the same with a coach. In fact, after the Pryor ruling, the NFL had no other choice but to sit Tressel for at least as many games as his former player.
