The resignation of Jim Tressel as Ohio State coach has sent shockwaves around the sports world on this Memorial Day.
My ESPN.com colleagues are weighing in on Tressel, the Ohio State scandal, the coach's legacy and what's next for the Buckeyes.
Let's take a look ...
Pat Forde: "Tressel and Ohio State only gave ground grudgingly, only when cornered, only when damage control was the last available option. ... Whether the prospect of more damaging reports made Tressel's sudden resignation a more convenient moment of reckoning is open to conjecture -- and my conjecture is that it absolutely did. By now, Ohio State would do well to send Tressel's superiors/enablers out with him. [Gene] Smith has not distinguished himself in the handling of this scandal, and neither has [E. Gordon] Gee. The school has only managed to do the right thing at NCAA and media gunpoint, not as a proactive display of integrity."
Ivan Maisel: "If the Ohio State administrators appeared baffled by the facts of Tressel's culpability, his colleagues in the coaching business were flummoxed by his actions. In nearly every in-depth interview I conducted with a head coach this spring, Tressel came up. The coaches yearned for some nugget of information that would explain the inexplicable. There is an inherent tension between a head coach and the athletic department's NCAA compliance official. But a coach withholds information from compliance at his own peril. ... "Jim's deal is a lesson," Oregon State head coach Mike Riley said last month. "Anything that comes up, you've just got to give it to compliance right now. In our world today, you think it's not going to be found out eventually?"
Ryan McGee: "No, the people that have had to trudge through the deepest mudholes of the Tressel mess, and will have to continue to do so in his absence, are the ones who have spent their entire lives proudly wearing the scarlet and grey. The folks who have the Block 'O' in the back window of their SUVs, who dress their kids like Brutus for Halloween, who have 'Hang On Sloopy' played at their wedding receptions. It's this level of passion that causes them to lash out when they feel as though those teams are being attacked, defending the coaches and administrators to no end, even as the evidence begins to mount. And it's that passion that makes it sting so badly when having to see one's colors splashed across magazine covers and leading cable newscasts as the symbol of everything that's wrong with college sports."
Jamie Newberg: "The sudden resignation of Ohio State coach Jim Tressel on Monday caught some members of the Buckeyes' Class of 2012 off guard, but it didn't cause any immediate defections."
There's also much more ...
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Be sure and keep up with all of the blog coverage of Tressel's resignation. And there's much more to come.