(Note: WFNY doesn’t have a singular editorial voice.  Today we will obviously have a lot of Ohio State posts as it is such big news.  Remember that each writer’s opinion is their own.)

Throughout history there have been cycles. Empires have risen, and inevitably, they have fallen. The same can be said of sports, to a certain degree. In particular, in major college athletics, the system ruled the most by money, profit, and power, you can only experience so much success before your success begins to attract unwanted attention.

It’s a pattern that plays itself out far too often. University is successful, media begins to focus on program and inevitably finds loose ends, University stands behind coach, more media info comes out, boosters and donors get nervous and begin to melt under intense scrutiny, University parts ways with coach in an effort to keep their hands out and their palms up. And life goes on.

That’s the way college sports tend to work, and it’s the way the Jim Tressel era has ended at The Ohio State University. In many ways, this ending was so spectacularly destructive that it seems like this was really the only way this ever could have ended. Like the brightest star imploding into its own violent death, so too has arguably the most glorious era of Buckeye football been crushed under its own weight. [Read more...]