Tressel Resigns

ESPN:

Embattled coach Jim Tressel, two months after publicly apologizing for fallout that resulted in suspensions for him and several of his players, has resigned from Ohio State.
"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 Monday morning. "The appreciation that Ellen and I have for the Buckeye Nation is immeasurable."
Assistant coach Luke Fickell, who had been named to fill in for Tressel during the first five games of the 2011 season in which he was to be suspended, will take over as the interim head coach, Ohio State said in the news release.
Tressel was entering his 11th season as head coach for the Buckeyes. He finishes with a 106-22 record at Ohio State (66-14 in the Big Ten). He won a national championship in 2002, seven Big Ten championships, including the past six, and had a 9-1 record against Michigan.
School president E. Gordon Gee announced Tressel's departure in a letter sent to Ohio State trustees.
"As you all know, I appointed a special committee to analyze and provide advice to me regarding issues attendant to our football program," the letter said, according to The Columbus Dispatch, which first reported Tressel's decision. "In consultation with the senior leadership of the University and the senior leadership of the Board, I have been actively reviewing the matter and have accepted Coach Tressel's resignation.

Wow, I didn't anticipate that news on Memorial Day.  After the fact, I don't feel the schadenfreude which came with the allegations of Coach Tressel's coverup.  After he accepted responsibility and resigned, I feel more pity towards him that so much good work will be buried under his mistakes.  Good luck to him.

Update:  Ivan Maisel feels somewhat the same way:

It would be easy to convict the former Buckeyes coach with his own testimony. His 2008 book, "The Winners Manual: For the Game of Life," has 268 pages of maxims, philosophy and kitchen-table wisdom that the coach failed to follow.

"Discipline is what you do when no one else is looking!" (p. 73) is a keeper.
But taking delight in his demise feels hollow. In the end, a quiet resignation on a holiday weekend, Tressel left behind a sport mystified that a coach so smart would commit career suicide.
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.

It is a shame that Jim Tressel failed to follow his own advice, as Maisel notes:

And Woody Hayes won 76 percent of his games, made the College Football Hall of Fame and remains a statewide icon more than two decades after his death. Hayes committed acts that would have been grounds for firing at many schools long before Ohio State fired him in 1978. The university defended him longer and louder than anyone believed possible because of his ability as a coach, as a teacher and a molder of men.

Until it couldn't, which brings us back to Tressel. He won 83 percent of his games. He will someday make the College Football Hall of Fame. Ohio State loved how he represented as a coach, a teacher and a molder of men.

Chapter 10 of Tressel's book is entitled "Responsibility." The chapter discusses how Tressel stresses to his teams to accept responsibility and "do right." With his resignation, Tressel performed the former for not performing the latter.

Hypocrisy is never pretty when exposed.  That is a reason why I try to remind others of my own faults. If I let them put me up on a pedestal, they are bound to be disappointed at some point.  Jim Tressel tried to use the reputation he'd built up to sustain him through this disaster, and it just made the fall that much worse.  We shouldn't leave Gene Smith and Gordon Gee alone, either.  They also look pretty sad in this affair, and Gee especially, should catch hell.