Teddy Greenstein on Tressel "resignation"

I mentioned this in the Tressel Out thread on the sports/news board, but thought it may be good for discussion here.

Some of Greenstein's column on Tressel in the Tribune today, smacks of being too little, too late.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/columnists/greenstein/ct-spt-0531-tressel-ohio-state-chicag20110530,0,2866929.column

I don't remember Greenstein saying anything about "we all saw this coming" with Tressel before it actually came. Is it chicken-shit to write that now, when he wasn't willing to stick his neck out and say it before it happened? Here's something he wrote a month ago about Tressel, without any "we all see what's coming" to be found ...

"Teddy Greenstein, Chicago Tribune
The Jim Tressel question comes down to this: Should one monumental screw-up end his reign? I’d be willing to give The Vest a second chance if he’d finally fess up about why he lied to the NCAA and failed to inform superiors that some players had traded their reputations for tattoos.
It wasn’t that he was “scared” about an investigation involving the FBI. Tressel hid the truth because he didn’t want his players suspended and thought he could get away with it.
Ohio State, though, will have to pull the plug if the NCAA treats the school as a repeat offender and decides to take away scholarships, TV time and victories from 2010. That stain will be too strong for Tressel to blot out."

And the quote about Tressel telling fellow Big Ten coaches 2 weeks ago that the NCAA has his head on a platter? Assuming he didn't just get that quote relayed to him on Monday, that would have been something that was worthy of being included in a story before now. I'm sure the quote was fed to him by Pat Fitzgerald, but if I was Greenstein's editor, I'd like to know when and under what context (on or off the record) it was obtained, and from whom. If it was off the record, why was it OK to use the quote in today's column?

 

Any of this surprises you?

 

Perhaps the most irrelevant major-newspaper columnist I've ever run across. 18 inches of nothing.

 

I guess I don't read him enough to know how much of a lightweight he apparently is. Did he used to do the media column at the Trib?

 

He did. Now handles golf in the summer, colleges the rest of the year.

 

Well, I liked the column and used it. I thought his odds on the next coach were especially interesting.

Plus, the man doesn't wear you down with 28 inches of copy.