Former Youngstown State player Ray Isaac (who went through similar trials as a player to those of Terrelle Pryor) recently came to the defense of his former head coach in an interview with Sports Radio Interviews:
“The article is a big lie. I think that I’ve only done two interviews since 1991, since all the allegations came out. … I did both of those interviews in 2003 and I was displeased with how those articles came out. So I have not done another interview since then. I’m very displeased with the article. The article is chewed up. If you look at the paragraph that goes into what I was allegedly to have said, it is poorly written. It doesn’t give any facts or clarity.”
Isaac says what was written about Tressel is a lie, and that he is as good a person as you will ever meet:
“Jim Tressel is as good a man as you’ll ever meet. It’s almost to the point where it’s hokey; you would think he is phony. Jim Tressel is like the person you want to be when you grow up. … He’s always treated me like a son, always got on my case. I’m just appalled by the lack of facts in the article concerning me and him. … It almost looked like he read 50 articles of the Jim Tressel/Ray Isaac situation and mixed them all together and then wrote a paragraph because he could not get any words out of my mouth.”
NCAA President Mark Emmert also did an interview with the same station today, and sounded off on his opinions of whether or not college student-athletes should be paid:
“No, I disagree with that. I’m as adamant as I’ve ever been about having student athletes be students. We do in fact provide it to many of our universities – full cost of attendance scholarships and financial aid. It’s really consistent with everything that goes on inside of universities and it wasn’t widely covered in the media. This was something I’ve been talking about again for six months. The notion of converting student athletes to employees and providing them with a salary and changing their status from one student athlete to ‘quasi-professional’ that’s where I draw the line and I draw it sharply.”
Clearly everything that we have read and heard is only the beginning of what appears to be a long line of “He said, she said” rumors and defenses of those rumors.