There's a great bit about this stuff in Football Outsiders a friend just linked to me.
The long and short of it is to be competitive in college football over time you need relatively low academic standards, a big athletic budget, and talent in the immediate area. So the study points this out about TOSU.
"One of the most overlooked aspects of the decline and fall of Jim Tressel
is the fact that of all the teams in the Big Ten, Ohio State had the least
reason to cheat. The school has such a strong competitive advantage that
it’s almost as if it was created for the sole purpose of being good at
football."
http://www.footballoutsiders.com/st...ce-centric-model-ncaa-football-success-part-i
That quote is from part 2. It basically says TOSU has a very soft academic requirement for football, a huge budget, and in an area full of talent. It's a fascinating point in that they didn't really HAVE to cheat.
Compare that with say Stanford with much higher academics, much smaller budget and much less talent in the immediate area(and if you count So Cal they're competing with schools like USC that were cheating for years).
Continues to amaze me when people say Harbaugh was overrated, I don't know if he'll win at SF or not but the man did an INCREDIBLE job at Stanford.
