Earlier this month, the Buckeyes’ program made more big news for the wrong reason.

The New York Times carried an investigative story that detailed possible academic fraud in Ohio State’s football program.

The story reported that a teaching assistant at Ohio State said standout running back Maurice Clarett passed a couple of courses by taking an oral exam after walking out of a mid-term and not taking the final test.

Andrew Bagnato of the Chicago Tribune reported a rather strange thing about the Times story.

Well, actually, a strange thing about Ohio State coach Jim Tressel.

"I have to be honest with you," Tressel said at this week’s Big Ten’s Kickoff meetings in Chicago. "I didn’t read it."

Frankly, I find that hard to believe.

Frankly, if I were Tressel, I wouldn’t admit I didn’t read the story.

He’s got to have read the story. He needs to read any story—good, bad or indifferent—about Ohio State football.

The last thing he wants people to think is that all he ever reads are X’s and O’s.

My gosh, if I remember right, Tressel’s boss--Ohio State athletic director Andy Geiger--called a press conference after the Times story appeared. TV cameras were there. Reporters—both electronic and print—were there. Where was Tressel when that took place? Why wouldn’t Geiger have talked with Tressel about the Times story?

Of course, Tressel isn’t the first coach to say he hasn’t read something—especially something of a controversial nature. It’s an old game played by a lot of guys who wear whistles around their necks and say they’re playing ‘em one at a time.

It’s my feeling that most coaches read anything they can get their hands on about themselves and their teams.

Even Hayden Fry, Iowa’s retired coach.

I used to get a big kick out of Fry at press conferences during the week and after games.

He’d try to fool reporters by telling them he didn’t read newspapers. But when he was upset about something that was printed, he’d say something like, "One of my coaches put that article on my desk."

Then he’d proceed to tell everyone how far off base the reporter was and how unfair the story was.

And somehow the clipping wound up being bulletin board material for the Hawkeyes.

A proposal by the Atlantic Coast Conference asks the NCAA to change its rules to allow leagues with 10 or more teams [the Big Ten is actually the Big Eleven] to hold money-making title games. The Big 12 and Southeastern Conferences have had such games in recent years.

"I don’t think I’ve heard any discussion that would lead me to believe that if it were possible, we would do it," Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany said.

Said Wisconsin coach Barry Alvarez: "As I’ve visited with some of the other coaches in the leagues who have playoffs, I don’t think any of them are very excited about [it]. I think it diminishes some of the season and I think it’s a letdown for the team that’s had a great season, then puts their season on the line for a playoff game.

"The reason, and the only reason, is for a paycheck."

Well, I’ll tell you this. A guy who coaches in the Big 12, not the Big Ten, would do anything legally possible to get his team in a conference playoff game.

He’s Dan McCarney of Iowa State. McCarney just happens to have been on the same staff at Iowa as Alvarez and was Alvarez’s defensive coordinator at Wisconsin.

The Lindy’s Big 12 magazine is now on the newsstands. In the Iowa State story I wrote for that magazine, McCarney told me, "We’ve brought respect to our program. Now we want to be in a position where we can make a run at the Big 12 championship every year….where we’re a team that has a shot to be in the race.

"We’ve finished third in the North Division of the Big 12 three years in a row. Now we have to figure out what it’s going to take to make the next step—where we don’t have to be satisfied watching two other teams play in the championship game.

"We’ve already done a lot of things people said we couldn’t do and a lot of things some people didn’t want us to do. Those things make you feel good, but then there’s that next step—going after the championship."

Iowa opens its football season Aug. 30 against Miami of Ohio at Kinnick Stadium in Iowa City.

Iowa State plays at Northern Illinois on Sept. 27.

It just so happens that Miami is expected to win the Eastern Division of the Mid-American Conference, and Northern Illinois is favored to win the Western Division as well as the overall league title.

Miami, which lost to Iowa, 29-24, at home last season, is led by quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, who passed for 343 yards in the 2002 game.