You know this had to be coming.
Since the NCAA has now made it legal for amateur college athletes to make money off of their name, image, and likeness, the whole silly tattoos for memorabilia thing is back in the news.
You remember it well right? Well, at least those of you that are old enough. If not, we’ll catch you up. When Terrelle Pryor was the quarterback at Ohio State, he and four others — “the tattoo five” — as they are calling themselves, were found to be exchanging memorabilia for tattoos. It all resulted in a suspension for Pryor, DeVier Posey, Dan Herron, Mike Adams, and Solomon Thomas. It also wiped out the wins from the entire 2010 season.
Well, now those five have penned an open letter to the NCAA to restore their records and wins from that year, quoting NIL as a reason to make what they feel was a wrong, right.
Pryor shared the open letter on his Twitter account with what appears to be the blessing of the other four that you can look read for yourselves.
The time has come @NCAA @OSU_AD @OhioStAthletics @Channel75live @DPo8 @BOOMHERRON1 #solomonThomas @AdamSchefter we should get our wins back records back and legacy of @JimTressel5 back and not looked past it! NCAA suspended us but let us play in the sugar bowl win vs Arkansas pic.twitter.com/pGpEvJCbx5
— Terrelle Pryor SR (@TerrellePryor) July 13, 2021
It must be noted that this does seem to fall in the same general light as NIL, but a lot of those rules and abilities are still being determined by the NCAA. It should also be noted that what the “tattoo five” did would not be allowable by the OSU NIL student-athlete guidelines as they are written today.
Still, yeah, it’s kind of silly how much these five got railed on for what probably would have been a footnote today — especially with what other programs have gotten away with in the years since.
Contact/Follow us @BuckeyesWire on Twitter, and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Ohio State news, notes and opinion.
