The System: The Glory and Scandal of Big-Time College Football

by Jeff Benedict

  And then Smith said he never saw or heard from Bobby D. for almost five years.

  It was listed in the Cornerstone of Hope’s Ninth Annual Benefit Gala program as live auction item number 1005.

  Two (2) season tickets for OSU’s 2012 home football games. See them all in the ’Shoe. Live the excitement of Buckeye football! O-H-I-O. Watch OSU beat Miami (Ohio), Central Florida, California, UAB, Nebraska, Purdue, Illinois and Michigan!

  Value: Priceless.

  The Disney on Ice package had already come and gone in spirited bidding in the ballroom at the Embassy Suites in Independence, Ohio. Tickets to Kenny Chesney and Tim McGraw’s Brothers of the Sun Tour and the autographed Muhammad Ali boxing gloves had raised thousands more. Now auction paddles popped into the air chasing the OSU seats. A thousand. Two thousand. Twenty-five hundred. Three thousand. Thirty-five hundred … sold!

  A guest from out of town turned to the man of the hour and whispered, “Those are your season tickets.”

  “Yes,” said Bobby D. “They are.”

  Or were.

  Five months earlier, on September 21, 2011, Robert DiGeronimo had been banned from Ohio State athletics for ten years for providing $2,405 in “extra benefits” to a total of nine football players between 2009 and 2011. He was notified of his “immediate disassociation” in a letter from athletic director Smith. Smith cited DiGeronimo’s refusal to meet with NCAA and university officials in the “tattoo-gate” investigation; that DiGeronimo had “deliberately” not complied with NCAA rules covering money and extra benefits. Furthermore, six days earlier, DiGeronimo had been quoted in the Cleveland Plain Dealer saying, “Quite honestly, if there’s no tattoo-gate, this thing [the NCAA investigation] doesn’t come out.” Smith admonished DiGeronimo for publicly implying he intentionally broke NCAA rules.

  “The University is outraged and disappointed with this conduct,” wrote Smith.

  During his interview, NCAA investigator Chance Miller had asked the AD if he had ever been invited to a Cornerstone of Hope event.

  “Never, never even—never actually heard the term Cornerstone of Hope until our case,” Smith said.

  Pity. The ninth annual gala was something to see. A sold-out, well-heeled crowd of nearly seven hundred had packed the place in support of a charity dedicated to love and loss. “Walking the journey of grief,” the co-founder Christi Tripodi described it.

  Tripodi’s personal journey had begun on Mother’s Day 2000. Her three-year-old son had been running a high fever and had taken a turn for the worse. Tripodi and her husband, Mark, rushed their son to the emergency room at a local children’s hospital. They figured a couple of hours and he would be back home in bed. Mom and Dad didn’t come home until the next night. When they did, their son wasn’t with them. He had died from an infection caused by bacterial meningitis. Little Bobby.

  “I’ll never forget when they came back and Mark, my son-in-law, had unhooked his son, held his boy,” the child’s grandfather said in the fall of 2012. Bobby D. took a deep breath. “And now you’ve got to understand, for the next six months Christi couldn’t get out of bed.”

  Seven brothers and sisters essentially moved into Christi and Mark’s tiny house, staying night after night, never letting their sister out of their sight.

  “Life was not the same for us anymore,” said Bobby D.

  And then, one day, a father heard a sound he had not heard in eighteen months. “I heard her laugh,” he said. “And I said, ‘Thank you, Jesus.’ Because I didn’t know if I was ever going to hear her laugh again.”

  Almost two years later Christi called her dad and said, “We have to own a place.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A place where people can get help. Will you be on the board?”

  Bobby D. figured his daughter was just talking. Two weeks later there was a board meeting. Bobby D. thought, Hmm, they’re serious.

  “How will this be funded?” he asked his daughter.

  A party center, she said.

  No way, said her dad.

  But word got out about the idea. Dino Lucarelli, the longtime director of public relations and alumni relations for the Cleveland Browns, called. Bobby D., you’ve helped a lot of people over the years, Dino said. You want to cash in some chips?

  Yeah, said Bobby, I do.

  In 2003, Cornerstone of Hope found space in a building DiGeronimo owned. It stayed in that space until a new place was built. The first real headquarters grew out of the converted old house on Brecksville Road in Independence where Sam and Mary DiGeronimo had raised their seven kids.

  Bobby cashed in a lot of chips. Construction buddies, a big mechanical contractor, electricians, plumbers, the union guys, all anted up, donating about $600,000 in time and material. DiGeronimo personally put in $400,000 of his own money. And there it was: a rambling, warm, welcoming “Home for the Grieving.” Bright, airy rooms upstairs for art therapy right next to a padded room where kids could untangle their emotions and let off steam; private counseling offices; a prayer garden. And the Mary DiGeronimo Chapel right as you walked in. Bobby D.’s mother’s wedding dress preserved with honor in a back corner where parents and friends sat and prayed.

  “Saint Mary,” said Bobby D., “for putting up with Sam.”

  Former Buckeyes star running back Robert Smith served as the master of ceremonies for the 2012 gala. A college football analyst on ESPN, Smith left Ohio State as one of the Buckeyes’ all-time greats and went on to set the Minnesota Vikings’ career rushing record with more than sixty-eight hundred yards before Adrian Peterson eclipsed it in 2012. The room was loaded with men who had proudly worn the scarlet and gray: another great running back, Beanie Wells; quarterback Troy Smith; wide receiver Ted Ginn Jr.; and linebacker Tom Cousineau, another certified legend, still cool as can be, rockin’ an Elvis Costello look.

  At DiGeronimo’s table sat another proud Buckeye. Jim Conroy was a successful Cleveland attorney who toiled on the offensive line on the 1968 national championship team under Woody Hayes. He and his wife had recently lost their twenty-seven-year-old son to suicide. Cornerstone had helped them deal with unimaginable grief.

  “Everybody in this room loves Bobby,” he said.

  Two chairs away Troy Smith sat down and quietly started talking to DiGeronimo. Bobby D. just listened. In person, he bore more than a passing resemblance to the actor James Caan. He had on a black velvet jacket, creased pants, a striped shirt and a muted tie. His shoes sparkled. His dark, slicked-back hair defied Father Time.

  You could tell by the look on Smith’s face that he was in need of some kind of help. Bobby D. had done a lot of listening and a world of good for Ohio State athletes over the years. “Bobby, can you help?” they asked. And he did. Not because he had to. Because, he said, it was the right thing to do.

  “Now, you lose a grandson, it’s about giving back even more,” he said. “Now you want to do more.”

  Before the dinner began, a steady stream of well-wishers had stopped by the table for a handshake, a hug, a “How ya doing?”

  “Thank you, thank you for coming, for your support,” said Bobby D.

  DiGeronimo’s ban seemed to add a sense of urgency to the auction. When the night was over, the 2012 benefit netted a record $350,000—nearly half of Cornerstone of Hope’s annual budget.

  At a press conference dealing with additional charges against the school relative to employment and gala violations, Gene Smith made clear exactly who this “rogue” booster was, as if everyone in the state of Ohio didn’t already know. Smith mentioned DiGeronimo’s name at least three times when talking about the school’s banning him from the athletic program for ten years. In large part, he explained, due to DiGeronimo’s decision not to cooperate with the school or the investigation.

  “We realized that wasn’t going to happen,” said Smith, “so we ultimately disassociated.”

  In his press conference Smith took great pains to point out that the failures at OSU were not institu
tional but rather “failures of individual athletes, a previous coach and a booster.”

  “So it’s not a systemic failure of compliance,” he said. “I’m optimistic and I’m confident that we will not have those charges.”

  Longtime observers of college sports saw Smith’s presser for what it was: a systematic attempt to turn Bobby D. into the designated fall guy; to toss him on the altar of the powerful NCAA Committee on Infractions to avoid the dreaded “lack of institutional control” charge; to protect a cash-cow football program and the Ohio State brand at all costs. Thirty-five years of faithful support jettisoned almost overnight, a month before the NCAA released its official report.

  As a college star, Robert Smith had seen a previous model of the system at work. He had openly tangled with the athletic department and head coach, John Cooper, for not allowing him to spend more time on academics in order to pursue a career in medicine. He knew full well what had happened to Bobby D., and he didn’t like it one bit. That’s why Smith welcomed the crowd with an impassioned speech praising a man who, few knew, had helped Smith during a particularly difficult period. They continued to speak every couple of weeks.

  “I love you like a father,” Smith said, looking directly at Bobby D. “You did more than my father did for me, more than any father could.”

  Nine months later.

  The downtown tour had started north on Ninth Street just as Progressive Field, home of the Indians, came into view. “That’s our building there,” said DiGeronimo from behind the wheel of his Escalade. Early-evening traffic was light. The SUV rolled past the PNC Center, Superior Square, the old Medical Mutual building and the Justice Center. Independence Excavating had dug the holes for every single one of those jobs. Several more landmark buildings were proudly pointed out—the Quicken Loans Arena, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the Science Center, the casino. Buildings imploded, dirt dug, removed, reused or sold; it was a commodity, like corn or wheat. Big jobs. DiGeronimo looped around the biggest job, Browns Stadium. Demolition, excavation, plus a ton of site work.

  “Forty million dollars,” said Bobby D.

  Dirt had been in the DiGeronimo family for more than sixty years. Ever since Bobby’s wild, ball-busting dad had arrived from Italy at about sixteen, worked in a factory, then opened a small general contracting business around 1950. The family operation was now spread across six privately held businesses—excavation, asbestos abatement, car wash, light materials division, a recycling center in Florida and communications. It employed more than a thousand people, four hundred with Independence Excavating alone. Over the last twenty years the DiGeronimos had helped reshape downtown Cleveland, rebuild it from below the ground up. The kids ran things now. Nine boys, some on the business side, others involved in field work or project management, and Bobby’s daughter Lisa, who was in charge of human resources. Nieces and nephews all over the place. At sixty-five, Bobby was construction director emeritus, the big boss who stopped by every morning for coffee with the guys, checked out the jobs downtown and made a call or two when needed. The DiGeronimo Companies had grossed more than $200 million in 2012.

  “We’ve been very lucky, very blessed,” said Bobby D.

  DiGeronimo’s association with Ohio State athletics, his entry into the world of boosters, began back in the late 1970s when the head basketball coach, Eldon Miller, heard about him through the Columbus construction grapevine and called him up.

  “Would you employ one of our players?” he asked.

  “Absolutely,” said Bobby D.

  According to the university, from about 1988 until 2011 DiGeronimo had donated approximately $72,000 to Ohio State athletics—an average of about $3,000 a year—and purchased a number of season tickets for both basketball and football. One year, in honor of John Cooper’s famed “Silver Bullet” defense, somebody asked Bobby D. if he could come up with sixty silver chains and bullets to give to the kids as keepsakes. Sure, he said.

  “They would always ask when they needed something,” said Bobby D. “Not that I was keeping score.”

  A day with Bobby D. began on a slate-gray Saturday in November 2012 in what looked to be a lodge but was actually the DiGeronimo home. It was three days before the presidential election. President Obama was making one last swing through the crucial battleground state. Daughter Christi and her husband, Mark, lived down and around a wooded lane near one edge of the forty-three-acre family compound. Brother Vic was in back with a stunning Italian job that would have fit in nicely next to George Clooney’s place on Lake Como.

  At Bobby D.’s house, where the clocks chimed, talk turned to Jim Tressel. DiGeronimo wasted no time.

  “He’s been a phony since I’ve known him in the eighties. He’s always been that way,” he said. “When someone says to me, ‘Jim Tressel, he’s a great guy,’ if he’s someone I know, I say, ‘You know what? I know a different Jim Tressel. You don’t know the Jim Tressel I know.’ ”

  In the early days of The Senator’s term in Columbus, all was good with Bobby D. His personal pizza and pasta delivery service to the coaches and players made regular runs between Cleveland and Columbus. The Buckeyes went undefeated (14-0) in 2002, and Tressel gave Bobby a championship ring, a classy show of thanks.

  As it always does, the national title in 2002 altered the football universe at Ohio State; expectations and outside scrutiny increased. Then came the messy matter of Maurice Clarett. The program needed even tighter controls. Tressel cracked down on access. Gene Smith arrived from Arizona State. By the fall of 2005 the joke was you needed a CIA badge to get into practice; media and other access to players was restricted. On game day all non–Ohio State personnel had to be out of the locker room six minutes before the team took the field. The program was cleaning up its act. But DiGeronimo laughed at the notion that somehow he had been swept out the door.

  “That’s all BS,” he said. “First off, I [had] field passes where it says I have access to the locker room. If I was pushed out of the locker room, I would have never come back. I’m on the field in 2006.

  “One of the most baffling things to me was when he said he caught me hiding in the locker room with another guy [before a game]. If I was hiding in the locker in 2001, why did you still have me on the field in 2006? It doesn’t make any sense.”

  In fact, in May 2005, Tressel sent DiGeronimo a note pointing out how hard the staff was working to be in “absolute compliance” with NCAA rules. In the note Tressel praised DiGeronimo as “one of the greatest friends to Ohio State Athletics.” He closed with this line: “Thanks, Bobby! You are the best!”

  But by the spring of 2007, Tressel no longer had any use for Bobby D. To this day DiGeronimo said he had no idea what triggered it. The first inkling of trouble came in April at Ted Ginn Jr.’s pro-day workout at the Woody Hayes indoor practice facility, which DiGeronimo had raised $100,000 to help build.

  A month before, DiGeronimo had walked right in with Cooper for the Buckeyes’ pro day. Not this time.

  “Bobby, you can’t go in there,” said an OSU assistant coach.

  “Okay,” said DiGeronimo. “Is there a problem?”

  “Coach doesn’t want you in there.”

  DiGeronimo’s phone rang. It was Ted Ginn Sr., Glenville High’s head football coach. He had set up the workout at the facility for his son.

  “I can’t get in there,” DiGeronimo told Ginn.

  “What are you talking about?”

  Bobby D. explained.

  “Wait a minute,” said Ginn.

  As DiGeronimo and his son Kevin finally, thanks to Ginn senior’s intervention, made their way in, Tressel came into view. DiGeronimo said Tressel saw him and walked the other way.

  They stayed forty-five minutes and left.

  Two months later at a Fellowship of Christian Athletes function, Tressel walked up to former Browns head coach Sam Rutigliano. DiGeronimo was at the table as well, but Tressel didn’t say a word to Bobby D.

  “Invisible,” he said.

&nb
sp; Two more months passed. This time the Cavs were in the NBA Finals. DiGeronimo had a grand suite in the Quicken Loans Arena. Tressel was in the arena walking around with NFL legend Jim Brown when the head coach saw DiGeronimo and stuck out his hand.

  “Bobby D., how you doing?” Tressel said, according to DiGeronimo.

  “Hi, Coach,” said Bobby D. and walked right by.

  “Now you’re in Cleveland, you’re on my turf, you’re my friend,” he said. “From that time on there was no sense of me being around a phony.”

  DiGeronimo stopped going to games. “Maybe two football games in the last four years,” he said.

  As the afternoon wore on, the conversation shifted to Gene Smith. DiGeronimo was told that in forty pages of transcript he went from a man Smith barely knew to a “hanger on” to a “bad actor” who “at the end of the day operated outside of the system and went stealth.”

  DiGeronimo’s eyes were closed, his dark head of hair leaning back against the couch.

  “Wow. Bad actor,” he whispered. “Gene Smith is saying that?

  “You know, it’s funny,” DiGeronimo said as he opened his eyes. “I’m reading this book called Surrender, and [it says] if you don’t do this and that … you’re going to hell. And you can’t hate anybody. You got to pray for the people. You know what? I never hated Gene Smith. I don’t respect him. You have to pray for people you don’t like. So you know what, I said a prayer for him.”

  DiGeronimo categorically denied receiving any warnings from Smith to stay away from student-athletes or the program.

  “Never,” said DiGeronimo. “Never called me. Never called me one time. Never.

  “Never any meeting. Never any voice mail. Everything he says is a lie. Everything.”

  DiGeronimo said he had seen or talked to Smith just twice in his life—the last time in the summer or fall of 2011 when Smith asked him to cooperate in the NCAA tattoo/memorabilia mess. The first time, he said, was a twenty-second encounter in 2006 after a lunch with former head football coach Cooper in Columbus.