Sports

Ohio St. president, AD should be 2nd & 3rd down

Jim Tressel did the only thing he could yesterday by resigning as Ohio State’s football coach.

You can’t preach accountability to your players and then not be accountable for your own actions. You can’t lie about not having been accountable.

You can only hope that over time people will remember you were a good coach who won a national title and owned Michigan. In Columbus, that’s good enough, which is sad.

Now it’s time for Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith and university president E. Gordon Gee to demonstrate that they also are accountable by stepping down. They have failed in their most basic responsibilities.

As recently as one week ago, Smith affirmed his support for Tressel, though he knew his coach had turned a blind eye to players receiving improper benefits and then lying about what he knew.

Smith runs the largest athletic department in the nation with 36 sports and a budget in excess of $90 million, a department intended to operate according to the university’s mission statement:

“The highest sense of integrity shall characterize every aspect of policy, performance and programs. All participants shall exemplify impeccable integrity — be they student athletes, coaching staff, administrative professionals or support staff of the department.”

Former Ohio State football player Ray Small recently told the school’s student newspaper, The Lantern, that it was common practice for athletes to receive preferential treatment like free tattoos for autographs and great deals on cars.

“I don’t see why it’s a big deal,” Small said.

Smith failed to convey the university’s athletic department mission statement to the athletes. He did not foster an atmosphere of compliance.

The NCAA continues to investigate Ohio State, and there’s a possibility that athletes in other sports less famous than star Buckeyes quarterback Terrelle Pryor might have paid less to have “Only God can Judge Me” or another philosophical message tattooed on their triceps.

“They have a lot [of dirt] on everybody,” Small said of the NCAA, “because everybody was doing it.”

Gee hired Smith. Gee came to Ohio State from Vanderbilt with a reputation as an academic. He eliminated the athletics department in Nashville, placing it under the auspices of the Division of Student Life.

Gee once said, “Many athletic departments exist as separate, almost semi-autonomous fiefdoms within universities and there is the feeling that the name on the football jersey is little more than a ‘franchise’ for sports fans.”

Gee’s worst fears appear to have come true on his watch — the scarlet-and-gray jerseys now are a scarlet letter for the university. New leadership is needed, not just in the football program.

lenn.robbins@nypost.com