Young out for game amid investigation
Ohio State announced Friday morning that standout defensive end Chase Young will miss Saturday’s game against Maryland as the school’s athletic department investigates “a possible NCAA issue from 2018” that may affect his eligibility.
After the school’s announcement, Young wrote on Twitter that he “made a mistake last year by accepting a loan from a family friend I’ve known since the summer before my freshman year at OSU.”
“I repaid it in full last summer and I’m working with the University and NCAA to get back on the field as soon as possible,” Young added.
Tim Nevius, a lawyer and former NCAA investigator who is representing Young as he deals with the NCAA, wrote Friday on Twitter that “Chase took a small loan from a close family friend last year to cover basic life expenses” and that the loan was repaid “months ago and we’re working to restore his eligibility.”
“Unfair and outdated @NCAA rules punish athletes for making ends meet while enriching everyone else,” he added.
According to the NCAA Division
I manual, student-athletes may receive a loan from an “established family friend” so long as it’s not given because of that person’s athletic ability or reputation, that the person providing the loan “is not considered a representative of the institution’s athletics interests” and that the “relationship between the individual providing the loan and the student-athlete existed prior to the initiation of the student-athlete’s recruitment.”
At least one college football insider, Bruce Feldman of Fox Sports, suggested the suspension might only last one game.
Young, a junior who attended high school near the Maryland campus, has 13.5 sacks this season, which leads the nation. He is one away from the Buckeyes’ single-season record and has more than what 28 NCAA teams have compiled. He has recorded a sack in 10 consecutive games, with four of them coming two weeks ago in a dominant win over then-No. 13 Wisconsin. Young is one of only two defensive players to be named a semifinalist for the Maxwell Award, given annually to the nation’s best college football player and is regarded to be in the running for the Heisman Trophy, which has been awarded to only one defensive player.
“He’s become such a complete player,” Maryland coach Michael Locksley said of Young, per the Post’s Emily Giambalvo. “His size, his speed, his athleticism and his power are all the things that make him a great player. It’ll be a tough opponent for us, and they do a good job again of trying to create the matchups. What we’ve got to do obviously when we game plan and week to week, it’s how to take away the guys that can wreck your game plan. You can bet that he’ll have our full attention in how we protect and turn the protection and help make sure that we don’t allow him to disrupt what we want to do to try to move the football.”
Ohio State will travel to 2-7 Rutgers after the Maryland game but then will close the regular season at home against No. 5 Penn State and on the road at No. 14 Michigan.
The Buckeyes (8-0) were ranked No. 1 in the first College Football Playoff rankings, which were released this week. No team that was ranked No. 1 in the initial CFP rankings has ever gone on to win the national championship.