This past weekend there was something curious that happened at Ohio State University, though.
The story is that a prized football recruit Alex Anzalone, has decided to "uncommit" to the University because there is a convicted sex offender, Charles Waugh, who has been attending spring games and has been in communication with both players and football recruits, some of which are still young high school students. There are photos of this offender with these young men and one photo in particular has Waugh and Anzalone in the same photo. For this reason, Anzalone opted to not play in Columbus. He does not want to associated with a program that has let this happen.
At the same time, one gets the impression by Sal Anzalone, Alex's father, that there might be more to the story. He said,
"You don't want your son to go to a place where there's a potential issue [like this]." "You expect the staff to have some sort of control on how things are handled with recruits when they visit. This is ridiculous."
It sounds like Mr. Anzalone might be implying that there is not much restriction at the University when young and/or underage recruits visit Columbus and there might be a history of unsupervision over the recruits. Mr. Waugh is a registered sex offender who, a few years ago, was convicted of possessing illicit underage photos. Yet, Mr. Waugh had access to young men visiting the campus and the proof, among other things, is the photos he has with them. Waugh is in a photo with Alex Anzalone and at least that one photo is the reason why recruit Anzalone will not be attending OSU. Hopefully, the worst of it is over, OSU will keep tighter watch over who interacts with the young men and the only thing that remains are the creepy photos of Waugh with the recruits.
While the university immediately issued emails to its student body cautioning them of Waugh's attempts to be in contact with some of the players and recruits, it came just last week, a bit late. God only knows how much contact Waugh had with players and recruits and it makes one curious about how long they allowed anyone, including registered sex offenders, to be in contact with their young recruits while on campus unsupervised and what they are going to do to keep it from happening again.
Hopefully, both recently-former coach Jim Tressel and new coach Urban Meyer have been and will be very protective of their underage recruits so that this breach never happens again and, at the same time, I pray that this the end of the story.
Father Marc A. Vicari
