I wonder the same thing. Sure, they get better talent overall, but are we really competing on a level playing field? At the Parkersburg Caravan last week, Jim Schaus made a point that I am really proud of. Ohio is one of only 17 D-1 schools to never receive a major rules violation from the NCAA. We may not always agree with the rules, but they are meant to apply evenly across all schools. I think it is a great lesson to teach our student athletes that honor and integrity count. We can play by the rules and still win. As Warren Buffett said about the financial institutions that had operated for years with no ethics or oversight, "It is easy to see who is swimming without any clothes when the tide rolls out."
Some of the more - ahem - senior bobcatattackers might be aware of the situation that I am about to relate.
What you said about Ohio being 1 of only 17 D-1 schools to not receive a major rules violation is accurate - but only technically.
Back in the 1970s, two Ohio coaches were involved in a grades cheating violation. Ohio discovered the misdeeds and self-reported the violations to the NCAA. Ohio fired the two coaches. The NCAA was satisfied with that punishment.
At that time, if a school self-reported a violation and if the NCAA was satisfied with the self-imposed penalty, no public announcement was forthcoming. You can see the logic in that policy. It didn't chill a school's propensity to self-report.
Later the NCAA changed its policy. It decided it would publicly announce all violations, even those that were self-reported and even if it was satisfied with the school's self-imposed penalty. You can also see the logic in that policy: let's be a more transparent organization.
(Af this juncture, let me observe that many fans, OSU and otherwise, fail to keep in mind that the NCAA is a member-driven organization. No school is forced to join the NCAA. But once a school does, it agrees to abide by the rules. NCAA staff in fact then represents member schools. So the NCAA is not really "they." Instead it is "us.")
When the NCAA changed the above policy, it made another decision: violations that occurred before the change would not be publicly available. You can see the logic there as well. While Ohio's violations are not publicly available, I don't know if they were actually expunged from NCAA records when the policy was changed.
Ohio fans still can be proud that during the last 30 years no major violations have been discovered. Not many schools can say that.
A month or so ago, I read a piece in USA Today that reported that of the BCS football programs, only two haven't been found to have committed major violations. Stanford is one and I forget the other. That's really sad; turn that stat around and it means that all but two have committed major violations.