Question of the day: Which football program should the NCAA take a closer look at: Auburn or Ohio State?

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Writers from around the Tribune Co. weigh in on the topic. Check back throughout the day for more responses and feel free to leave a comment of your own.

Nick Fierro, The Morning Call

The NCAA suits should take the first red-eye to Columbus. People I know and trust who’ve been involved in collegiate sports for decades have been telling me for years about how Ohio State’s most egregious violations never get exposed. No one is willing to go on the record, but deep down I suspect they’re right and are not exaggerating. This latest incident with coach Jim Tressel covering up illegal benefits to players is something Ohio State’s athletics program doesn’t want anyone to poke with a stick. Yet Ohio State insulted everyone’s intelligence by originally suspending Tressel only for nonleague games against Akron and Toledo –- teams even I could coach the Buckeyes to wins over if I parachuted in on game day. That alone merits a full investigation. Now excuse me while I get sick.

Matt Murschel, Orlando Sentinel

In my mind, the Auburn football program should be first on the NCAA Infractions Committee’s to do list. Although, it’s like trying to decide which is worse, Milli or Vanilli. However, history is against the Tigers. Auburn has been near the top of the list of schools with major NCAA infractions since they started keeping records back in the early 1950s. The recent allegations by former Auburn football players that they were paid to play for the Tigers just brings the program back into the spotlight. This right after the fact the school spent most of last season vehemently denying allegations that their star quarterback, Cam Newton, had being involved in his own version of a pay-for-play scandal involving Mississippi State. While we live in a society where you are innocent until proven guilty, it doesn’t take Matlock to figure out that the facts are starting to stack up against the school, its football program and its players.

[Updated at 10:17 a.m.

Teddy Greenstein, Chicago Tribune

Both are potential felonies, so let’s hope the investigators don’t snooze on either case. But here’s the difference: We think Auburn has misbehaved while we know Ohio State has been up to no good.

Coach Jim Tressel still has failed to come clean, at least publicly, on so many issues surrounding the email that alerted him to his players’ selling awards and gifts in exchange for cash and tattoo discounts. Instead, damaging details keep trickling out like a toxic leak.

And how about Terrelle Pryor’s Hot Wheels? He has been pulled over three times for traffic violations in the last three years, according to the Columbus Dispatch, and each time with a loaner car registered to a car salesman or dealership.

Ohio State says it investigated and uncovered no wrongdoing. Given the school’s credibility, that means nothing.

Gary Klein, Los Angeles Times

This is not an either/or proposition. The NCAA should look at both programs. Here’s hoping it takes fewer than the four years needed to investigate USC.

With Heisman Trophy winner Cam Newton scrambling off to the pros a la Reggie Bush, history says mining anything in that continuing probe could prove difficult. But the allegations that former players made on HBO’s “Real Sports” last week obviously require follow-up.

Several of the players were on the team when Gene Chizik, the Tigers’ current head coach, was a Tigers assistant. That might be a good place to start.

Remember, the crux of the USC case was: How much did the school know or should it have known?

There doesn’t appear to be a whole lot of guesswork involved with the Ohio State situation(s). A paper trail of e-mails has already come to light and Jim Tressel and all the other principals are still in Columbus. Tressel increased his self-imposed suspension from two to five games. Is the NCAA going to settle for that?

Former USC assistant Todd McNair got a show cause order from the NCAA and lost his job over far less.

As for a final decision on either case ... see you in 2015.]