Jim Tressel deserved to be fired. By the conditions of his contract.
By every other standard (moral, logical, etc.) Jim Tressel should have a statue in front of Ohio Stadium because his "misdeeds" amount to approximately a third of a hill of beans, especially in comparison to... well, literally almost every other college football scandal that followed afterwards.
And that's what this week's The Worst is about. I'm not particularly interested in rehashing every single element of Tatgate, in part because I had the displeasure of having to do it in real time as it was happening:
I want to make clear that these are extremely serious allegations that cannot be dismissed as minor.