It never fails. As soon as a team wins the national championship in college football, trouble follows.

Ohio State defeated Miami, 31-24, in double-overtime in January to win the BCS title at the Fiesta Bowl.

But some of the afterglow has diminished. AD Andy Geiger was forced to defend the Buckeyes’ academic image Sunday after an anonymous graduate assistant told The New York Times that prize tailback Maurice Clarett had received preferential treatment in an introductory class in African-American and African studies last fall as a freshman.

Clarett, the preseason favorite to win the Heisman Trophy this season, walked out of a midterm examination and did not take a final exam. But he passed the course after taking oral exams instead, an Ohio State official said.

Clarett, who set an Ohio State freshman record with 1,257 yards rushing and 16 TDs, isn’t talking. That is a shocker in itself, given the fact he couldn’t shut up about the school’s refusal to fly him home for the funeral of a close friend in Youngstown the week before the Fiesta Bowl.

Clarett and senior wide receiver Chris Vance, who reportedly failed one class and struggled in others yet played in the Fiesta Bowl, appear to represent a much bigger problem. If the most recent charges involving Clarett are true, they are not necessarily NCAA violations, but do speak volumes about the unusual educational opportunities for athletes at OSU.

Geiger and Snyder will head a special committee to investigate this and other accusations as detailed by the teaching assistant, among them that tutors sometimes wrote papers for athletes and that football players had forged the names for absent teammates on class attendance slips.

Harder to brush under the rug is Ohio State’s recent history of academic problems. In 1998, linebacker Andy Katzenmoyer said that to avoid academic ineligibility he took summer school courses in golf, music and AIDS awareness and his teammate Damon Moore told Sports Illustrated he had “some grades changed.”

In 2000, the year before Jim Tressel arrived, receiver Reggie Germany was declared ineligible for the Rose Bowl with a 0.00 GPA. And, in 2001, Ohio State had the lowest graduation rate of any Big Ten football team in that year (28 percent).

In the end, Clarett will be just fine. The teaching assistant, who took her concerns about Clarett and Vance to the head of the department in the spring, was dismissed from her teaching duties. She has been stigmatized by school officials as a liar who had a history of psychological problems. She has since left the school.

And life goes on in big-time college programs.