DaytonDailyNews.com

With the NCAA always looking for ways to improve its image, how about this. How about the NCAA providing Tyson Gentry with a $6,000 exercise machine that helps the former Ohio State walk-on rehab a 2006 broken neck that has left him unable to walk.

According to a story this week, OSU football coach Jim Tressel saw Gentry waiting to use an exercise machine in the team's practice facility because it was one of the few machines Gentry found that helped him gain strength.

The problem was that several players use the machine, and Gentry often had to wait. Tressel made inquires, and while he was looking into NCAA compliance issues the company that makes the machine gave one to Gentry.

Maybe if the machine works as well as Gentry thinks, he'll regain his ability to walk and give the machine back. Maybe he'll keep it forever as a $6,000 gift, which no doubt the NCAA will look into as an inappropriate extra benefit.

This is a perfect spot for the NCAA to respond in a different way, superseding OSU and the company that gave Gentry the machine. The NCAA makes plenty of money on college football and the Bowl Championship Series, of which Gentry was a small part until he was injured.

Ohio State is in the big-money national championship game this year. The NCAA should step up as a national champion, too, donating the machine to Gentry.

It's a way for the NCAA to use its money wisely and spread goodwill.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2157

or mkatz@DaytonDailyNews.com.