Ohio State president Gordon Gee has announced his retirement, effective next month.
The timing couldn’t have been any better.
Gee is a gaffe-prone 69-year-old relic who has inflicted more than enough damage to this prestigious Big Ten university with his outrageous, derogatory comments last December to the athletic council that mocked Notre Dame and Roman Catholics in general and trashed the academic integrity of neighboring Louisville, Cincinnati and Kentucky and the Southeastern Conference in general. Gee said that the decision by football coach Brett Bielema to leave Wisconsin for Arkansas was a blessing, suggesting Bielema’s AD Barry Alvarez felt Bielema was “a thug” who was one step ahead of the posse.
It’s time to mute the sound for good.
The man, who expensed $64 thousand on the bow ties, bow tie cookies, O-H and bow tie pins that he and others gave out,, loved the cameras. Apparently, he also loved the money. He was making $1.9 million annually in base pay, deferred with performance bonuses and retirement benefits. His latest self-described attfempt into humor have embarrassed both himself and the entire Buckeye nation. Gee can apologize all he wants after the Associated Press released a copy of his recorded remarks. But even his most ardent supporters have clicked the off button…
Gee, who was named the country’s best college president by Time Magazine in 2010, was a prolific fund raiser who was in the midst of spearheading a $2.5 a billion development campaign for campus improvements. Maybe that is why the Ohio State Board of Trustees decided to hire him twice, once from 1990 through 1998 and again in 2007. You think they would have learned.
But his latest futile attempts at Catskills humor paint a picture of an insensitive egomaniac who felt he was the smartest guy in the room and whose bigotry gave higher education a bad name,
During his latest flawed comedy routine, Gee said he told the council he negotiated with Notre Dame officials about joining the Big Ten almost two decades ago. “The fathers are holy on Sunday, but they’re holy hell on the rest of the week,’ he said, prompting laughter at a December meeting attended by AD Gene Smith, several other athletic department pioneers, professors and students.
“You just can’t trust those damn Catholics on a Thursday or a Friday, and so literally, I can say that,” said Gee,who is a Mormon.
Having questioned the honesty of an entire religion, Gee proceeded to fire away at schools like Louisville and schools in the SEC when the topic of future Big Ten expansion arose. “The top goal of Big Ten presidents is to “make certain that we have institutions of like-minded academic integrity,” Gee said. “So you won’t see us adding Louisville,” a member of the fractured Big East that is preparing to joining the ACC in the fall of 2014.
After pausing for a round of nervous– we hope– laughter, Gee said he didn’t think the Big Ten would be taking Kentucky– either. Or for that matter, Cincinnati…
Gee was more than happy to offer his opinion on Big Ten expansion, urging the conference, which has already added Rutgers and Maryland to increase its footprint in the populous Northeast corridor and the heart of this country’s financial and political base, to be even more predatory in its attempts to increase the size of the Big Ten’s lucrative TV package. He suggested teams from leagues like the ACC were ripe for the plucking, even though all 15 members had just signed off on a TV media rights deal, so they can’t move for the foreseeable future. “If the ACC continues to struggle, and Florida State goes off to the SEC or something like that, and Clemson moves in a different direction, I could see Virginia, Duke and North Carolina having a real interest in joining us.”
“You know Penn State just abhors Pitt. It would be the same way. Even though we love Cincinnati as a city, we want it to be an Ohio State city. They’d have to take (Ohio State AD) Gene (Smith) out and shoot him to let Cincinnati into the Big Ten. There are some things that we just would not to do. And that’s the way that Penn State also feels about Pitt. . . . I could see potentially Missouri and Kansas coming to the Big Ten (so it could expand West).
“By he way it goes without saying this all has to be speculation that remains right here.”
We can only imagine how Gee’s board room politics played in deep South and on the Atlantic Seaboard, but we have a good idea.
Gee is no stranger to controversy. This is certainly not the first time he has put his foot in his mouth.
In the wake of the memorabilia and tattoo scandal that tarnished Ohio State’s image in 2010, Gee was asked in March 2011 whether he had considered firing football coach Jim Tressel for his actions in the cover up. “No, are you kidding?,” Gee responded. “Let me just be very clear: I’m just hopeful the coach doesn’t dismiss me.” Tressel stepped down three months later. In November 2010, Gee boasted that Ohio State’s football schedule didn’t include teams on par with the “Little Sisters of the Poor.” He later apologized to the real Little Sisters of the Poor in northwest Ohio, sent a personal check to them and followed up with a visit to the nuns months later.
Last year, Gee apologized for comparing the problem of coordinating the school’s many divisions to the Polish army, a remark that a Polish-American group called bigoted and ignorant.
But this time, he has so clearly overstepped his bounds that the Ohio State trustees called Gee’s remarks unacceptable and placed Gee on a zero tolerance “remediation policy” much like the late Indiana president and NCAA executive director Myles Brand did with Hall of Fame basketball coach Bob Knight to improve his behavior before firing him in 2000. Gee finally had a moment of self reflection this month. “After much deliberation, I have decided it is now time for me to turn over the reins of leadership to allow the seeds we hare planted to grow. It is also time for me to re-energize and refocus myself.”
The general public got it long before Gee did. Gee withdrew Monday as commencement speaker for a Catholic high school after being reprimanded by the Board of Trustees. He was scheduled to speak Saturday at the graduation ceremony for St. Francis DeSales High School in Columbus but decided to skip it to ensure the students and their accomplishments are the focus of the event, Ohio State spokeswoman Gayle Saunders said. The school’s principal, Dan Garrick, said he and Gee spoke Monday in a conversation that started with a “heartfelt apology.”
It was just another lightning rod moment for a man who was trying to salvage what little is left of his reputation.
