In article at ESPN, Gordon Gee said of Notre Dame.
Said of the SEC (and Louisville)
and
Considering what has happened at tOSU in the last few years, I think Gordon Gee ought to be keeping his mouth shut and a low profile.
Bah, just sounds like standard sports-fan trash-talking to me. I wouldn’t take it as actually meaning anything.
Actually to me it sounds an awful lot like a university where athletics is king and fuck the rest.
Ya know, kinda like Penn State (although in their case “fuck the rest” was literal).
From what I have read, his remarks were much more incendiary than remarks that have cost others their jobs. Substitute Jews for Catholics and rabbis for priests. He would be gone by now.
Compared to Sergio Garcia, Fuzzy Zoeller, Jimmy the Greek or a good number of others, Gee’s comments were way more out of line.
I think he is toast and/or he should be.
What goes through these people heads? They hold very responsible positions yet they can’t weigh their words before they speak them. I don’t get it.
The difference is that Gordon Gee is the PRESIDENT of THE Ohio State University.
Not a guy in a barcolounger with a six pack of beer and bag of peanuts.
Yeah. His comments are unacceptable from someone in his position, particularly since his comments directed at the SEC are so laughable when you compare graduation rates between a Big Ten football factory school like OSU and an SEC one. Utterly stupid. Dude should (and probably will, if I’m reading the tea leaves correctly) be fired for being a moronic douchebag.
No, he is THE president of THE Ohio State University.
He’s a world class suck-up twit and the Ohio Board of Regents should fire him yesterday, and make him repay his ridiculous salary ($802,125 annually, plus housing) to boot.
Speaking as a conservative Catholic…
I’m normally quick to pounce on Catholic-bashing, but in this case, I’m not all that outraged. I’m inclined to believe that Mr. Gee was not so much mocking the religious tenets of Catholicism as he was taking a swipe at the administration of Notre Dame for the way they do business.
As many people know, the Big Ten has negotiated with Notre Dame about joining their conference- it hasn’t happened because ND plays hardball financially. They get a lot of money from their football program that they don’t want to share with other teams in a conference. And THAT ticks off school administrators and Athletic Directors in the Big Ten (and in other conferences), who think (not without reason) that the Irish are money-grubbers, despite their saintly image.
As an Irish Catholic, I root for Notre Dame and always have- it doesn’t follow that other schools don’t have some legitimate beefs with the school. My sense is, Mr. Gee was really just saying, “Those priests who run Notre Dame may seem like sweet guys at Sunday Mass, but they’re cutthroat negotiators who are out to get every dime they can.” And he’s probably right.
I’m a Notre Dame grad, and I really don’t understand the outrage. Gee is a twit, and continually shoves his foot in his mouth - understanding that context, this was clearly sarcasm gone very very wrong.
But as I understand it, he doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on when it comes to academics. Ohio State doesn’t do all that good of a job graduating their athletes.
The problem is that this isn’t the first time Gee stuck his foot in his mouth.
Gee was supposed to speak at a Columbus Catholic high school graduation this week, but they accepted his offer to withdraw from the commitment.
USA Today is reporting that he’s resigning.
I’m intrigued by one comment especially:
Well yes, literally he can say that. His lips are capable of forming the words. But figuratively-literally, which I assume he meant, “I can say that” in this context means that the speaker is a member of the group being derided. So he figuratively-literally can’t say that. Why did he say that he could?