Last football season, Zach Dillard went in on Gordon Gee, President of Ohio State University, for his outrageous expenditures, revealed in the light of OSU's tattoo scandal that cost several players to miss games and future Buckeyes to become ineligible for postseason play.
After reading this excerpt, you'll see why Gee was forced to step down.
In an exhaustive look into Ohio State's financial records, the Dayton Daily News uncovered that Gee — the highest-paid university president in the country — has developed a habit of living lavishly, often on the public school's dime. The report cited the 68-year-old Gee for outspending comparable school presidents by a wide margin, putting $7.7 million on the Buckeyes' tab for travel, throwing high-society parties at his university-provided mansion and, of course, bow ties. Lots of bow ties. Sixty-four thousand dollars’ worth of bow ties.
So what defines lack of control: College athletes earning a couple thousand dollars for tangible goods (autographs and personal memorabilia) or a university president spending $7.7 million of a public university's worsening endowment on luxury hotels and limo rides?
When scholarship athletes profit financially, it's an NCAA violation; when a university employee earning nearly $2 million a year expenses $895,000 on parties at his free mansion, it's considered "very, very valuable for the state of Ohio.”
It's hypocritical of Ohio State, and, by association, the NCAA, to call Gee's spending justified, as if standout football players provide zero financial benefit. In the present state of affairs, athletics funds academics at a higher and higher rate – so much so that Gee, during the fallout of the "scandal”, joked he hoped Tressel would not fire him.
This is not to say that Coach Tressel, Terrelle Pryor and the other four players pinpointed in Tattoo-Gate should not be held accountable — rules are rules and lying is lying, gentlemen — but this is why that NCAA rulebook is due for a Fahrenheit 451 moment. This is why athletes should be allowed to profit off their status on the open market, with proceeds going into post-graduation trust funds. Paying college kids cash is not the answer, because they are wont to blow it on, you know, college things. However, would that be any more irresponsible than a grown man expensing a $532 shower curtain?
After spending some time "reflecting" on vacation, Gee has decided his actions are "entirely inappropriate" and do not reflect the University. He's absolutely right, but he isn't talking about any of the actions listed above. This dude is resigning because he made some bad jokes in public, saying he couldn't trust Catholics and that people from the South are dumb. WOAH!!
Hold up. Those are lame comments that have existed since the dawn of religion and since people figured out how to work a compass. The only thing offensive about those kind of jokes is that he has the audacity to call them jokes. It's tough to tell whether America's politically correct culture is what forced him out or whether there is something more nefarious going on behind the scenes (obviously, I'm kidding, because surely there can't be anything else going on behind the scenes, right? RIGHT?!).
Anyway, college sports should take this one for what it's worth, even though it's a pretty weak reason to resign as a college president, all things considered. Gee represented the hypocrisy that could soon devour the NCAA, which is now without one of it's most influential cronies.
