Ohio State president Elwood Gordon Gee caught some heat last week for insulting the quality of opponents Boise State and TCU face on their football schedules in the continuing debate about the BCS and the crowning of a national champion.
“Well, I don’t know enough about the Xs and Os of college football,” Gee told the Associated Press. “I do know, having been both an SEC president and a Big Ten president, that it’s like a murderer’s row every week for those schools. We do not play the Little Sisters of the Poor. We play very fine schools on any given day.”
What is it about the Little Sisters of the Poor? Why, in every sports debate that comes up about quality of opponents, does somebody like Gee feel the need to disparage the Little Sisters of the Poor?
They don’t even have a football team.
The fact is the Little Sisters of the Poor is a fine Roman Catholic religious order for women that helps the elderly poor in 31 countries around the world.
They deserve better than to be defined as schedule patsies.
“We’ve heard that before,” said Amelia Arnold, who works in the development department in the Baltimore office. “We think it is funny. Most people don’t realize we are an organization and the work that we do … but we have had some Ravens players here for programs.”
One thing about the Little Sisters of the Poor that Gee knows nothing about — the vow of poverty.
Gee claimed a college football playoff system — like the NCAA has in every other sport, including the other divisions of college football — would bring college football closer to professionalism if implemented in Division I-A.
“It’s a slippery slope to professionalism,” Gee said.
Now Gee knows something about being a professional. He’s been a professional college president money grabber for years. If there was a national championship for college president wallets, Gee would claim the title.
Gee has been a university president at different schools more than anyone else in the history of the American collegiate system. He has ruled at Vanderbilt, Colorado, West Virginia and Brown — in addition to this being his second stint at Ohio State.
His reported total compensation as Ohio State president is $1.6 million, which puts him at the top of college presidents of public universities.
Gee’s shortest tenure was at Brown from 1998 to 2000. It is not looked back on fondly at Brown, where students, during the annual spring weekend event, erect the “E. Gordon Gee Lavatory Complex,” a collection of portable toilets.
Ohio State’s schedule is hardly tougher than Boise State’s or TCU’s. But whether or not TCU or Boise deserves to play for a national championship this year, Gee publicly exposed what we have known all along — that the college presidents with deep pockets to fill are the ones that fight for the existing BCS system and the payoffs it brings to those pockets.
Elwood Gordon Gee shouldn’t even be allowed to utter the words, “Little Sisters of the Poor.”
Examiner columnist Thom Loverro is the co-host of “The Sports Fix” from noon to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday on ESPN 980 and espn980.com. Contact him at [email protected]
