Terry Gilliam, Associated PressOhio State University President E. Gordon Gee speaks at a March 8 news conference about football coach Jim Tressel’s failure to notify the school about information he received involving players selling memorabilia. Tressel resigned in May.
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio State University President E. Gordon Gee is an unabashed Buckeyes fan.
Perhaps more than most presidents, he says, he works to establish personal relationships with coaches and student-athletes, attending as many contests involving OSU’s 36 varsity sports as his schedule permits.
In the fall, when thousands of the football faithful pack the Horseshoe — as the venerable Ohio Stadium is known — Gee is usually among them. He told a reporter last fall that he considered then-football coach Jim Tressel “a very dear friend.”
Now, Tressel is gone, forced to resign amid an NCAA investigation of OSU’s football program. (See the end of this story for some of the online reaction to that resignation, Gee’s comments and more in a Storify aggregation of links and video)
And there’s increasing focus on the role that Gee and other presidents play in overseeing college sports programs.
NCAA President Mark Emmert has invited 54 college presidents — including Gee — to a retreat Aug. 9-10 to discuss athletics.
“I think it takes on a very special significant form in most universities, especially those that are in the major conferences. When I was president of the University of Washington I always joked — although it wasn’t that much of a joke — that athletics was 2 percent of the budget, 2 percent of the students and 98 percent of the attention that the university got,” Emmert said. “The president needs to be very attentive to it.”
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He also said that “at the end of the day it is all about presidential leadership. They are not the content experts around athletics, nor are they for medicine or physics. But they are the people that are ultimately responsible for what happens on their campus.”
The NCAA Committee on Infractions has scheduled a hearing Aug. 12 on allegations that OSU football players sold memorabilia for cash and discount tattoos and that Tressel lied about what he knew. A decision on penalties is expected six to eight weeks after the hearing, but the scandal already has taken a toll on the university’s image.
Athletic Director Gene Smith acknowledged this month that Tressel was forced out May 30 in part to improve OSU’s position in the NCAA investigation. However, Smith also cited the “continued public attacks on the institution.”
Gee has supported athletics at each of the five universities he has led — including two stints at OSU .
“I often point out that I cannot get 105,000 people to watch a chemistry experiment on a Saturday afternoon, but we can certainly gather that number in the ‘Shoe,’ ” he said in a recent e-mail. “Our athletics traditions are an important part of the fabric of this university, and they provide a wonderful vehicle for engaging fans with other aspects of the university.”
Gee also said: “I am very engaged with Ohio State’s athletics program, but it is not my role to manage it. Keep in mind that football represents just one-quarter of one percent of the university’s budget. Ohio State is one of the most massive, complex institutions of higher education in the nation, and I spend the vast majority of my time focused on the academic side of this institution. I view my role as providing support and resources. I do not micromanage athletics or any other aspect of this complex university.”
Coaches and athletic directors typically are the ones to lose their jobs in the wake of NCAA violations; presidents generally stay above the fray.
But the responsibility for a scandal-free athletic department rests with the person holding the top job, says Carol Cartwright, who has led two Ohio universities and has been an influential voice in college athletics.
“Institutional control is paramount,” said Cartwright, who retired June 30 after serving three years as president of Bowling Green State University and previously served 15 years as president of Kent State University.
“The tone at the top is very important,” she said. “Nobody can be absolutely in charge to the extent that you can guarantee that nothing will ever happen. But it is just like in many other activities — if you set the right tone, set expectations for appropriate behavior and monitor yourself and deal effectively with issues as they are identified, you have a much better chance of catching issues early, dealing with them and moving on.”
Cartwright said she does not have firsthand knowledge of the OSU case, so she could not comment on it specifically.
But as the former chairwoman of the NCAA’s executive committee and a current member of the board of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, she said she took seriously the opportunity as a college president to set standards and make sure those directly accountable to her — including the athletic director — understood them.
“I believe that athletics plays a very important role in collegiate life, but so do a number of activities,” Cartwright said. “The key is keeping the right balance.”
University presidents have been heavily involved in the NCAA since 1984. Its 18-member board of directors is composed of campus presidents and chancellors.
The Knight Commission, which was instrumental in the NCAA approving stronger academic requirements for athletes in 1992, released a report last year titled “Restoring the Balance: Dollars, Values and the future of College Sports.” The commission, an independent group of leaders in education, athletics and business, calls for three principles for reform: requiring that financial reports filed with the NCAA be made public; rewarding institutions that make academic values a priority; and treating athletes as students — not as professionals.
Emmert has said he didn’t plan the retreat because of recent high-profile NCAA investigations, such as the one involving OSU.
NCAANCAA President Mark Emmert has invited 54 college presidents — including Gee — to a retreat Aug. 9-10 to discuss athletics.
Instead, he said in an interview last week that the plans were driven by the “recognition that we need to address a number of big issues in intercollegiate athletics right now and we need more than incremental change. A number of areas — some very serious and challenging — need to be addressed to make intercollegiate athletics even stronger.”
The presidents, most from Division I schools, will talk about helping student-athletes achieve academic success, achieving fiscal sustainability and strengthening the integrity of the schools.
Emmert said the goal is to ensure that “our athletic programs are being run in ways that are consistent with our rules and all the underlying philosophy of college athletics. There is enormous pressure from the commercial side that are placing coaches and players and boosters and administrators and everyone in the game in very difficult positions.”
Gee plans to attend the conference, an OSU spokesman said.
Cartwright said she, like most presidents, has always been a big fan of all sports at her institution.
But her successor at KSU, Lester Lefton, is more likely to be found at a play than on the sidelines, said spokeswoman Emily Vincent.
“He goes to homecoming but he’s more a fan of the arts,” she said.
“But you have to make sure everyone knows and s the rules,” he said. “Every year I meet with all the coaches and talk about NCAA rules and our expectations. We will obey the rules and make sure that we have communicated not only to the coaches but to the athletes.”
Williams also said he meets student-athletes during recruitment and emphasizes the importance of academics.
Gee isn’t just a football fan.
He said in the email that his staff gives him a weekly schedule of the Buckeyes’ home sports events and “I may drop by several of them if my schedule permits.”
In February 2000, when Gee announced that he was leaving as president of Brown University, a story in the university’s alumni magazine said Brown was losing one of its most visibly enthusiastic sports fans.
“Having come to Brown from such sports-crazed institutions as the University of Colorado and Ohio State, Gee filled his University Hall office with Bear booster items, showed up at every single home football game, and squeezed onto the bench during women’s basketball games,” the article said.
“Various athletes and coaches recall that the prexy with the shortest tenure in Brown history even had a tendency to hang around during varsity practices.”
But Gee has been more than a fan when it comes to athletics.
In 2003, as chancellor of Vanderbilt University, he eliminated the athletic department and placed athletics under the division of student life so student-athletes could also have a full academic and social experience at the college. He scrapped the position of athletic director, giving those duties to David Williams II, vice chancellor for university affairs and general counsel.
Gee worked with Williams during his first turn as OSU president in the 1990s and hired him in 2000 to come to Vanderbilt.
“It has gone very well,” Williams said in a recent interview about how the university and athletic program have fared. Teams have performed well, academic performance has improved, and athletes are more involved in study abroad and other university programs, he said.
While complying with NCAA rules and regulations is everyone’s responsibility, a university president oversees so many aspects of running an institution that he has to rely on those directly involved with athletics to keep him aware of everything good — and bad — that occurs, Williams said.
“The athletic person has to be very comfortable telling the president the truth and making sure he has access to the president,” he said.
“You don’t want to say at a big school it is tougher,” Williams said. “But when you have special gifted athletes, the more gifted the athlete the more opportunity that athlete may be approached to get deals. You have to watch that sort of situation even closer.”
Shortly after his decision to eliminate the athletic department at Vanderbilt, Gee wrote an opinion piece in the Washington Post.
“Many athletic departments exist as separate, almost semi-autonomous fiefdoms within universities and there is the feeling that the name on the football jersey is little more than a ‘franchise’ for sports fans,” he wrote.
“College presidents and others need to take a good look at the system we have created for ourselves, in which the professional sports leagues have enjoyed a free feeder system that exploits young people and corrupts otherwise noble institutions,” he wrote. “We have maintained the fantasy for far too long that a big-time athletics program is for the students, the alumni and, at public universities, even for the legislators.
“It is time for us to call it what it is has sadly become: a prep league for the pros, who have taken far more than they have given back. We should demand nothing less than a system in which student-athletes are an integral part of the academic institutions whose names and colors they so proudly wear on game day.”
Asked if he thought that applies to OSU, Gee responded in his e-mail:
“I am working to ensure that Ohio State’s athletics program is well integrated into the rest of the university. Our athletic director, Gene Smith, also serves as associate vice president within the university with other responsibilities beyond athletics. For example, he has been a leader across campus in our work to break down cultural silos.
“Our varsity athletes are students first and foremost, and we should never lose sight of that fact. Where others see helmets and shoulder pads, I see backpacks.”
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