http://sports.yahoo.com/news/e--gordon- ... 40039.html
This Dan Wetzel article is a good illustration of Gordon Gee and illustrates why I have felt in particular that he and Graham Spanier among others are the main problem facing collegiate athletics.
The idea that any of this is about academics is the biggest joke of them all. It has always been about money, power and control.
The amount of petty politics and shady dealings on the administrative have never been more evident in college athletics than they have in the past 5 years at both Penn State, Ohio State and the NCAA offices. Not to single out those schools, but it's quite obvious that the NCAA is a house of cards designed to funnel money and exists for no other reason than that purpose.
The GIST below
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The problem is he's spent his career moonlighting as one of the chief busybodies and reformers of the NCAA.
Over the decades Gee has sat in on nearly all of the most powerful boards and executive committees, both in the national office in Indianapolis and through the Big Ten and SEC. He's shaped college sports, pushed its direction, been a part of creating, or not changing, its rules, culture and purpose. This is a guy who went seeking power and influence and then wielded it broadly.
About the only one of his peers more active than Gee was former Penn State president Graham Spanier. Those two were always locked at the philosophical hips, quick to scold everyone else – particularly young athletes – about how to conduct their affairs. (Spanier is currently awaiting trial on charges of perjury, obstruction, endangering the welfare of children, failure to properly report suspected abuse and conspiracy that stem from the Jerry Sandusky sexual molestation scandal.)
These are the people who run the NCAA, not the office workers in Indy or even president Mark Emmert, a former campus leader himself. These are the men and women that are in charge and have been forever. These are the rulers and defenders of the status quo.
[Related: Washing a car with university water can be an NCAA violation]
These are the people who gave you an organization that thinks amateurism is somehow a fair concept, that demands that it and it alone gets all the money, that believes it has the inalienable right to sell a player's likeness for ever and ever, that seemingly reworks its policies on the fly, that writes a rule book that obsesses over things such as cream cheese on bagels, that creates an enforcement system that no one believes is fair, that uses an illusion of a level playing field to dodge taxes and that, in the end, has a weak record of actually educating many of its most high-profile "student-athletes."
E. Gordon Gee is the NCAA: tone deaf, clumsy, situationally arrogant and obsessed with bringing in more and more money (and making sure Delany, or anyone else, doesn't then get their paws on it).
There is nothing noble or enlightened or moral or dignified about these people. They're just desperate, look-at-me fundraisers who, when not saying or doing ridiculous things, claim they and they alone know what's best for all.
That's always the most offensive part here.