ORD_Buckeye;1819786; said:
OTOH, he has every right to speak out on the larger issues surrounding college athletics and has been doing so for some time from his (whether you agree with it or not) arguments against a playoff to the athletic reforms he instituted at Vanderbilt.
I'd go further and say that leading university presidents have an obligation to a leadership role. The alternative is the SEC model where everything is left in the hands of coaches, ads and boosters. I'll grant that he may have strayed a little to far, but it's better than erring on the side of leaving these issues in the hands of the coaches and espn.
Yes definitely. I see it both ways in this sense: Gee has the responsibility of doing what University Presidents ought to be doing, which is trying to fight for the interests of their University (in whatever arena: the sciences, athletics, undergraduate education). However, he also is not the football guy at Ohio State, nor for the Big Ten. So for me, I have a somewhat self-contradictory attitude on his getting involved in the issue.
And I neither agree nor disagree with his opinion. He speaks the truth on the realities of major college football and the place of the upstart mid-majors, but Gee is also comfortable denying them the access necessary for those mid-majors to prove themselves to be major powerhouses in the long run. Thats ok, but its too easy to form a logical counter-argument against him because he has a motive to be inherently biased in favor of the current powerhouses and the status-quo.
ORD_Buckeye;1819788; said:
Take note of the fact that Boysee agreed to this after Georgia slid to the bottom half of the SEC and might be staring down a possible coaching change. Note the timing of their agreeing to play UGA in contrast to them running for the hills at the prospect of playing Corn Aggy right when Pellini was getting that program rolling again.
Trust me. They want no part of this Ohio State program at this particular time. They WILL find a way to weasel out of the game. They'd take a game with Michigan though.
I absolutely took note of the Boise-Georgia game. ESPN forged ahead with the plans for that game to happen. I don't really know why Georgia agreed (they had to re-schedule a Louisville game and paid Louisville $700,000 to walk away from the season-opener), and the Bulldogs will probably lose big.
Boise's ideal opponent is a middle of the road team with some national buzz that is in a power-conference: Oregon State, Texas A@M, Illinois, Georgia. They are teams with football history, in football conferences that do not currently have enough to actually beat the Broncos.
Boise does not want to face the elite's. Virgina Tech was one of the only top-12 programs that the Broncos had a favorable match-up with due to the extreme offensive impotence on the VaTech program. They don't want to face Florida, USC, Texas, Ohio State, its risky and not worth the high-chance of a loss. But neither do those elite teams want to face Boise State because financially, its a net-loss, and if they lose then they lose prestige.
