James Laurinaitis, Gordon Gee and a minor Ohio State violation
by Doug Lesmerises
Monday June 01, 2009
It turns out that a thank you from Ohio State president Dr. E. Gordon Gee to former Buckeye James Laurinaitis led to a minor NCAA violation.
The Columbus Dispatch on Sunday took an interesting look at the way universities and their athletic departments handle public records requests. Having seen the way Ohio State redacts information, blacking out every name before releasing documents, I'm not surprised that the article found Ohio State to be among the most conservative schools when it comes to doing what it considers to be protecting the privacy of its student-athletes. As the story pointed out, plenty of others believe schools like Ohio State go too far.
As part of the project, the paper highlighted various NCAA violations reported by Ohio State over the past several years, and one in particular caught my attention.
The paper reported a violation that took place on April 26, 2008, when Gee bought dinner for a football player and that player's girlfriend, brother and sister-in-law. The fact that an athlete's family members received a free meal was the violation, the Dispatch wrote, continuing that "the football player couldn't play in a game until his brother repaid the cost of their dinner, $204. He did."
One point of the Dispatch report is that so much information is withheld by Ohio State, it's difficult to get a clear picture on what actually happens with some of these violations.
Unless Gee ate dinner twice on this particular day, I know this one.
Last May, I spoke briefly with Gee about the Ohio State football players - like Laurinaitis and Malcolm Jenkins - who had decided to return for their senior seasons. Gee was appreciative, and mentioned that he had gone as far as taking Laurinaitis out to dinner a couple weeks earlier, on the day of the NFL Draft, when Laurinaitis could have been moving on to his new career. It was Gee's way of saying thanks for coming back.
The date of the draft was April 26.
I then spoke with Laurinaitis about the dinner in August during preseason camp. As it turned out, this was just a bit of the reporting I did for my preseason story about the return of the OSU seniors, and it wound up not making my final story. And not knowing that others were at the dinner, I didn't consider the possibility that it may have been a violation.
Here's what Laurinaitis said in August about that April dinner, when he said he ordered what he called "delicious" prime rib at Mitchell's Steakhouse in Columbus.
"Being the president of the university, a guy of his standing, he doesn't need to do that by any means, but it meant a lot," Laurinaitis said.
"It was really an eye-opening experience. Dr. Gee has done everything and met everybody. Unbelievable guy, and truly I think this is a friendship that is going to continue on.
"He has always e-mailed me whenever I accomplished something on the field or in the classroom, saying congratulations. And he called when I decided to come back, saying how proud he was of me to make a decision like that and what a good example I was. I think it's a friendship that is going to continue to go on. I told him next year on draft day, if I have the opportunity, I'll take him out to dinner and return the favor."
