Just when I need a laugh..............

[Buckrub]

http://www.cbssports.com/collegefootball/blog/eye-on-college-football/22338681/gordon-gee-apologizes-to-arkansas-bielema-for-thug-comment

Look who is standing behind Orville "The Insulter" Redenbacher, or whatever this Gee Whiz Idiots name is............. and imagine OSU talking about Thugs and Football in the same breath, and not discussing themselves!!!

[Niner]

OK, I'll bite............who is it?

[Buckrub]

President of Ohio State, and behind him is the DISGRACED ex-coach of said team. While they talk about our coach in derogatory terms.............the hypocrites.

[Buckrub]

Gee no whiz when it comes to street smarts

By Wally Hall


In this Sunday, May 5, 2013 photo, Ohio State president E. Gordon Gee speaks during the Ohio State University spring commencement in Columbus, Ohio. Gee told a university committee last December that Notre Dame wasn’t invited to join the Big Ten because they’re not good partners while also jokingly saying that “those damn Catholics” can’t be trusted. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)


Gordon Gee has always seemed like a pseudo-intellectual snob.

The president of Ohio State, Gee is the man who dismantled the athletic department at Vanderbilt, and while that academic giant has held its own athletically, especially since Gee’s departure, other schools did not follow suit.

Gee seems like the kind of president who might go to the athletic weight room and make a show of not being able to lift much weight, and then act surprised when an athlete used the same equipment with 10 times the weight.

So it didn’t come as a surprise that once again he had to deliver several apologies, this time to Arkansas football Coach Bret Bielema and Wisconsin Athletic Director Barry Alvarez, who was Bielema’s former boss.

It seems the know-it-all Gee had some thoughts on why Bielema left Wisconsin.

Gee, a lawyer, Mormon and the man who has been the president of four universities, decided that Alvarez thought Bielema was a thug and said as much when addressing a meeting of the Ohio State Athletic Council on Dec. 5, 2012, nearly six months ago.

Of course, he would think he knew more than anyone in that room. Even though he was probably wrong, he apparently made something up so he would seem to know more.

He has apologized to Bielema and Alvarez, just as he did to Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delaney and SEC Commissioner Mike Slive for his comments about people in the SEC not being able to read and write.

Slive, also a recovering attorney, and Delaney accepted the apology, as did Bielema and Alvarez. By e-mail.

Bielema posted the apology on his Twitter account and said he would accept the apology as well as a phone call from Gee, which is how a man would have apologized to begin with.

Everyone has wondered about why Bielema left Wisconsin. Alvarez added to the intrigue when he named himself the interim football coach for the Rose Bowl - with Bielema barely cleared from campus - and started trying to keep some of Bielema’s staff before he named a new head coach.

Alvarez, who paid himself $118,000 to coach Wisconsin to its loss in the Rose Bowl, wasn’t able to keep the assistants, which was part of the reason Bielema left the Badgers for the Razorbacks. Jeff Long opened the payroll purse to pay assistants. Alvarez, who is more old school, would not.

Now Arkansas has perhaps its best coaching staff since Frank Broyles was running practice.

Still, some doubt has lingered whether assistant coaches’ pay was the only reason Bielema - who wrote a note praising Long’s handling of Bobby Petrino’s firing almost four months after it happened - left Wisconsin.

Recently, when Bielema’s wife, Jen, arrived back in Fayetteville after selling their home in Madison, Bielema commented that it had not been an easy time for her as she packed and took care of the move.

Yet, there has been no indication, nor even the slightest hint, that Bielema is a thug. He is a big guy and looks tough, but he’s also a gourmet cook. You don’t usually associate Pecan Plank Roasted Wild King Salmon Chowder and thugishness.

Maybe - and this a guess - Bielema was so upset about losing assistant coaches that he said something to Alvarez, who apparently wasn’t going to budge, and the longtime friendship was strained enough that Bielema thought a fresh start for everyone would be the best thing.

Whatever, Bielema certainly didn’t deserve to be characterized as a thug by Gee, who also had no right to indicate that the athletes in a conference where he once worked can’t read and write.

Gee is the guy who joked during the Jim Tressel investigation that he hoped the coach didn’t fire him.

The coach couldn’t, but perhaps someone should have, or at the very least let him know being smart includes not saying stupid, unfounded things.