Appalled (8/15):
$800,000???? Wonder what their donors think of that use of their money? More to the point, wonder who media trained OSU President Gordon Gee to make all of those amazingly stupid remarks during his interview for that regrettable story in the Sunday NY Times.
Bill Huey, Strategic Communications, Atlanta (8/15):
Nobody "media trains" Gordon Gee. He thinks for himself, and tells it like it is, as in this quote from the NY Times story: "We’re in the middle of this firestorm, and everyone will be looking to us,” Gee said. “I’ve always said I wouldn’t like to have myself judged by the vicissitudes of an 18-year-old running a football. But this is the system. College athletics has gotten beyond itself. Do I think it’s broken? Yes.”
Agree completely. Higher education would be a lot more effective and productive if there were more people like Gordon Gee heading universities and fewer of the money-grubbing academic bureaucrats running things now. I mean, do we really NEED 36 bowl games? Should universities really be operating a farm system for the NFL? Big money corrupts everything it touches, and nothing has been more corrupted by money than NCAA Division I football.
Appalled (8/18):
Totally agree with you, Bill, on college sports. But Gee is a huge part of the problem -- he revels in it at OSU, stonewalled and stuck by his coach until it he had no other option. Give him points for candid statements -- but he's also the guy who said he hoped the COACH didn't fire HIM.
Joe Honick, GMA International Ltd (8/18):
Precisely what does $800,000 buy in terms of "crisis management" when the truth is what it clearly is? Sometime ago I wrote in these pages about a seminar I attnded ludicrously and loosely titled "Ethics and the Professional Athlete" which moved quickly to the same idea with college athletes who have no allegiance to anything but to run, kick and dunk on the college tab. I was laughed out of the joint when I suggested the need for tighter rules that included the college athletes repaying their universities if they left before graduation. I was too naive to think coaches at major colleges would dip this low with immunity.
But it is the very idea that Kekst or anyone else is going to put a nicer face on corruption clearly exposed. But then lots of dough has made it worthwhile for the likes of Qaddafi et al to attract high powered PR firms. |