Intercollegiate Forum: Ohio State's Gee Participates In Q&A

Gee Foresees Reintegration Of Intercollegiate Athletics Within Schools

Q: What is your philosophy on higher education and athletics?

Gee: Intercollegiate athletics are a very important part of who I am, and I enjoy it very much. But also, I think what has happened, I’ve seen over my nearly 30 years as a university president we’ve been engaging in this arms race. What has happened in intercollegiate athletics in my lifetime is that ... it’s become isolated, arrogant, it’s become distinct from the rest of the institution. What I really do believe is there’s going to be a reintegration of intercollegiate athletics so that it becomes fully embedded in the institution.

Q: What are your thoughts on disbanding the athletic department while you were president of Vanderbilt? 

Gee: My view was let’s treat these students as students, let’s have the athletic program be just like the Department of Physics or Chemistry. We’ll treat them the same. We’ll make everyone in the institution accountable for them. … At the time we did that, I received over 8,000 letters about what I did, two of them in favor. … Probably the most successful experiment in college athletics was the Vanderbilt experiment. ... And the first thing we did is we started to reintegrate again at Ohio State.

Q: What is impeding the progress of that integration? 

Gee: Fear, trepidation, boards of trustees, sportswriters, the fact that there’s not a chemistry section in the local newspapers, there’s a sports section. There’s a constant kind of drumbeat that athletics have this kind of magnified role within the university and I think a lot of that noise gets translated into the way that the integration process works. 

Q: How much time is spent on a daily basis on athletic issues?

Gee: It’s kind of flattened out over time. I think when I was a young president … I spent a lot more time on it than I probably should have done. Now I would say maybe about 10% of my time (is spent on athletics). Maybe 75% of my irritation on a day comes out of (athletics), not necessarily my time. 

Gee Hopes To Align Values Of Athletic Program With Values Of University

Gee: I think it’s become an overpowering set of issues and in today’s economic climate, that may not be quite as apparent. But I believe that selling the left side of the field commercially in the end is not always in the best interest of the institution. We have to be very careful about commercialization … (because it) can have an impact on the professionalization of intercollegiate athletics and that line I want to try to keep separate. … One of the things that’s very important to me, particularly since my Vanderbilt experience, is to make sure that the values of the university are actually in line with the values of the athletic program.

Q: Are you feeling the economic downturn at Ohio State? 

Gee: Any institutional leader of a large institution like mine has to be very prudent right now. You don’t overextend yourself.

Q: How do you feel about paying NCAA athletes, perhaps establishing savings accounts for them to use during their time in school?

Gee: Anything that moves us towards the notion of paying athletes, I am totally against under any form. 

Q: What is the NCAA doing well and where can they improve? 

Gee: When we wrestled intercollegiate athletics away from the athletic directors and coaches and put it in the hands of president, it has been very successful. The reform agenda that (NCAA President Myles Brand) has outlined is good one. 

Q: What are some of the issues five years from now that will be facing intercollegiate athletics? 

Gee: I think we’re going to go one of two ways. I think that the power of the sports industry to move toward servitude with everything -- the BCS playoff and all this other kind of stuff -- or else for us to move back into a more centrist role. Either we’re going to put some of these issues back into some semblance of balance or else the whole thing is just going to break loose.

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