Updated: November 24, 2010, 11:31 AM ET
Ohio St. prez disregards TCU, Boise St.
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Associated Press
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Even if TCU and Boise State run the table, they still don't deserve to be in the Bowl Championship Series title game, Ohio State president E. Gordon Gee said Wednesday.

In an interview with The Associated Press, the president at the university with the largest athletic program in the country said that TCU and Boise State do not face a difficult enough schedule to play in the national championship game.


I do know, having been both a Southeastern Conference president and a Big Ten president, that it's like murderer's row every week for these schools. We do not play the Little Sisters of the Poor. We play very fine schools on any given day.

-- Ohio State president E. Gordon Gee
"Well, I don't know enough about the Xs and Os of college football," said Gee, formerly the president at West Virginia, Colorado, Brown and Vanderbilt universities. "I do know, having been both a Southeastern Conference president and a Big Ten president, that it's like murderer's row every week for these schools. We do not play the Little Sisters of the Poor. We play very fine schools on any given day.

"So I think until a university runs through that gantlet that there's some reason to believe that they not be the best teams to 🇧🇪 in the big ballgame."

Gee, long an admirer of the BCS and the current bowl system, said he was against a playoff in the Football Bowl Subdivision.

"If you put a gun to my head and said, 'What are you going to do about a playoff system [if] the BCS system as it now exists goes away?' I would vote immediately to go back to the bowl system," he said.

He said the current system is better for the student-athletes.

"It's not about this incessant drive to have a national championship because I think that's a slippery slope to professionalism," he said. "I'm a fan of the bowl system and I think that by and large it's worked very, very well."

He cited Ohio State's presence in the 2007 national title game as an example.

The Buckeyes won their first 10 games that season to rise to No. 1 before losing 26-21 at home to unranked Illinois. They fell all the way to No. 8 in the BCS standings.

A series of upsets over the final weeks of the regular season and in other team's conference championship games led to the Buckeyes climbing all the way back to the No. 1 spot in the final BCS standings. They were matched against an LSU team with two losses.

Nation Blog
ESPN.com's Andrea Adelson is a national college football blogger for ESPN.com.

Ohio State led 10-0 early only to have LSU come back and score the next 31 points in a 38-24 victory at the Louisiana Superdome.

"You know, it's a mystery," Gee said. "We were No. 1, then No. 11, then No. 7 and we ended up playing for the national championship. I think I kind of like that mixed-up mystery."

While he was at Vanderbilt, Gee abolished the athletic department since it was underwritten by the university's general fund anyway. He said he has no problem with an Ohio State program that fields 36 intercollegiate varsity teams and has an annual budget exceeding $120 million.

"Here, athletics pays for itself and also pays for academic programs at the institution," he said. "The other thing, of course, that I take a look at and see how well we are doing in terms of that notion of balance, which is what I was all about at Vanderbilt, which I am all about here."

He said Ohio State's eighth-ranked football team, which plays rival Michigan on Saturday, is in the top 10 in the nation not only on the field but also in terms of academic progress.

"That's the kind of balance I want to have," he said.


Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press

Well.....the Wisconsin Badgers beat Ohio State.
So i guess that means WE should be in the championship game.

Of course i'm hoping that Ohio State and Michigan State, as well as the Badgers all win this weekend.
That would probably give the badgers the Rose Bowl bid.

"Cheesey" wrote:

Fuck you, Big 10 (who can't count to 11, soon 12), Big 12, and SEC (NCAA's worst overall graduation rate IIRC).

"Wade" wrote:

Week-Long Series:
The Man Stopping College Footballs Playoff (Part I)
 
With just a couple weeks remaining in the college football season and four undefeateds still remaining, the complaints about the BCS and calls for a college football playoff are only going to grow louder. But while fans seem to think enough controversy will eventually lead to change, that remains highly doubtful. There are many obstacles to a playoff but over the next week we will dissect the biggest impediment for change: Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany. Although you may have never heard his name, hes often called the most powerful man in college sports. In our five-part series, we examine who exactly this man is, why hes against a playoff and how hes stopping it. In the first part, we look at Delanys early life and college basketball career.

Watching Jim Delany speak at a podium, the last thought that runs through anyones mind is a tough-playground kid from New Jersey. But Delany, a South Orange, NJ, native cut his basketball and boardroom skills navigating the playgrounds and basketball courts of South Orange and Newark.

The days and night spent playing pick-up games (it was said that hed only break for dinner before heading back to the courts) paid off as Delanys prep career allowed him to get a spot on Dean Smiths North Carolina squad in the late 60s.

In college, Delanys street toughness and competitiveness never subsided. He played on the freshman team coached by future Hall of Fame coach Larry Brown and played alongside former South Carolina coach Eddie Fogler. Anyone who talks about Delany and his playing days will tell you that he was tenacious on the floor. One teammate put it like this: If you set a screen on Delany, he might make you pay for it so the next time you had to set a screen, you didnt want to.

But Delany didnt just want to beat opponents on the basketball court. He was always competing with his teammates off of it. Said Fogler in 2009: He could even be competitive socially. We all liked to have a good time, and if we were out with four young ladies, he was going after the prettiest one.

And it was his assist that set up Charlie Scotts game-winning basket in the 1969 regional final against Davidson, putting the Tar Heels into that years Final Four. Prior to Michael Jordans 82 game-winner for the national championship, Scotts shot was the most famous in school history. During his senior year, Delany was named a co-captain of the 1969-70 squad.

After graduating in 1970, Delany remained at North Carolina where he earned his law degree in 1973. His first job out of college was as counsel to the North Carolina Senate Judiciary Committee. Although it might have appeared at the time that Delany was leaving athletics behind, he would soon be able to combine his passion for sports with his legal background a combination that has paid dividends for nearly four decades.

Week-Long Series:
The Man Stopping College Footballs Playoff (Part II)
 
In Part II of our week-long series on Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany, we briefly look at Delanys career from the moment he graduated from North Carolinas law school to just before he was named Big Ten Commissioner. That includes his early legal works and first stint as a conference commissioner with the Ohio Valley Conference, the combination of which would later help him become the most powerful commissioner in the country.

Delany graduated from North Carolinas law school in 1973 and immediately took a law-related job as counsel to the North Carolina Senate Judiciary Committee. Its very likely that Delanys no-thrills public persona was built during his time as a lawyer.

The Horizon League commissioner Jon LeCrone credits Delanys law background with how he enters debates in his current job as Big Ten Commissioner. Said LeCrone early this year: Hes never bullied in any meeting Ive been in. He has the training from law school, and if you take one side, hell take another. He knows how to argue both sides. But once he has his mind made up, he tries to counter.

Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith added: Youre not going to see Jim grandstanding. Youre not going to see Jim trying to sit at the head of the table. Hes not flashy; he just gets it done.

BCS executive director Bill Hancock also commented earlier this year about Delanys straightforwardness. Said Hancock: Hes dead solid honest. When people dont know you, they form their opinions sometimes based on incorrect information. Hes got a big old heart and tries to do things the right way.

After working with the North Carolina Senate Judiciary Committee from 1973-75, the former North Carolina basketball player re-entered college athletics as an NCAA enforcement representative. The name pretty much says it all. It was Delanys job to make sure schools were following the rules. He held that position from 1975 to 1979 when he was tabbed the commissioner of the Ohio Valley Conference, a mid-major whose marquee programs are Murray State and Austin Peay.

His tenure wasnt especially notable on a national scale but Delany got his first taste of expansion when he watched Akron and Youngstown State join the conference as he was settling in (they had been added before he arrived). But the conferences attempt to get mesh urban cities in Ohio with rural schools in Kentucky and Tennessee backfired.

Years later Delany simply observed: It just didnt work.

Akron left by 1987 and Youngstown State took off in 1992. Delany did add one school to the conference as commissioner (Tennessee State) in 1986 and the school is still a member of the conference. Aside from the OVCs failed expansion experiment, there was little else noteworthy about Delanys tenure.

He did witness two of his schools, Austin Peay and Murray State, become among the first No. 14 seeds to defeat a No. 3 seed in the NCAA Tournament (in 1987 and 88 respectively). But still just 41 when he took over as commissioner the Big Ten Conference in 1989 from the legendary Wayne Duke, Delany looked completely over-matched and under-prepared when he arrived in Chicago to run the countrys most prestigious conference.

Week-Long Series:
The Man Stopping College Footballs Playoff (Part III)
 
In Part III of our week-long series on Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany, we pick up with him becoming commissioner of the oldest Division 1 conference in college sports at the age of just 41. We look at how quickly his vision for the Big Ten Conference became the road map for all of college football and how he became a major player in the creation of the BCS.

In 1989, just four months into his tenure as Big Ten commissioner, Jim Delany was approached by all ten university presidents; they wanted Penn State in the conference. Why act so quickly? Prior to Delanys arrival, the previous commissioner, Wayne Duke, spent most of his time making sure the Big Ten was maintaining the status quo and staying financially stable.

But the university presidents wanted someone that would actually move the conference forward and put it at the forefront of college athletics. Thats why Delany was hired from the Ohio Valley Conference.

Said Delany at the time: Sometimes a bureaucrat becomes a leader if youre willing to get out in front of the parade and take some risks. If youre not willing to do that, I do think youre relegated to the position of being a paper-shuffler. Im willing to take risks.

Brokering the move of Penn State was just the first domino Delany dropped. Because of Penn States move, the two-division SEC was created, as was the concept of a conference championship. This then led to the eventual creation of the Big 12 and that conference championship. And Delany wasnt done.

In 1991, Delany essentially created the bowl system as we know it when he announced that beginning in 1994, the Citrus Bowl would take the second place Big Ten team while the Holiday Bowl would take the third place team (the Holiday Bowl took the second-place team in 1993). It was the first time a conference had bowl tie-ins for non-conference champions.

Said then-Pac-10 commissioner Tom Hansen: I think what they did was in the best interests of the Big 10. However, I dont think its in the overall best interests of college football.

Delanys reasoning went as follows: Our hope is that you can build up these bowls to where you can have six or seven healthy bowls, not four. This enhances the bowl structure and ourselves.

Delany gave up potentially bigger pay outs at major bowls for the security of guaranteed lesser bowls. Now, it seems like a no-brainer, but at the time is was a major risk.

But by 1993, the power that the Big 10 and Jim Delany had was already evident to the nation. Ed Sherman of the Chicago Tribune wrote: The consensus is the realignment fault line once again runs through the Big 10. The conference toppled the first domino in 1990 when it added Penn State, setting off an unprecedented wave of schools switching leagues. Now, three years later, conference commissioners expect the Big 10 to trigger yet another chain reaction.

Conference realignment and additional bowl ties-ins were nothing compared to what Delany pulled off next in 1996. At that time, the Bowl Alliance was in place to help match the No. 1 and No. 2 team in the same bowl. The only problem was that it didnt include the Pac-10 or the Big 10 and it also didnt include the Rose Bowl. Tradition dies hard.

But by 1996, Delany had enough of a system that forced his conference champion into the Rose Bowl. In 1994 an undefeated Penn State was denied a chance to play Nebraska for the national title because of its tie to the Rose Bowl. The next year it looked like the same thing would happen to No. 2 and undefeated Ohio State. But an end-of-the season loss to Michigan ended all that.

The possibility of a future with the Big 10 being shut out of a shot at the national championship didnt sit well with Delany or the Big Ten universities.

Said Delany at the time: The Penn State situation and the possibility of Ohio State sensitized everyone to this issue.

Then came July 24, 1996. The Chicago Tribunes Andrew Bagnato wrote: The oldest major athletic conference didnt want to give up the tradition of sending its football champion to the Rose Bowl. But it also wanted its best teams to be able to play for a national title. Critics said the Big Ten essentially wanted to have its cake and eat it too. But Tuesdays announcement of a new college football superalliance allows the Big Ten to do just that.

That superalliance is what we know today as the BCS. Delany and the Big Ten achieved the four goals they set out to meet: maintain its Rose Bowl connection, be eligible for the national title game, strengthen the overall bowl system and kill a Division I-A football playoff.



Then-Minnesota coach Jim Wacker was pleased: A year ago our commissioner spelled out his vision, and it came true. Finally. Hallelujah. He deserves a pat on the back.

From then on, the Big Ten winner still went to the Rose Bowl unless they were selected to play for the national title. If thats the case, the Rose Bowl is not obligated to invite a Big Ten team, but theyve only passed over the Big Ten once (2003) since then when the Rose Bowl was not the national title game.

As would be the case for years to come, Delany eventually got everything he wanted.