Gee: As long as presidents are in charge, no playoff

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Gordon Gee has noticed all those faux college football playoff brackets that have sprung up in the wake of a topsy turvy season.

Ohio State's president is not amused.

"They'll have to wrench a playoff system from my cold, dead hands," Gee said.

Coming from Gee, that is the equivalent of The Godfather ordering a death bed hit. The 63-year-old is one of the most influential college administrators in the country and was on his soapbox during a brief meeting with reporters at Ohio State's football media day before the BCS title game on Jan. 7. Gee returned to Ohio State in July for a second tenure as school president after spending seven years at Vanderbilt. During that time, he did away with the athletic department. The controversial move was unprecedented but has yielded positive results.

Gee reiterated Thursday that there is no momentum toward a playoff after one of the craziest seasons on record. He said he was chairman of the Big Ten 10 years ago when the league reluctantly agreed to become part of something called the Bowl Championship Series.

The system might not be perfect, but Gee, a rabid fan wherever he has worked, said university executives will not acquiesce to public pressure for a playoff.

"As long as the presidents are in charge, there won't be one (a playoff)," Gee told a group of reporters as he walked through the university's Fawcett Center. "It's interesting to read all this speculation.

"I think the BCS is working. If I had a vote, I would vote to go back to the (old) bowl system. But of 125 university presidents, 124 of them would not support a playoff system."

There are actually 120 Division I-A presidents.

Gee touched on a variety of subjects as he passed through the lobby. He defended the academic and athletic reputation of the Big Ten.

"You're talking to a guy who knows it very well having just come from the SEC," he said. "If you talk to the presidents of the SEC, they would all agree that the academic reputation of the Big Ten conference is the strongest in the nation ...

"If you take at the Big Ten over the last five years, it actually has done pretty well (on the field). Last year, they did not have as good a season as they should have had. That's because I was in the SEC."

There were laughs all around. But Gee was aware of the criticism the football program, and the Big Ten, took after a 27-point loss to Florida in January's BCS title game. Ohio State is back in the game for the third time in six years after an unlikely set of circumstances allowed it to jump back up to No. 1 despite a late-season loss to unranked Illinois.

Gee saved some of his sharpest comments for job-hopping Arkansas coach Bobby Petrino.

"I think I will say this bluntly," Gee said. "Bobby Petrino latest act is just another idea of what is wrong with the profession. We tell our players that they live by a certain set of rules of regulations but yet we don't hold our coaches to the same standard. I think that's wrong. I think we need to recalibrate that. (Head) coaches cannot leave players and coaches in a lurch after they have created expectations for young people to be with them."

What does that make, then, of Gee's Arkansas counterpart, chancellor John White, who signed off on Petrino's hiring?

"I think John White wanted a football coach. He got the football coach he wanted. The answer is, it's the system that allowed that to happen. John played by the rules of the game. The problem is the rules are broken."

Gee suggested university presidents gather to discuss the situation but that, "then they'll go home and break the rules."