(05-31-2013 02:52 PM)ohio1317 Wrote: A lot of the stuff he said is not stuff you are supposed to say in public, but isn't stuff we don't already know.
1. The Big Ten has certain academic standards it wants met which exclude schools like Louisville and Kentucky (I'm not defending that point, only saying its something we all knew).
2. It wants new markets in expansion or big names both because they are what bring audiences and because existing members don't want competition in their home state markets in conference.
3. The Big Ten did not want the ACC dominating the east coast. It took Maryland and Rutgers leaving it a big hole and the remaining potential members are few (though Gee very understates how powerful the conference is).
4. The NCAA is a mess. It's a structure with very different objectives and very different kind of members. Something will change or there will be a break eventually between the different parts.
The only real objectionable things I saw was a) the Catholic criticism seemed worse in this context. b) The academic snobbery and anti-southernness sounded really bad.
And yet a lot of it is new:
1) The statement that if the Big 10 had predicted how the dominoes would fall, they would have taken Missouri and Kansas along with Nebraska, and they still are interested in them. That means they actually want Mizzou and KU
NOW. This statement gives those two schools time to coordinate and prepare their moves if they eventually want to go into the Big 10.
2) OSU and its backers have publicly supported UC in the past. They have dismissed any claims that OSU wants anything but the best for UC. Gee revealed that to be a lie. Although most people have suspected it was a lie all along, OSU can no longer claim plausible deniability about the truth: that OSU views UC as a threat that needs to be kept down.
Rest assured, these comments WILL be brought up in state budget battles the next time OSU tries to justify receiving more state funding than other in-state schools.
3) He named UVA, Duke, and UNC as 3 schools in the ACC that the Big 10 feels would be good additions. This puts to rest any fan speculation about VT, GT, or FSU.
4) The Barry Alvarez comments were ridiculous.