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Gee, who needs playoff?
By Patrick McManamon
Beacon Journal sports columnist
POSTED: 07:26 p.m. EST, Jan 19, 2008
Ohio State president Gordon Gee recently sent a note to his colleague at the University of Georgia, president Michael Adams.
The note arrived shortly after Adams, the holder of two postgraduate degrees from OSU, had proposed a college football playoff system.
‘‘I told him we were going to take his degree away,’’ Gee said Thursday before speaking at the Akron Roundtable at Tangier.
Gee's quip had a strong element of seriousness to it -- because Gee is dead set against a Division I football playoff and will do all he can to oppose it.
‘‘They will have to drag a college football playoff system out of my cold, dead hands,’’ Gee said.
The words sound harsh, but Gee, a humorous, gregarious intellectual who always sports a bow tie, states his position matter-of-factly. Those who expect Ohio State to lead any kind of charge to a playoff might as well put their efforts into re-wallpapering the family room.
Adams was not happy about it.
‘‘I love Ohio State,’’ he said recently on XM radio. ‘‘But this is not a way to serve the country.’’
Serve the country? Isn't that what our finest young men and women are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Serve the country?
Is Adams joking?
Apparently not. He said the only reason the Big Ten opposes a playoff is that the conference knows the only way it can get a team in the BCS title game is through the system that sent Ohio State to be waxed by Southeast Conference teams in consecutive years.
‘‘What we have now is a system where the Big Ten has the opportunity to most every year get a team into the national-championship game that, based on their performance, would not get there through a playoff system,’’ Adams said. ‘‘So, they are not dumb people.’’
He added that ‘‘entrenched constituencies have a self-preservation interest’’ in keeping the BCS.
Gee has no problem with that notion.
He conceded that the Big Ten has been called ‘‘obstructionist’’ when it comes to a playoff.
‘‘I plead guilty,’’ he said.
The entire situation is interesting. The only NCAA sport that lacks a playoff is Division I-A football. But Gee points out no other sport has the bowl system (which is lucrative).
A year ago, Adams opposed a playoff proposal put forth by Florida. Then Georgia finished the ’07 season strong and thumped Hawaii in a bowl game, yet was shut out of the BCS title game, and Ohio State lost badly to LSU.
Gee, who abolished the athletic department and athletic director position while Chancellor of Vanderbilt, said if anything changed he would prefer to junk the BCS and go back to the bowl system.
‘‘It's exciting,’’ he told the Roundtable crowd. ‘‘Get with it. Let's have fun. It's not about winning or losing.’’
No?
Gee said he was Chairman of the Big Ten Conference when the BCS was developed, and at that point, the game was played Jan. 1 or 2. He said he dug in his heels, made that development his ‘‘Maginot line.’’
Since, the BCS has grown and moved the title game well past Jan. 2. Gee's Maginot line of defense had as much success as the one built by France to hold off the Germans.
‘‘Maybe I need a new analogy,’’ he joked.
Gee said his focus at Ohio State is to ensure athletics are integrated (his word) into the university and do not stand alone.
He expressed his love for coach Jim Tressel and threw out a few LSU jokes while mentioning that Ohio State's $110 million athletic budget is a ‘‘relative speck’’ in its $4 billion overall budget.
Gee decried how a playoff would bring ‘‘creeping professionalism’’ to college football, yet it seems the BCS already has done just that with its title game.
He said football is ‘‘not in the business of winning or losing’’ and is not present ‘‘to entertain 105,000 people for 3ƒ hours on Saturday afternoon.’’
It's hard to decipher exactly where Gee is going with all this, because surely Ohio State's powerhouse athletics department is going nowhere. And players don't seem to have a choice between the 3ƒ-hour game on Saturday afternoon or Habitat for Humanity.
But that's where Gee stands.
He pointed out that the OSU band -- the ‘‘best damn band in the land’’ -- practices two times as much as the football team.
‘‘Sometimes it shows,’’ he said.
Let the record show, he was joking and all laughed.
Saving the country was not on his agenda.
CAVALIERS
The smart-aleck approach would be to say that we might actually find out what kind of coach Mike Brown is in 2010.
That's the last year of his contract extension, and also the first year LeBron James potentially would be playing outside of Cleveland.
James' contract expires in 2009 and . . . well . . . let's not even go there. It's not a pleasant thought, and there's no reason to think it will happen.
Besides, we already know what kind of coach Brown is, and that's a very good one who deserved his extension.
Cleveland can be a hard place to coach or manage.
The large level of frustration from coming close to winning a title tends to blur the big picture, and incredibly good seasons are considered inadequate.
And that leads the vocal minority to pipe up.
So it is with Brown, a guy who coached his team to the NBA Finals last season and who has done an exemplary job this season of being patient and finding the right combinations.
To some, Brown is boring, a guy who doesn't know how to coach offense.
In reality, he's a guy who brought defense to the Cavs and has a superstar believing in him and his approach. When the team's star buys into the coach's system and style, the team does.
The common conception is that the Cavs started slowly this season.
In reality, they didn't.
For a long time, they didn't have their team due to holdouts (Sasha Pavlovic, Anderson Varejao) and injuries (Larry Hughes, Donyell Marshall, James).
Yet, they started 9-6 and remain one of only five teams to beat the Boston Celtics.
Since the Cavs got healthy and Brown returned to the lineup that led to the team getting to the Finals, they have won nine out of 11, including the win Thursday in San Antonio.
The lineup that is working has Hughes starting.
Hughes has responded to the challenge given him by Brown. He also has been in at the end of games -- which, as my esteemed colleague Brian Windhorst has pointed out, is what's important in the NBA.
Zyrdunas Ilgauskas also has joined Varejao at the end of games, which is good to see. Ilgauskas has played well from the start this season. (He's another guy the vocal minority love to criticize, but how many 7-foot-3 guys can do what Z does?)
Brown is a good man, a good father and a good coach, and character matters. As General Manager Danny Ferry properly pointed out, a good coach is hard to find, so it makes sense to keep him.
Brown does not criticize his players publicly. He did not whine last season when the Cavs got some atrocious calls at the end of games in the playoffs. (Speaking of atrocious, did anyone see how the end of the Spurs game was officiated?)
For all the Cavs' ups-and-early-downs, there is one indisputable fact: When James plays at least half the game, the Cavs are 21-12.
When he hasn't, they're 0-6.
Little things show up in pro sports from time to time that are meaningful.
At the end of NBA games, coaches usually wave to each other down the sideline, a sign of sportsmanship.
Thursday night, Brown and Gregg Popovich met warmly at midcourt to shake hands.
Popovich might be the league's best coach, and his respect for Brown was evident. That showed and meant a lot.
Keeping this coach in Cleveland for as long as possible merely makes sense.
RANDOM THOUGHTS
-- Want to trade Asdrubal Cabrera?
That's what the Indians were faced with this offseason when they got involved in trade talks, and the Indians were in plenty of discussions -- to varying degrees.
Name any major deal this offseason -- third baseman Miguel Cabrera to the Detroit Tigers, pitcher Dan Haren to the Arizona Diamondbacks, outfielder Jason Bay, who did not leave the Pittsburgh Pirates -- and the Indians were involved in some way, shape or form.
But rather than seek minor-leaguers or prospects, teams wanted players from the Indians' major-league roster -- and most asked for Cabrera, who was so impressive at second base last season.
Which meant acquiring a player for one position would have left a void at another.
Rather than make a move to make it seem like they were busy, the Indians chose to do what they felt was right and kept their players.
-- Lot of rumors and reports out there that the Cavs were trying to acquire Jamal Crawford from the New York Knicks.
Reportedly, the Cavs would have included Larry Hughes -- a large surprise, given Hughes' contract makes him nearly impossible to trade.
Apparently the rumors overstated the reality, as General Manager/coach Isiah Thomas has been turning down every trade offer sent to Manhattan.
The Cavs also have never felt any urgency to make a move -- unless it was a clear improvement.
Crawford can play both guard spots, and he can shoot, but he sometimes does not take the best shots, which accounts for his 40 percent career percentage heading into this season. His defense also is a concern.
-- One other rumor had the Cavs trying to acquire Pau Gasol from the Memphis Grizzlies. That would be more than interesting. Gasol is a 7-foot forward and third overall pick who never has averaged fewer than 17.6 points and 7.3 rebounds.
Not sure who would go, but it would be interesting to see how he'd fit.
-- Browns quarterback coach Rip Scherer interviewed to be the offensive coordinator at UCLA, but the Los Angeles Times reported that Scherer pulled his name from consideration.
Word from L.A. is that Scherer told UCLA he believes too strongly in the Browns and feels too good about the team's direction to leave.
This is good for the Browns, because Scherer and offensive coordinator Rob Chudzinski have been closely aligned.
-- The Dallas Cowboys made Jason Garrett the NFL's highest-paid assistant after the Baltimore Ravens and the Atlanta Falcons interviewed him to be coach. Garrett was the first person Browns General Manager Phil Savage tried to contact a year ago when he was looking for a new offensive coordinator.
-- Tony Sparano is coach of the Miami Dolphins, Ken Whisenhunt coach of the Arizona Cardinals. The common denominator? Both were on Chris Palmer's expansion staff in 1999 with the Browns.
-- Palmer, incidentally, will be in Green Bay today. He coaches the New York Giants' quarterbacks, perhaps one reason Eli Manning has settled down so nicely this season.
-- Good to see Bud Selig got a three-year contract extension this week to be baseball's commissioner. Happened a couple of days after he appeared in front of Congress.
America is a wonderful country isn't it?
Guy like Selig can be lambasted the way he has been for missing the steroids scandal, then a couple of days later gets a three-year extension.
If this isn't the land of the free, then what is?
-- Rest in peace, Richard Knerr, whose company Wham-O invented the Hula Hoop and Frisbee. Imagine reflecting at the end of life on the hours of enjoyment those simple toys provided so many people.
-- Until next time . . . there you have it.
Patrick McManamon can be reached at pmcmanamon@thebeaconjournal.com
Ohio State president Gordon Gee recently sent a note to his colleague at the University of Georgia, president Michael Adams.
The note arrived shortly after Adams, the holder of two postgraduate degrees from OSU, had proposed a college football playoff system.
‘‘I told him we were going to take his degree away,’’ Gee said Thursday before speaking at the Akron Roundtable at Tangier.
Gee's quip had a strong element of seriousness to it -- because Gee is dead set against a Division I football playoff and will do all he can to oppose it.
‘‘They will have to drag a college football playoff system out of my cold, dead hands,’’ Gee said.
The words sound harsh, but Gee, a humorous, gregarious intellectual who always sports a bow tie, states his position matter-of-factly. Those who expect Ohio State to lead any kind of charge to a playoff might as well put their efforts into re-wallpapering the family room.
Adams was not happy about it.
‘‘I love Ohio State,’’ he said recently on XM radio. ‘‘But this is not a way to serve the country.’’
Serve the country? Isn't that what our finest young men and women are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Serve the country?
Is Adams joking?
Apparently not. He said the only reason the Big Ten opposes a playoff is that the conference knows the only way it can get a team in the BCS title game is through the system that sent Ohio State to be waxed by Southeast Conference teams in consecutive years.
‘‘What we have now is a system where the Big Ten has the opportunity to most every year get a team into the national-championship game that, based on their performance, would not get there through a playoff system,’’ Adams said. ‘‘So, they are not dumb people.’’
He added that ‘‘entrenched constituencies have a self-preservation interest’’ in keeping the BCS.
Gee has no problem with that notion.
He conceded that the Big Ten has been called ‘‘obstructionist’’ when it comes to a playoff.
‘‘I plead guilty,’’ he said.
The entire situation is interesting. The only NCAA sport that lacks a playoff is Division I-A football. But Gee points out no other sport has the bowl system (which is lucrative).
A year ago, Adams opposed a playoff proposal put forth by Florida. Then Georgia finished the ’07 season strong and thumped Hawaii in a bowl game, yet was shut out of the BCS title game, and Ohio State lost badly to LSU.
Gee, who abolished the athletic department and athletic director position while Chancellor of Vanderbilt, said if anything changed he would prefer to junk the BCS and go back to the bowl system.
‘‘It's exciting,’’ he told the Roundtable crowd. ‘‘Get with it. Let's have fun. It's not about winning or losing.’’
No?
Gee said he was Chairman of the Big Ten Conference when the BCS was developed, and at that point, the game was played Jan. 1 or 2. He said he dug in his heels, made that development his ‘‘Maginot line.’’
Since, the BCS has grown and moved the title game well past Jan. 2. Gee's Maginot line of defense had as much success as the one built by France to hold off the Germans.
‘‘Maybe I need a new analogy,’’ he joked.
Gee said his focus at Ohio State is to ensure athletics are integrated (his word) into the university and do not stand alone.
He expressed his love for coach Jim Tressel and threw out a few LSU jokes while mentioning that Ohio State's $110 million athletic budget is a ‘‘relative speck’’ in its $4 billion overall budget.
Gee decried how a playoff would bring ‘‘creeping professionalism’’ to college football, yet it seems the BCS already has done just that with its title game.
He said football is ‘‘not in the business of winning or losing’’ and is not present ‘‘to entertain 105,000 people for 3ƒ hours on Saturday afternoon.’’
It's hard to decipher exactly where Gee is going with all this, because surely Ohio State's powerhouse athletics department is going nowhere. And players don't seem to have a choice between the 3ƒ-hour game on Saturday afternoon or Habitat for Humanity.
But that's where Gee stands.
He pointed out that the OSU band -- the ‘‘best damn band in the land’’ -- practices two times as much as the football team.
‘‘Sometimes it shows,’’ he said.
Let the record show, he was joking and all laughed.
Saving the country was not on his agenda.
CAVALIERS
The smart-aleck approach would be to say that we might actually find out what kind of coach Mike Brown is in 2010.
That's the last year of his contract extension, and also the first year LeBron James potentially would be playing outside of Cleveland.
James' contract expires in 2009 and . . . well . . . let's not even go there. It's not a pleasant thought, and there's no reason to think it will happen.
Besides, we already know what kind of coach Brown is, and that's a very good one who deserved his extension.
Cleveland can be a hard place to coach or manage.
The large level of frustration from coming close to winning a title tends to blur the big picture, and incredibly good seasons are considered inadequate.
And that leads the vocal minority to pipe up.
So it is with Brown, a guy who coached his team to the NBA Finals last season and who has done an exemplary job this season of being patient and finding the right combinations.
To some, Brown is boring, a guy who doesn't know how to coach offense.
In reality, he's a guy who brought defense to the Cavs and has a superstar believing in him and his approach. When the team's star buys into the coach's system and style, the team does.
The common conception is that the Cavs started slowly this season.
In reality, they didn't.
For a long time, they didn't have their team due to holdouts (Sasha Pavlovic, Anderson Varejao) and injuries (Larry Hughes, Donyell Marshall, James).
Yet, they started 9-6 and remain one of only five teams to beat the Boston Celtics.
Since the Cavs got healthy and Brown returned to the lineup that led to the team getting to the Finals, they have won nine out of 11, including the win Thursday in San Antonio.
The lineup that is working has Hughes starting.
Hughes has responded to the challenge given him by Brown. He also has been in at the end of games -- which, as my esteemed colleague Brian Windhorst has pointed out, is what's important in the NBA.
Zyrdunas Ilgauskas also has joined Varejao at the end of games, which is good to see. Ilgauskas has played well from the start this season. (He's another guy the vocal minority love to criticize, but how many 7-foot-3 guys can do what Z does?)
Brown is a good man, a good father and a good coach, and character matters. As General Manager Danny Ferry properly pointed out, a good coach is hard to find, so it makes sense to keep him.
Brown does not criticize his players publicly. He did not whine last season when the Cavs got some atrocious calls at the end of games in the playoffs. (Speaking of atrocious, did anyone see how the end of the Spurs game was officiated?)
For all the Cavs' ups-and-early-downs, there is one indisputable fact: When James plays at least half the game, the Cavs are 21-12.
When he hasn't, they're 0-6.
Little things show up in pro sports from time to time that are meaningful.
At the end of NBA games, coaches usually wave to each other down the sideline, a sign of sportsmanship.
Thursday night, Brown and Gregg Popovich met warmly at midcourt to shake hands.
Popovich might be the league's best coach, and his respect for Brown was evident. That showed and meant a lot.
Keeping this coach in Cleveland for as long as possible merely makes sense.
RANDOM THOUGHTS
-- Want to trade Asdrubal Cabrera?
That's what the Indians were faced with this offseason when they got involved in trade talks, and the Indians were in plenty of discussions -- to varying degrees.
Name any major deal this offseason -- third baseman Miguel Cabrera to the Detroit Tigers, pitcher Dan Haren to the Arizona Diamondbacks, outfielder Jason Bay, who did not leave the Pittsburgh Pirates -- and the Indians were involved in some way, shape or form.
But rather than seek minor-leaguers or prospects, teams wanted players from the Indians' major-league roster -- and most asked for Cabrera, who was so impressive at second base last season.
Which meant acquiring a player for one position would have left a void at another.
Rather than make a move to make it seem like they were busy, the Indians chose to do what they felt was right and kept their players.
-- Lot of rumors and reports out there that the Cavs were trying to acquire Jamal Crawford from the New York Knicks.
Reportedly, the Cavs would have included Larry Hughes -- a large surprise, given Hughes' contract makes him nearly impossible to trade.
Apparently the rumors overstated the reality, as General Manager/coach Isiah Thomas has been turning down every trade offer sent to Manhattan.
The Cavs also have never felt any urgency to make a move -- unless it was a clear improvement.
Crawford can play both guard spots, and he can shoot, but he sometimes does not take the best shots, which accounts for his 40 percent career percentage heading into this season. His defense also is a concern.
-- One other rumor had the Cavs trying to acquire Pau Gasol from the Memphis Grizzlies. That would be more than interesting. Gasol is a 7-foot forward and third overall pick who never has averaged fewer than 17.6 points and 7.3 rebounds.
Not sure who would go, but it would be interesting to see how he'd fit.
-- Browns quarterback coach Rip Scherer interviewed to be the offensive coordinator at UCLA, but the Los Angeles Times reported that Scherer pulled his name from consideration.
Word from L.A. is that Scherer told UCLA he believes too strongly in the Browns and feels too good about the team's direction to leave.
This is good for the Browns, because Scherer and offensive coordinator Rob Chudzinski have been closely aligned.
-- The Dallas Cowboys made Jason Garrett the NFL's highest-paid assistant after the Baltimore Ravens and the Atlanta Falcons interviewed him to be coach. Garrett was the first person Browns General Manager Phil Savage tried to contact a year ago when he was looking for a new offensive coordinator.
-- Tony Sparano is coach of the Miami Dolphins, Ken Whisenhunt coach of the Arizona Cardinals. The common denominator? Both were on Chris Palmer's expansion staff in 1999 with the Browns.
-- Palmer, incidentally, will be in Green Bay today. He coaches the New York Giants' quarterbacks, perhaps one reason Eli Manning has settled down so nicely this season.
-- Good to see Bud Selig got a three-year contract extension this week to be baseball's commissioner. Happened a couple of days after he appeared in front of Congress.
America is a wonderful country isn't it?
Guy like Selig can be lambasted the way he has been for missing the steroids scandal, then a couple of days later gets a three-year extension.
If this isn't the land of the free, then what is?
-- Rest in peace, Richard Knerr, whose company Wham-O invented the Hula Hoop and Frisbee. Imagine reflecting at the end of life on the hours of enjoyment those simple toys provided so many people.
-- Until next time . . . there you have it.
Patrick McManamon can be reached at pmcmanamon@thebeaconjournal.com
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