HOG CALLS

Comments leave OSU’s Gee smarting

Arkansas coach Bret Bielema watches the Razorbacks warm up during practice April 6, 2013 at Razorback Stadium in Fayetteville.

FAYETTEVILLE - Few appear more stupid than those who fancy themselves smarter than they actually are.

Take Dr. E Gordon Gee, for example.

Over the past week or so, the nation has asked a simple question about the Ohio State University president whose G is pronounced hard, like in “geek.”

How can you be so idiotic?

The bow-tied geek was merely the look E. Gordon Gee affected, but a slanderous geek better befits this Buckeye whose slurs could launch an apology tour from Columbus, Ohio, through Fayetteville, Louisville, Ky., Birmingham, Ala., Madison, Wis., South Bend, Ind. and all the way to the Vatican.

Travel agents need no longer apply to book Gee’s “My Bad” tour. Ohio State’s president announced his obviously forced retirement Tuesday, effective July 1.

Apparently, Gee was trying to be funny while providing grist for the Buckeye boosters mill during a December gathering of the Ohio State Athletic Council. The problems arose when his comments - which insulted Catholics in general and Notre Dame in particular - became public as part of a Freedom of Information request by Sports Illustrated.

In addition, Gee offered up some disparaging remarks about the SEC and the University of Louisville. He also presumed to be a fly on the Wisconsin wall, acting as is he knew what Wisconsin Athletic Director Barry Alvarez really thought of Bret Bielema, the football coach who had just left Wisconsin after seven years as the Badgers head coach to take the Arkansas job.

“Barry Alvarez thought he [Bielema] was a thug and he left just one step ahead of the sheriff,” Gee was quoted as saying.

Alvarez, the former longtime football coach at Wisconsin, denied ever saying anything so derogatory about the coach he promoted to succeed himself in 2006 after hiring Bielema in 2005 as defensive coordinator.

Gee has since apologized to Bielema and Alvarez.

Understandably, the Catholic and Notre Dame references drew the most national attention, but from here the Bielema-Alvarez issue is the most damning.

While tasteless and lame, in context Gee’s remark that “you can’t trust those damn Catholics” was an obvious attempt at humor, and his criticism of Notre Dame, the SEC and Louisville omitted personalities.

The references to Bielema and Alvarez were absolutely personal.

In the initial apology the Ohio State president sent to Bielema, which Bielema posted on his Twitter account, Gee admitted those references were “entirely unfounded, unfair and inaccurate.”

Imagine the Ohio State administration’s or board of trustees’ furor if an Ohio State student newspaper reporter or campus radio station reporter had written or broadcast anything so “entirely unfounded, unfair and inaccurate” about President E. Gordon Gee.

Yet, it doesn’t dawn upon some of these university presidents and chancellors that the standards their universities’ journalism and communications schools teach their students apply to them, too.

They live in a different world. Some of these pompous, pampered Revenge of the Nerds elite who live in their ivory towers believe that because they are Ph.D. smart in some things, they are wise in all things - particularly athletics, which affords them the most expansive stage to display their expansive arrogance.

Gee, Gordon, it seems you are the latest egghead to lay an egg, which proves that having more degrees than a thermometer doesn’t guarantee the sense to gauge what turns up the heat.

Sports, Pages 22 on 06/08/2013