It’s been exactly two weeks since Vanderbilt Chancellor Gordon Gee said he was ‘declaring war’ on big-time college athletics. As he detailed the war plans – unfurling statistics and financial numbers before a room of befuddled sports reporters who, among them, couldn’t account for a single math class since high school – several questions were immediately raised.

For example:

Didn’t Gee get the memo about those distasteful war metaphors?

(Gee’s possible answer: Vanderbilt is in the South, and therefore not subject to the rules of good taste.)

How, then, does Gee plan to win the war?

(Gee’s possible answer: With an all-out attack, using every source of weaponry available to his troops; by seizing his athletic department, taking it hostage and dropping a bomb on the athletic director’s position; by continuing to field athletic teams that are capable of winning any battle and slaying any opponent.)

What does Gee hope to gain if he’s able to succeed in his war?

(Gee’s possible answer: An end to all those inane puns on his name – like, Gee whiz, what the hell is Vanderbilt thinking?)

It should be said that, since making the announcement, Gee and his institution have collected some fine compliments from the intellectual dilettantes – folks with NPR on their radio presets instead of WFAN, folks far too smart to understand that athletics are very, very important, and that an education is quite overrated, especially when you want to become a sportswriter.

Sportswriters, meanwhile, are calling Gee an idiot, and punning his name with much merriment. Attempting to ‘send a message,’ Gee took Vanderbilt’s athletic department and eliminated it. The Commodores will still compete – if that’s the verb best used to describe repeated, abject failure – in the SEC, but now their teams will be managed by the Office of Student Athletics, Recreation and Wellness. So in other words, the football team will be run by the same folks who organize fraternity softball.

In another head-scratcher, the vice chancellor will handle the important sports-related administrative decisions, such as scheduling opponents, leveling budgets and managing personnel.

‘I just hope that this vice chancellor has a lot of time on his hands, every day, seven days a week,’ said Syracuse athletic director Jake Crouthamel, whose job is very busy, even without concerns about the ZBT softball team. ‘If this person can fulfill his responsibilities, then he probably didn’t have enough to do beforehand.’

Gee, who’s served as president of four schools, including West Virginia and Ohio State, admitted his revolutionary tactics might not work elsewhere.

‘If I tried this at Ohio State,’ Gee said, ‘I’d be pumping gas.’

But once again he is wrong. There’s no way any Columbus-area Exxon manager would be that forgiving. If Gee waged his war at either Ohio State or West Virginia, his face would appear, draped undoubtedly by Western-style text, in every sheriff’s office and on every milk carton in the state. Gee wouldn’t be a war hero, he’d be reviled. The Buckeye and Mountaineer programs would be in greater disrepair than 10-year-old running shoes, and Gee would be thinking to himself, ‘Gee, why did this ever seem like a good idea?’

Actually, there is a reason behind all this, but the cunning sportswriters, when discrediting Gee, condense this into one requisite paragraph. It generally goes something like this: The NCAA is in trouble … many of its coaches are cheaters … Maurice Clarett is evil and so are the people helping him … the Atlantic Coast Conference is rotten and greedy and slimier than a Family Double Dare studio.

Yet the curious thing about General Gee’s war plan is this: For all the rot and corruption in the NCAA, none of it lurks in Vanderbilt. The Commodores are clean. They stay out of trouble. They graduate. They need reform like a Mormon needs A.A.

‘The need for it is what perplexes me,’ Crouthamel said. ‘But the jury is still out, and we’ll all watch what happens with some degree of interest.’

Just don’t expect to see Syracuse following on the war path soon. A few athletic directors nationwide have already mused that Vanderbilt’s plan won’t work.

Vanderbilt is still interesting to keep an eye on, but only because we all love watching a good-ole, self-ordained implosion. Perhaps Gee’s warfare has some validity, but because it involves an array of numbers and dollar signs, no sportswriter can aptly tell you what it is. Instead, we’ll keep on doing what we do best – namely, making fun of an easy target.

This can be done quite effectively, with an all-out attack that uses every available source of weaponry. And for this mission, puns do the job quite well.

Chico Harlan is a staff writer for The Daily Orange, where his columns appear each Tuesday. E-mail him at apharlan@syr.edu.

Published on September 22, 2003 at 12:00 pm