But Gee is not about money. (Don’t be misled by his 1.8 mill at Vanderbilt.) “After all,” says the Chronicle, “more-lucrative posts await, certainly in private industry.” ‘“If it was just about money, I could do substantially better,’” says Gee. Right. Private industry can hardly wait to hire as top dog a guy who tells you he will stay, but in reality, as shown by his record, will hit the road in a few years, maybe in two or three. Lack of stability and continuity -- that’s what private businesses want.
But, doubtlessly to prove it’s not about money, Gee points out that he will be making less at The Ohio State University than at Vanderbilt, with a pay package of about a million a year. (Can you live in Columbus on that?) However, he also “will be eligible for some form of performance based pay, the details of which he says have yet to be formally hashed out.” I am in the fortunate and unusual position of having learned, and being able to disclose to you, what the performance pay will be based on. Gee will receive a bonus of $1 million every year that Ohio State beats Michigan in the Horseshoe, and a bonus of $2 million if Ohio beats Michigan in the Big House. What’s more, every time Ohio beats Michigan in two consecutive years, the performance based pay will include an extra one million dollars the second year. If Ohio wins three straight years, this extra amount will be doubled, so that Gee will get an extra bonus of two million in the third year. The extra amount will double again to four million if Ohio wins a fourth straight year. And again to eight million in a fifth straight year. And so on.
The Ohio State Board of Trustees was reluctant at first to accept this basis for performance pay. Three of The Ohio State University’s Trustees had learned arithmetic, and were concerned that the bonus might end up bankrupting the university and maybe even the whole state of Ohio. After all the extra bonus would be $512 million in the eleventh consecutive year of victories over Michigan and $1.24 billion in the twelfth year. But finally the deal was done because Ohio’s Trustees decided that, what the hell, Michigan is bound to win sometime, maybe once every five or six years, so that the performance bonus will then drop back down to only the initial figure the next time Ohio beats Michigan (which should be the year after the loss). And if it costs Ohio an extra 16 mill because Ohio beats Michigan five straight years, the Trustees thought this was worth it. In fact, they voted that it would be worth it to beat Michigan 11 or 12 straight years even though this would cost Ohio over half a billion in the eleventh year and then over a billion in the twelfth year.
Upon hearing of this deal, the Michigan Trustees debated a motion to throw the Ohio State game for 20 straight years on the theory that this would bankrupt The Ohio State University and the whole State of Ohio, both of which would then go out of business so that Michigan would never have to worry about losing to Ohio State again.
One other little known fact is that, upon learning of Gordon Gee’s performance pay deal, the President of Michigan decided that it would be a pretty nifty way of increasing her own inadequate total compensation of a million a year. So she demanded the same performance bonus from Michigan’s Trustees as Gee is getting from the Ohio State Trustees. But the President of Michigan is no fool -- she didn’t get to be president of Michigan by being stupid. She didn’t demand a performance bonus for beating Ohio State. She demanded one for beating Appalachian State.
Being desperate to achieve this goal, and having no concerns that the performance bonus would constantly increase because of consecutive victories, Michigan’s Trustees immediately agreed to the president’s demand.*
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