Gordon Gee took shots at Notre Dame, Louisville and the SEC in his controversial remarks. (Bloomberg/Getty Images)

By SI Staff

Ohio State president Gordon Gee created quite the stir after news broke on Thursday that Gee had taken jabs at the SEC, Notre Dame and Louisville during a meeting of Ohio State’s Athletic Council on Dec. 5. As it turns out, that’s not all he said. SI.com’s Andy Staples obtained a complete recording of Gee’s remarks from Ohio State through an open records request. Gee’s statements can be heard in their entirety below.

Gee touches on Big Ten expansion, his dealings with Notre Dame and his thoughts on Cincinnati, Louisville and Kentucky, among other schools. A sample of some of his most eye-opening remarks — listed by time — are included below the audio file:

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Have these Wisconsin players just learned that Leaders & Legends will soon be naught but an unfortunate memory? (AP)

By Holly Anderson

As expected, the Big Ten has officially announced its plans to shift from the constantly-maligned Leaders & Legends divisions to geographical halves. The league has also decided to move to a nine-game conference schedule. First, the business, and lordamercy have they ever mathed this thing out:

The Big Ten Conference office announced football division alignments set to begin in 2014 and nine-game conference schedules set to start in 2016. [...] The new division alignments will feature Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State, Penn State and Rutgers in the East Division and Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Northwestern, Purdue and Wisconsin in the West Division. [...] Each school will play the other six schools in its division plus two teams from the other division in 2014 and 2015, which will serve as transitional years in which the schools will still be playing eight-game schedules. Beginning in 2016, each school will play three teams from the other division as part of its nine-game schedule. [...] With the start of the nine-game conference schedule in 2016, teams from the East Division will host five conference home games during even-numbered years, while teams from the West Division will host five conference home games during odd-numbered years. As a result of the nine-game conference schedule and the Big Ten’s schedule rotation, every student-athlete will have the opportunity to play against every other team in the conference at least once during a four-year period. 

Got all that? Right. Now, on to the important part: How we are all going to keep these straight without carrying around pocket globes. Using the first letter of each school’s name in a given division to form an anagram is possible (PRIM MOM for the East and WIMP INN for the West), but we prefer Tony Gerdeman’s technique:

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By Zac Ellis

The Mountain West has approached the Pac-12 about a potential partnership, Jeremy Fowler of CBSSports.com reports. MWC commissioner Craig Thompson hopes the two leagues can form an alliance around nonconference scheduling, bowl matchups and officials. Together, the MWC and Pac-12 count 24 West Coast teams as members.

#MWC approaches #Pac12 about "best practices" partnership of resources, scheduling, etc, commish told @CBSSports cbssports.com/collegefootbal…—
Jeremy Fowler (@JFowlerCBS) April 24, 2013

The Mountain West, which only a year ago saw conference realignment threaten its very existence, convinced Boise State and San Diego State to remain with the conference instead of defecting to other leagues. Thompson said he believes the Pac-12 is open to the possibility of a partnership.

“But can we all agree that Maryland and Rutgers are looking particularly leaderly this morning? Hello?” (AP)

By Holly Anderson

Friday night news from Sources McMurphy that bears repeating: Leaders and Legends are going the way of the dinosaur. Not in the re-released-in-3D way, but rather the selected-for-necessary-extinction way:

Legends and Leaders are no more, as the Big Ten will use geography to determine its new divisions and division names beginning in the 2014 season. The Big Ten will replace Legends and Leaders with East and West when Maryland and Rutgers join the league in 2014, league sources told ESPN.

[...]

“Just take a ruler and a map [and split the 14 teams],” a source said.

HOW HARD WAS THAT? Honestly.

This joke is never not funny: There are nine Boise State football players in this picture. Can you spot them all? (AP)

By Holly Anderson

Boise State does not want to have to pay money for aborting its launch to the then-Big East. We are of two minds about this: Should the American justice system do whatever it can to save whomever it can from having to play in the Odd Lots League? Or do those who even act like playing for the freshly hatched American Athletic Conference is a good plan deserve to be left to their fates?

Or will Boise skate free no matter what, by having its players hide all school monies beneath jerseys scattered across the blue turf? The choice is yours:

To help you visualize WKU’s move, here are a couple noted Hilltoppers topping an imaginary hill. Today we learned the Big Red costume has a pocket on the leg, presumably to hold the vials of human tears that sustain its existence.

Since we last updated our easy-to-use conference realignment graphic, a length of time ago so short it can still comfortably be expressed in hours, here’s what else has transpired in the ceaseless league-hopping square dance: As first reported over the weekend by the Bowling Green Daily News, Western Kentucky has elected to join Conference USA next summer.

The move will take effect on July 1, 2014; the school will hold a press conference at 1 p.m. ET to formally announce the switch. No replacement member institution has been announced for the Sun Belt, but our pals at SB Nation heard a while back that JMU was next in line to level up should a current team depart.

@celebrityhottub BE OUR GUEST, BE OUR GUEST, WE DON'T CARE IF YOU'RE OUT WEST—
Scott (@actioncookbook) April 01, 2013

Try the gray stuff. It’s delicious.

Karl Benson, you deserve all these balloons for not naming your divisions Helios and Apollo or some damn thing. (Andrew Fielding/Zumapress.com)

The four-team Sun Belt expansion is official, and once it’s complete — and if nobody else leaves — the league will boast 12 teams and the ability to split into divisions and stage a conference championship game. Sagely observing the errors of power conferences we shall not name here, the SBC has elected to name its divisions Sun Belt East and Sun Belt West; the league will split as follows, per an Idaho press release:

When the Vandals enter the league in 2014, there will be two six-team divisions. A Western Division with Idaho, New Mexico State, Texas State, Arkansas State, Louisiana-Lafayette and Louisiana-Monroe, and an Eastern Division with Appalachian State, Georgia State, Georgia State, South Alabama, Troy and Western Kentucky. Appalachian State and Georgia Southern will be in transition from FCS status. 

Y’all know how these things go. You know there was at least a sliver of a chance that Very, Very Western Sun Belt members Idaho and New Mexico State could’ve ended up in the East. Excellent avoidance of typical pitfalls, Sun Belt bigshots.

The latest wave of realignment as it stands of 4:55 p.m. EDT on Thursday. God be with us.

Aren’t we glad we didn’t redo this graphic today?

Here’s a list of conference realignment moves that have been made known since we last wrote about conference realignment moves, which, for the record, was like two hours ago:

• Tulsa is joining the Big East. Not the Big East with all the basketball schools in it that’s going to be called the Big East down the line. Tulsa is joining the first Big East. This is happening in 2014.

• East Carolina is joining the Big East, also not the basketball Big East — though wouldn’t it be droll if one of these teams accidentally ended up in the Catholic 7 — and also in 2014.

• Conference USA is joining the Sun Belt. All of it. This part we made up, probably.

All this reported by college football realignment oracle Brett “Sources” McMurphy. We’ll see you back here in a couple hours for the next shuffle.