“He’s not been a reluctant partner in this,” Gee said of Smith. “He’s worked very hard with a group of officers and trustees. There’s been no hiding the ball. I think he’s done an excellent job.”

At the same time, Gee said he regretted two missteps in the handling of Tressel’s case. First, Gee said he would put in the “regret category” the university’s decision to suspend Tressel only two games after it came out in March that Tressel had withheld information about players receiving improper benefits and later lied about the situation.

Gee also admitted that the news conference to announce Tressel’s two-game suspension turned into a debacle. That day, Tressel did not wholeheartedly apologize for his transgressions and Gee made an ill-timed and now-ridiculed joke about hoping that Tressel did not dismiss him.

“We didn’t perform very well; I didn’t and the coach didn’t,” said Gee, who earned a reputation as a reformer in college athletics during his days as the chancellor of Vanderbilt. “I’m a guy who takes what I do very seriously. But I don’t take myself seriously. In that instance, it was inappropriate for me to crack a joke.”

But those blunders, along with appealing to allow the five players suspended for five games to play in the Sugar Bowl, have been the source of much of the criticism directed at Ohio State. Despite a five-game suspension issued by the N.C.A.A., the suspended players, including the star quarterback Terrelle Pryor, were allowed to play against Arkansas in the Sugar Bowl because of an obscure clause in N.C.A.A. rules. When Tressel’s initial knowledge of players’ selling memorabilia to a tattoo parlor became public, the players’ participation in the Sugar Bowl looked all the more indefensible.