Ohio State athletic director’s ‘berserk’ response to Buckeye football’s Big Ten slippage (2024)

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Gene Smith looks comfortable with his pending retirement as Ohio State athletic director but talks with at least a twinge of regret.

Not about the state of the athletic department as a whole. Ohio State continues to churn record revenue totals, build and upgrade facilities and win national championships across its 35 sports.

One sport, though, will weigh more heavily on Smith’s legacy more than any other. On his way out the door, he tried to put his thumb on that scale.

“I probably put a significant burden on Ross (Bjork) with the budget because I was playing poker with football and went all in,” Smith said Thursday, referring to his successor as AD. “Where we are with football and not winning Big Ten championships, I wanted to make sure that we did everything we could to make sure football has a real chance next year.

“When I think about my legacy, so to speak, I think about that. I hate to leave when Ohio State football is not back to winning Big Ten championships. I put a financial burden or Ross that he’s got to balance the budget in the future, because I just went berserk.”

Smith made those remarks after a one-hour career retrospective interview moderated by former cleveland.com columnist Doug Lesmerises. The discussion covered Smith’s 19 years as athletic director as a backdrop for the ongoing — and at times tumultuous — change in college sports. Billed as a recognition of Smith’s legacy, many of the topics explored his opinions on and solutions for the reforms and conflicts yet to come.

How well-equipped Smith leaves Ohio State to handle that uncertain future will reflect back on those two decades. He will not be in the AD’s suite for the Nov. 30 home game against Michigan. Should OSU suffer a fourth straight loss to its rival, though, some portion of that loss would belong to Smith.

Which is how Smith, once wary of the escalating cost for the nation’s top football coordinators, signed off on an unprecedented $11.425 million assistant coach salary pool. When Ryan Day wanted to hire a true offensive coordinator for the first time, Smith authorized the hire of Bill O’Brien. When he left three weeks later to take over at Boston College, Smith approved a little more money to hire Chip Kelly away from his job as UCLA head coach.

Day earned over $10 million for the first time last season. That means over $21 million committed to salaries for only Day and the 10 countable assistant coaches. That does not account for analysts, quality control coaches, strength and conditioning staff and others.

Smith gave Day an assistant coach salary pool of $7.245 million when he promoted him to head coach in 2019. That pool has grown by over 57%.

Much like the way Day built his roster for this fall — with name, image and likeness enticements to both keep the roster together and attract high-impact transfers — Smith apparently decided to leave nothing to chance.

Ohio State won The Game in 15 of Smith’s first 16 seasons. It won 11 Big Ten championships in that span, including four straight from 2017-20 in the transition from Meyer to Day. The absolute dominance fans grew to expect in the rivalry blossomed, then abruptly ended, on Smith’s watch.

Smith’s past past eight months did not create a smooth slide into retirement. The in-person sign-stealing accusations against Michigan heightened tensions between the programs. Then the Wolverines won again and knocked OSU out the playoff. While some fans, accustomed to dominance in the series, grew restless over the direction of the football program, Smith had to fire basketball coach Chris Holtmann when that team stagnated for the second consecutive season.

Enough to drive a guy “berserk,” I suppose. Yet Smith’s legacy already includes two instances of pulling football away from a potential drop-off.

After the “Tattoogate” scandal and the firing of Jim Tressell, Smith hired Urban Meyer. That led to the 2014 national championship and the modernization of the program’s national recruiting apparatus. When Meyer stepped away in 2018 due to health issues, Smith promoted Day to his first head coaching job. The program became synonymous with quarterback and receiver excellence.

Maybe the offseason spending spree will create a similar spark.

While Smith jokes about the budget, in reality he began reshaping that a couple of years ago, finding new revenue streams in anticipation of expected changes to the athlete compensation model. He continues to predict major ramifications from House vs. NCAA and other active litigation. He continues to call for federal legislation to bring structure where the NCAA has faltered.

On his way out the door, he also decided to control what he could control. His athletic program was once defined in large part by its football program’s extended perch at the top of the Big Ten. To reclaim it, he made a financial commitment which not too long ago would have been outside his comfort zone.

“You either embrace change, or you become irrelevant — it’s that simple,” Smith said when discussing reforms in college sports. “And over the years, we’ve embraced change.”

Ohio State football is in no danger of becoming irrelevant. Relevancy, though, has never been the standard — not before Smith’s tenure, and certainly not after.

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