Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith to retire in 2024
Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith announced Wednesday that he’ll retire in June of 2024.
Smith, 67, has been one of the most influential athletic directors in college athletics during his tenure at Ohio State. He became Ohio State’s athletic director in March of 2005 after serving as the Arizona State athletic director for five seasons. He was also athletic director at Eastern Michigan and Iowa State.
A former Notre Dame defensive end, Smith has served on both the College Football Playoff Committee and the NCAA Football Rules Committee and has been the chair of the Men’s Division I Basketball Committee.
Smith’s retirement will come a day before Oregon and Washington officially join the Big Ten along with USC and UCLA. The two Los Angeles schools announced last summer they were heading to the Big Ten while the two Pacific Northwest teams joined the Big Ten a week ago as the Pac-12 fell apart due to a lack of a new media deal.
“Fox brought new money to the table for Oregon and Washington,” Smith said at a Wednesday news conference of the Big Ten’s recent expansion. He confirmed that Ohio State and other current Big Ten members are not set to get less money from the Big Ten’s new media rights deal with the addition of the two new schools.
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The Big Ten will have 18 teams starting in 2024 and its football television contracts will be with CBS, Fox and NBC.
Smith has also been outspoken about the need for college football to reorganize its governance structure. He reiterated Wednesday that he believes the way college football is run should continue to be examined given its financial influence in college sports.
Smith took over at Ohio State while Jim Tressel was the football team’s head coach. Tressel’s teams won at least 10 games in Smith’s first six football seasons at the school before Tressel resigned in May of 2011 because of his knowledge of NCAA violations.
After new Wisconsin coach Luke Fickell served as Ohio State’s interim coach in 2011, Smith hired Urban Meyer. Ohio State went 12-0 in Meyer’s first season but was ineligible for a bowl game or the Big Ten title because of the NCAA violations during Tressel’s tenure.
Ohio State won the national title after the 2014 season with Meyer in charge and lost a total of five games over the ensuing three seasons.
In 2018, Smith was suspended for 17 days as Meyer was suspended for the first three games of the season because of the athletic department’s handling of domestic abuse allegations against former assistant coach Zach Smith.
“Although Coach Meyer and Athletic Director Smith failed to adhere to the precise requirements of their contracts when they concluded that they needed to await a law enforcement determination to file charges before they reported the otherwise disputed claims of spousal abuse against Zach Smith, they did so based upon a good faith belief that they did not have sufficient information to trigger a reporting obligation or initiate disciplinary action in the absence of law enforcement action,” a board of trustees report said. “Other than their misunderstanding of the requirements triggering reporting obligations, neither Coach Meyer or Athletic Director Smith violated any policy, rules, law or contractual obligation in connection with the alleged domestic abuse claims against Zach Smith.”
Zach Smith, an assistant under Meyer at Florida, was fired in the weeks ahead of the 2018 season after the allegations against him became public.
Current coach Ryan Day served as Ohio State’s interim coach during Meyer’s suspension and took over the program after Meyer announced in December of 2018 that he’d retire from coaching.
