If I were in charge, Jake Diebler would be allowed to add his brother to his coaching staff
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Ohio State football has gotten creative to avoid nepotism laws with some assistant coach hires, so Diebler can too.
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Jake Diebler’s first full season as
Ohio State men’s basketball coach was pretty disappointing. The Buckeyes would post a 17-15 record in the 2024-25 season, failing to make the NCAA Tournament for a third straight season. Among the reasons for another season of mediocrity for Ohio State was a number of transfers failing to live up to expectations.
Meechie Johnson returned to Ohio State after spending two years at South Carolina, but only played in a handful of games before sitting out the rest of the season due to personal reasons.
Kentucky transfer Aaron Bradshaw was unavailable for a few games due to a legal investigation into an off-campus incident, while Duke transfer Sean Stewart pretty much spent the whole season in foul trouble.
Johnson will head back to South Carolina for the upcoming season, Bradshaw is off to Memphis, and Stewart will stay in the Big Ten after moving on to Oregon in the transfer portal.
An even bigger issue for Diebler after taking over as the Ohio State’s permanent men’s basketball head coach following the firing of Chris Holtmann was that the new head coach wasn’t allowed to hire his brother, former Buckeye sharpshooter Jon Diebler.
Ohio’s nepotism laws kept Jake Diebler from giving a public contract to a family member since Diebler himself is a public employee. These laws were first enacted in 1973 and have been revised and strengthened multiple times, most recently just last year.
But, the way they are set up means that Jon Diebler could accept a position on Kevin McGuff’s coaching staff for the women’s basketball team, but working on his brother’s staff is a no-no, even though he would be a home run hire.
Robert Goddin-Imagn Images
I can understand situations where Ohio’s nepotism law is necessary. This isn’t one of those situations. Jon Diebler was Ohio's Mr. Basketball in high school before playing at Ohio State from 2007 to 2011.
Following his college years, Diebler would go on to play overseas for a decade before being hired by Butler as their Director of Recruiting in April 2022. Despite not yet holding an assistant coaching position, it’s quite obvious that Diebler is certainly qualified to hold an assistant coaching position.
Had the hire been allowed, Jake Diebler would have made his brother the fifth assistant coach, as well as one of his on-the-road recruiters. Instead, Diebler’s assistant coaches were Joel Justus, Dave Dickerson, Jamall Walker, Talor Battle, and Luke Simons.
Diebler and Simons were both on staff under Bryce Drew at Valparaiso, so it’s likely that Simons filled the spot that Diebler had tabbed for his brother since Simons hadn’t held an assistant coaching position until last season.
What makes Jon Diebler being denied an assistant coaching position on his brother’s coaching staff even more annoying is that there have been a few assistant coaching hires for the football team that look pretty similar to what Jake Diebler wanted to do.
When Urban Meyer was head coach at Ohio State, his son-in-law was a member of his coaching staff. Corey Dennis started as an intern at Ohio State in 2015, eventually working his way up to quarterbacks coach in 2020 on Ryan Day’s staff. While many will likely speak positively about the work Dennis put in during his time in Columbus, even he knows that the only reason he was a Buckeye intern and then assistant was because he married Meyer’s daughter.
Before Meyer brought in Dennis, head coach Jim Tressel hired his brother, Dr. Dick Tressel. At first, Dick Tressel was associate director of football operations before he was moved to running backs coach. Some may think Tressel adding his brother to the coaching staff was nepotism but Dick Tressel was head coach in Division III at Hamline University from 1978 to 2000. With such an extensive coaching career before coming to Ohio State, Dick Tressel was more than qualified for a position on the Buckeye football coaching staff.
Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images
It could be argued that since Dennis and the other Tressel were initially hired at lower-level positions before being elevated to assistant coach status, they were actually hired by other assistant coaches and coordinators, rather than their father-in-law and brother. But we all know head coaches are control freaks, so they definitely signed off on the hires. Maybe Jake Diebler should have gotten creative to add his brother to last year’s coaching staff.
It’s hard to imagine that Ohio’s nepotism laws were created to keep one of the most dangerous three-point shooters in Ohio State history off of his brother’s coaching staff. Would the Buckeyes have been more competitive and made the NCAA Tournament this year had Diebler been able to hire his brother as an assistant? Who really knows if that would have made much of a difference when it comes to Ohio State’s performance during the 2024-25 season, but it certainly wouldn’t have hurt to have someone who played at the level Diebler did working with the Buckeyes all season.
In my opinion, if you are Jake Diebler and the athletic department, you have to get creative to find a way to bring Jon Diebler into the fold.
For those who are going to say that it is tough to skirt a state law. Apparently not, since a couple of the football coaches were able to do it to bring in family members. Had the men’s basketball team been at the height of its powers, like when Thad Matta took the team to a couple of Final Fours, you would have seen a creative solution found to add Jon Diebler to his the staff.
I’m guessing the athletic department felt the headache of trying to prove this wasn’t a nepotism hire wasn’t worth it, since the basketball program was already dealing with so many problems.
If clowns like the “pitbull lawyer” representative from Toledo can waste time with trying to get flag planting at college sporting events made a felony, then we can see some changes to Ohio’s nepotism laws, since Jake Diebler needs all the help he can get after seeing what he did in his first full season as head coach at Ohio State.
Jon Diebler will likely forget more about basketball than the rest of us will ever know, so saying he is getting a job just because his brother is the head coach is dead wrong. Any Buckeye basketball head coach would give serious consideration to hiring Diebler if they had the chance to bring him in as an assistant.
When it comes to an assistant coaching hire for Ohio State, family or not, the one question asked should be, “Will this be a better hire than when Urban Meyer hired the best man from his wedding, Billy Davis?”
If the answer is “Yes” (which in pretty much every case it will be), then any nepotism laws shouldn’t matter. The Davis hire was infinitely more infuriating than Diebler possibly bringing in his brother, since Davis was terrible at his job, though admittedly, he did have a decent resume before taking the position.
I would hope that common sense would prevail in a situation like Diebler’s, but it is quite obvious that common sense waved bye-bye to a lot of people in Ohio, as well as around the country, a long time ago. Since whatever the basketball program is trying to do isn’t working, they might as well try and push some boundaries since the football program has found a way to make it work for them.
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