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Gene Smith (AD The Ohio State, '10 AD of the Year, '13 NAAC Organizational Leadership Award)

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gmen6981 said:
Mean Gene announces he will retire next July.

apnews.com

Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith says he'll retire in summer 2024

Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith said he plans to retire next summer. Smith, who has spent the past 18 years at Ohio State leading one of the largest and most successful athletic programs in the country, announced Wednesday that he would step down in July 2024.
apnews.com apnews.com
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I have mixed reactions on that news...imo he was batting around .500 in terms of awful vs good decisions. A good AD is hard to find though, hopefully we get a good replacement on the radar soon.
 
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RB07OSU said:
I have mixed reactions on that news...imo he was batting around .500 in terms of awful vs good decisions. A good AD is hard to find though, hopefully we get a good replacement on the radar soon.
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Ohio State has finished in the Top 10 of the NACDA Learfield Directors Cup 15 times. Half of those have come over the past ten years, including four Top Four finishes in the past seven (excluding the aborted 2019-2020 season). Under Gene's 18 year tenure OSU athletes have won 32 team and 117 individual national championships. And don't discount OSU Athletics reported a record gross revenue of $251.6 million for fiscal 2022.

It's fair to criticize the shortcomings, public relations gaffes, and a hire here or there; but I think this is a case of, 'don't let perfect be the enemy of good.' Gene's overall scorecard is positive for his tenure, IMO.
 
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Dryden said:
Ohio State has finished in the Top 10 of the NACDA Learfield Directors Cup 15 times. Half of those have come over the past ten years, including four Top Four finishes in the past seven (excluding the aborted 2019-2020 season). Under Gene's 18 year tenure OSU athletes have won 32 team and 117 individual national championships. And don't discount OSU Athletics reported a record gross revenue of $251.6 million for fiscal 2022.

It's fair to criticize the shortcomings, public relations gaffes, and a hire here or there; but I think this is a case of, 'don't let perfect be the enemy of good.' Gene's overall scorecard is positive for his tenure, IMO.
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Overall positive is probably accurate if you look at all athletic programs, which is the metric you should use for an AD even though I focus mostly on football, wrestling and basketball. So in terms of retention, I wouldn't fight that decision.

For me, I have trouble forgiving the choice to play a meaningless Gator Bowl at without a winning record that cost us a probable national title the next year, and also the treatment of Urban Meyer in his last year. And that's not hindsight, there were a ton of Ohio State folks that decried it before it happened. I also don't think he truly appreciated the importance of The Game...but then again, not every AD we will ever had an upbringing to hate ttun and that's really up to the coach to emphasize that, so that's the least of my gripes.

There's been other issues, but I can also acknowledge the good in the same lens of the sports I follow. He made up for UFM by promoting Day per UFM's suggestion rather than doing an outside hire. Jury is out there in terms of beating ttun, but I think that was absolutely the right move at the moment. Tom Ryan was a great hire for wrestling, nobody can keep up with Sanderson but he is coming as close as humanly possible imo. Holtmann is on the hot seat this year, but I'm not sure we had any better option out there and at the time I loved it...still rooting for him because he's a fantastic human being, and we've had some fun seasons even if we're underachieving in the Tourney.

Long winded way of saying that Gene probably performed well by the standard of an AD, but the moments that pissed me off really pissed me off. So it'll be hard looking back fondly on his tenure, that is until the next AD pisses me off more lol.
 
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While it's pretty hard to argue against his overall track record, I'm not going to miss Gene. It seems like in the biggest moments during his tenure he was always reactive or a step behind. It also seems like a lot of the big successes were due to happenstance (Urban), someone else's big hire (Thad hired by Geiger) or the sheer money that our AD has regardless of who is in charge being able to support so many sports that, while we've won big (Synchronized swimming anyone?), our competition has been limited.

Obviously the clusterfuck that was Tat-gate and the decisions made afterward, in particular not self inflicting a bowl ban in 2011 which in turn led to the bowl ban for the NC contending 2012 team, stands out the most. However the end of the Matta era was similarly fumbled when we waited until the spring when the entire 2015 frosh class transferred to move on, then had to overpay Holtman to come aboard after the coaching carousel had already stopped months earlier.

Then the COVID response and the big ten cancellation, which he seemed to not be too against until it became clear the SEC would play and the cancellation was wildly unpopular (to his credit he fought his ass off to get the season played at that point). He does get a lot of credit it in the media for the BIG's recent expansion (which was mainly brought on by USC and UCLA themselves starting the domino effect and coming to the BIG), but I haven't seen much to support that other than him being in the position he is at OSU.

We did hit our peak in a lot of programs while Gene was here though, so I do have to thank him for that. And he did keep the AD in great financial shape, though again that is probably easier than it sounds at a place like OSU. I'm excited to see what direction we go with our new hire(s).
 
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