Ohio State tackle Josh Fryar understands what football can give, and what it can take

Josh Fryar knows as well as anyone the brutal toll that football can take.

The Ohio State right tackle also knows what it can give.

Football can be a beautiful – and enriching – sport. Eleven players must play as one, sacrificing for the whole. Reach the NFL, and a windfall awaits.

But football is a violent sport that can take a devastating toll on limbs and brains.

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From the time Fryar started playing flag football as a young boy, his father, Jeff, coached him. Jeff was Josh's offensive line coach at Beech Grove High School in suburban Indianapolis. Jeff, now 58, played for Indiana under Bill Mallory. Perhaps the fondest memories of his college career are the consecutive blowouts over Ohio State in 1987 and ’88, the last times IU has beaten the Buckeyes.

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“Because coach Mallory was from Ohio, he gave us all buckeyes to put it in our pockets,” Jeff Fryar said of the ’87 win. “When we went out and did our business and got back to the locker room that day, we all took our buckeyes out of our pockets and crushed them on the locker room floor.”

He remembers that story, but there is much Jeff cannot recall.

“I have mental issues from football,” he said.

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) can’t be definitively diagnosed until after death. But the Fryars have no doubt Jeff has it, and that football is the cause.

Jeff accepts his condition with grace. He has no self-pity. He still loves football. Though Jeff had to give up his career in human resources, he’s a substitute teacher at suburban Indianapolis Beech Grove High School, which Josh attended.

“I try to live each day to the fullest,” Jeff said.

Still, he has limitations. He can be irritable, particularly in the evening when his brain becomes tired. He’s comfortable driving only short distances.

When Ohio State plays Notre Dame Saturday in South Bend, 2½ hours from the Fryars’ home in Indianapolis, Jeff won’t be there. The commotion of attending a game is usually too much for him, though he tries to make it for one game a year. But he’ll be watching on TV, ready to dissect the game and give Josh a breakdown of it.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Jeff and Jamie Fryar have been married for 25 years. Jamie is a nurse and Jeff’s primary caregiver.

“I’d say 10-11 years ago, he was pre-diagnosed with it, and his cognition has declined,” Jamie said.

Medication has slowed the rate of decline, she said, but it is irreversible.

Especially before the diagnosis, the Fryar family, which includes Josh’s older brother Jacob, struggled to cope with Jeff’s mood swings and forgetfulness.

“I think there was the loving dad and the dad that sometimes had problems,” Jeff said. “Until we figured out what was going on with me, it was kind of like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. ‘Why is dad so loving to our family and then all of a sudden he turns a switch and he’s a different person?’ ”

It wasn’t easy for Josh and Jacob.

“He’s an unbelievable guy,” Josh said. “I love my dad to death. (But) the family issues were difficult because he wouldn’t remember things.”

Josh is sharing his father’s story because he wants to increase awareness about CTE. His parents support that decision.

“I might not have CTE in 40 years,” Josh said, “but someone on this team might have CTE, and seeing how it affected him and affects him is very, very eye-opening.”

Given his father’s condition, it’s natural to wonder if Josh has any misgivings about playing football.

“No, and I firmly say no because I know what this game can do for your family,” he said. “You can help your family out substantially going to the NFL or being in coaching.”

His parents share his view.

“The sport has done so much for myself and my family that it’s their choice (to play),” Jeff said. “They can see what their father has gone through, but I left it up to them.”

The Fryars believe the advances in equipment, coaching and concussion awareness have made the game much safer than when Jeff played. Back then, tacklers were coached to lead with their head, and their helmets offered little protection. When his sons played youth football, Jeff bought them top-of-the-line helmets instead of settling for the team-issued ones.

“I look at Josh’s helmet and what the guys are wearing today, and they look like space helmets or race helmets,” Jeff said. “Mine was just a shell.”

A long climb up the depth chart for Ohio State's Josh Fryar

A long climb

Josh played several sports as a kid. In junior high, his parents said, he was a national champion wrestler.

But football was his passion. In elementary school, when students were asked to write down their career goal, Fryar wrote that he wanted to be an NFL player.

“A lot of teachers would laugh because I used to be a short, stubby kid,” he said.

Though he got offers from the likes of Alabama, Penn State and Oklahoma, he was only a three-star recruit. That made him one of the lowest-rated recruits on the Ohio State roster, and he had a long climb to become a starter. It also put a chip on his shoulder that remains.

Fryar was a freshman during the 2020 COVID-shortened season and then tore an ACL in warmups before the Michigan game in 2021. He rehabbed and progressed well enough to become Ohio State’s top backup lineman last year.

Still, he had self-doubts. But when offensive line coach Justin Frye told him he’d be starting for the injured Dawand Jones against Indiana last year, something clicked.

“I was like, ‘All right, let's do this,’ ” Fryar said. “I wasn't scared anymore. I don’t know what switched in me, but it was just a feeling in my gut that I had. That week, I studied my tail off and then I was like, ‘Oh, that's how you have to attack every single week.’ ”

Fryar was moved to left tackle this spring before shifting back to the right side early in training camp. He has graded as a champion in two of the Buckeyes’ three games.

“He’s so smart,” Frye said. “He really understands the big picture and the whole game. That’s allowed him to keep growing and playing to his ability level because he'll ask the right questions.”

Frye has immense respect for Fryar because he persevered through tough times and when he might not have seen a clear path to a prominent role.

“It’s Year 4, and he stuck around and waited his turn and he fought back from an injury,” Frye said. “In this climate of college football, the first thing that happens with a lot of guys is if they don’t get how they scripted it in their mind, they lose faith, lose hope, or just lose themselves and move on or chase something else. He didn’t do that.”

'She's my rock,' Josh Fryar says of his mother

'She's my rock'

Though Jeff Fryar won’t attend Saturday’s game, Jamie wouldn’t miss it. She grew up near South Bend. Her dad’s family owned the Morris Inn in town. Some of her relatives are buried in the cemetery on campus.

The boys aren’t the only football lovers in the family. Jamie even helped coach Josh when he started in a flag football league. As they got older, she would also critique her sons’ performances.

“She gave it to ‘em pretty good when they got home,” Jeff said. “We finally bought a projector. She’d sit down and watch game film with us.”

Josh and Jeff consider her the glue to the family.

“She’s my rock,” Josh said. "Whenever you're going through something difficult, you can always talk to her and she'll make you feel better about things."

“I love her to death,” Jeff said. “We’ve had our ups and downs. There were times, before I got on the medicine, that I didn’t treat her well, or the boys. The medicine has helped, but if it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t be living.”

The Fryars are a tight family, bonded largely by football and their devotion to Jeff, by what the sport took, but also what it has given. Jeff has lifelong friends through football, and Josh is forming them at Ohio State.

"I think it's worth it because I've seen the connections and relationships my dad has made through football, and I want that bond," Josh said. "You're playing football with a guy you'd never met before getting to Ohio State, and now you're best friends with them.

"You pay a price for it, but I think it's a greater reward to find those connections from football. You're going to have a lifelong friendship with somebody you never knew before."

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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: OSU's Josh Fryar knows what football can give, and what it can take