Q&A: Ohio State AD Gene Smith on NIL, new Big Ten commissioner and more

The environment in college sports has evolved.

Rules changes in recent years have allowed athletes to make money from the use of their name, image and likeness and transfer between schools with greater ease.

The postseason and conferences are expanding in the near future, too. The College Football Playoff will adopt a 12-team bracket next year. By adding Southern California and UCLA, the Big Ten is also to join the Southeastern Conference as a 16-team league.

As he met with The Dispatch in his office at the Fawcett Center last week, Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith spoke about the range of issues. The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. A first part, addressing the state of the Buckeyes’ football program, was published on Friday.

Q: What’s it been like dealing with constant change, and not just a little change, but a lot of change?

A: The aggregate of issues we're dealing with now are different than the others over the years. There has always been incremental change. You had to learn how to manage change and shift over the years. But when you have so many issues happening all at once, and big issues, you have to be patient. A lot of people overreact when there's a newness. I think that's when you have to pause, get feedback, study, and not overreact. There are so many things we learned from the transfer portal to NIL and everything else in between. You want to make sure you do things the right way and take advantage of all the intellectual capacity we have around us to gain insight and knowledge and come up with the best plan to deal with whatever those issues are, and we're doing that with a lot of different things. We've taken our time and not just jumped into the pool not knowing how deep it is.

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Q: What have you learned about the world of NIL now that it’s 2 years old?

A: The most important thing is we're going to always try to do things the right way, within the rules, with the highest level of integrity, and keep in front of us the primary purpose of each issue — NIL, transfer portal, whatever. What we've learned is that Columbus has 30,000 businesses and corporations. We needed to make sure we focused on those relationships, and they've really come hard and strong. At the beginning, everyone was focused on donors and individual contributions to the collectives. That’s viable, but what has shifted over time, which is the way it was originally intended to be, was to try and get your community involved from a business point of view. We saw that at the beginning a little bit, but now it’s really blossoming. That’s something we learned working with the collectives in an appropriate way and getting them involved in that space. That was a big lesson for us. I've always believed in NIL and always felt it was educational. When I talked to recruits throughout June, that's what I shared with the families and the student-athletes: This is your opportunity.

Q: Since NIL was created, there’s been a plea to get federal legislation. Is that a realistic possibility?  

A: I have to compliment (new NCAA president) Charlie (Baker). He’s done a great job on (Capitol) Hill. I was a pessimist at the beginning, that we probably couldn't get anything done. But for the first time, there's a coordinated effort throughout the schools through their government affairs offices. The SEC took people to the Hill to meet with people. We've met with people. At the end of the day, there's probably more hope something might happen, that you could get a national registry for agents, which is needed, a national disclosure, a standardized NIL contract. Maybe an independent administrator. Who knows what the heck is going to happen? But I'm more optimistic because of the effort, and it seems there's be there's a congruence in the messaging, which hasn't been there before. Charlie’s done a good job of getting everybody aligned with those things.

Q: If your optimism is realized, when would be reasonable to expect something?

A: I'm not a government affairs guy, so I don't know much about their process except that I do know they go on recess sometime in August. A number of bills have been teed up. They can come back and still vote on something after the recess. My perception is, if not this year, it might be hard next year, because it's an election year. I'm hopeful that something happens this year, and we'll go from there.

Q: If no NIL legislation comes to pass, and college sports continues with a patchwork of state laws, how sustainable is that?

A: If nothing has passed, we'll just continue to manage it like we are. We've learned a lot. We'll continue to do well. We're blessed to be in Columbus with over 30,000 businesses and more coming. The reality is we'll be fine.

Q: What are your impressions of Tony Petitti, the new Big Ten commissioner?

A: I've known Tony for a long time, and he gets it. He came in eyes wide open. I really like that he focused on his staff first. Obviously, he jumped right into the media relationships that we established, and he's working hard to clean all that up and get us some long-form contracts. What is nice is he shares my philosophy and that of my colleagues that contracts don't really drive relationships. You've got to have them. You have to. But it's more about the partnership. We've been able to put in place the future scheduling, work with our television partners for future broadcasting because of the relationships, but at some point, we got to have the long-form contracts, and he's working on that.

Q: His background is in TV, but what other skills have you seen from him that can make him effective running a conference?

A: We're all the total sum of our experiences in life, so you look at his resume, he's been doing a lot. He was in Major League Baseball for a while, working from a commissioner's office, so he gets it. But I thought one thing he said that was really cool was that when he's working in the baseball office he knew he had to work for the owners, but he had to work with the team, presidents and coaches. And at the end of the day, he works for our presidents. He works at their pleasure. But he understands the biggest opportunity for him to be successful is working with the ADs, working with the senior woman administrators, working with the faculty reps. He gets that. He's been very engaging with all of my colleagues and brings all of us questions. That's pretty good. And he's a blue-collar guy. His dad was a police officer. I gravitate to people who came up the hard way. And he did.

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Q: You mentioned presidents. You don’t have one right now at Ohio State. What has that been like not having a successor for Kristina Johnson? Has that affected your department?

A: It really hasn't, because we have so much stability internally. My teammates have been here a long time. Our event managers, our facilities people. We pulled off eight home games last year. Five in a row. We pulled off the Buckeye Country Superfest with George Strait that broke all kinds of records. We just do it. My teammates do their job. We are not in a silo, but we're going to do our jobs for the betterment of Ohio State. At some point, when big decisions are being made and will affect us, fortunately we're out of a school year, but I feel confident in these trustees. They'll get it done. It's not like we haven't been through this before. The president's cabinet is working excellently together. This is a normal transition during a presidential search.

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Q: You surpassed a quarter of a billion dollars in revenue in the last fiscal year. The pandemic hit everyone hard. Are you out from under that?

A: We’ve been able to work with Mike Papadakis, our university CFO, on the dollars that were lost during the pandemic. We have a little loan that we're paying back over time, which is great. We have to pay back the support they provided us during that time. But we’re in a good spot. I can't say anybody's truly back to normal, but 2022 and 2023 were close for us when you think about all the events. Eight home games, parking, sales, concerts, rentals, it was a home run for us. We got a lot going on that generates revenue. I feel like we’re back on track.

(Editor’s note: The university in December finalized a $48 million loan to the athletic department that is to be repaid over 30 years).

Q: This will be the last year of a four-team College Football Playoff and the last year of division play in the Big Ten before USC and UCLA come aboard. Does it feel like the end of era?

A: It does. It's kind of weird for those of us who sat in the room years ago, did the BTN deal and all that and came up with this format. We all remember Legends and Leaders (divisions). ... There’s some nostalgia with it. The West and East division champion playing in the championship game. But I’m excited for the future, too. It's just kind of like, ‘Wow, that was actually a pretty cool.’ People forgot about what we went through to get BTN up and running.

Q: What will it be like not being on ESPN this year?

A: It’ll be a little weird. It’ll be interesting to see how they position us and the Big Ten on College GameDay on Saturday morning. They can’t ignore us totally, because we’re in the CFP run. But it’ll be interesting to watch those behaviors.

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Q: Is there anything new with St. John Arena and the ice hockey rink?

A: We just hired Moody Nolan to be our architect and Ruscilli to be our construction manager. We’ve had one meeting. Hopefully, somewhere in November, we’ll have a plan for women’s ice hockey competition. That facility will be north of the Covelli Center. Men’s ice hockey will practice and still compete at the Schottenstein Center. Relative to St. John and that property, we’ll continue to do things like take down the scoreboard. It’s basically a weight room, and we've got some offices in there.

Q: Do you think about retirement?

A: I'm healthy. I'm having fun. I enjoy what I do. When you look back at this year, there are so many exemplars you feel good about it. I want to chase some things. We're so close to winning the Director's Cup (annual all-sports award for the top athletic department). We ended up third this year. We’ve been second three times since I’ve been here. When you look at the academics, the performance of our kids is unbelievable. We had 191 graduates in May, and 95% of them already had jobs. Forty-one percent are going to graduate school. Our goal was to get to 95% (graduation). We finally got there. So they know before they walk across the stage what they’re going to do. Those things drive me, though most people don’t know that. I had a call with (former wide receiver) DeVier Posey. I just had a call with Cris Carter. I got a call with Sevyn Banks. It's just helping. I love that stuff. I don’t know when I’m going to retire. I have no clue. CEOs I’m blessed to work with who are retired told me I’ll know. There’s a time for leadership. They’ve told me you’ll know when it’s time for new leadership. Certainly, health and family stuff may take you away, but they also say you’ll know. Who knows? They may tell me it’s time.

(Editor's note: Smith signed a contract extension two years ago that runs into 2026.)

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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Ohio State AD Gene Smith addresses college sports industry changes