Latest / Buckeyes TomOrrow Morning / With New Leadership, Are Big Changes Coming To Ohio State Athletics?
Transcript
- 0:00Welcome to buck Eyes tomorrow morning for Friday, January nineteenth. I'm your host,
- 0:03Tom or the Akron game in two hundred and twenty five days, the
- 0:06game against Michigan in three hundred and sixteen days. There could be major news
- 0:11breaking for the Ohiose Date program. Oh any minute now. I just sort
- 0:15of nervously checked Twitter before I hit record on this one. The Ohio State
- 0:20Buckeyes could be very very close to naming their new offensive coordinator. That is
- 0:25news that we have been talking about on the insider board, the huddle board
- 0:28percenter by jefferyby Steakhouse at buckeyehuddle dot com since late last week. I put
- 0:34out two names that I was hearing. One of those names sounds like it
- 0:37is the leading contender to be the new offensive coordinator. Ohiuse state. Whenever
- 0:41that happens, we will talk about who that is. If you want to
- 0:43join the conversation right now, you can do that on the huddle board at
- 0:46Buckeye huddle dot com and get all the insider information on what we're hearing,
- 0:51some thoughts from our scheme guys on who that might be and how that old
- 0:55dynamic might work working with Ryan day. That's all on the huddle board at
- 1:00COM. But in the meanwhile, do you want to let you hear from
- 1:03new Ohio State University President Ted Carter at the Ross b York press conference on
- 1:08Wednesday? Who was ore for also our first chance to really meet Ted Carter
- 1:12and let sort of get his thoughts on the athletic department and you know where
- 1:19this all fits in and maybe the future of athletics at the college realm and
- 1:23all of that. So we're gonna let you hear directly from Ohio State President
- 1:26Ted Carter here, And this is sort of a higher level conversation. We
- 1:30normally are kind of getting down into the nitty gritty on stuff and depth charts
- 1:34and you know, positional changes and that kind of stuff. This is a
- 1:37much higher level conversation. This is the university president. He is not necessarily
- 1:41as worried about the third string tight end as much of this audience is.
- 1:45So it's gonna be sort of a bigger picture conversation. Let's start with Ted
- 1:48Carter himself. He just started on January first, so Ross Byork as the
- 1:52new ad Ed Carter, the very new university president, started on January first,
- 1:57So when did he actually get involved in the process that ended with ros
- 2:00Byorke being named the new Ohio State Athletic Correct. Obviously, I've been University
- 2:07of Nebraska System president until thirty one December. I was in communication with doctor
- 2:13Peter Mohler is acting. I was kept informed of how the search advisory committee
- 2:19was being put together. I didn't have direct involvement in that. They were
- 2:23often doing their job, so it allowed me to continue that effort. But
- 2:27from the day I started here on January first, I was deeply involved in
- 2:30the search all the way to some of the final interviews and then another level
- 2:36of final interviews. Simply stated, I think I just need to say what
- 2:42Ross said to tell you how he separated himself from the rest of the candidates.
- 2:46He struck me as Summi that has the values here at Ohio State integrity,
- 2:53passion, care for our students. And as I went before in my
- 2:57earlier comments, I was looking for those three criteria and I measured those against
- 3:01all of the candidates, and he was by far the leader. It wasn't
- 3:06you know, we had good candidates. I mean, we had a really
- 3:07wide range of candidate as you might imagine, interested in this job, but
- 3:12Ross was a clear winner in that discussion. Here's a great big picture question
- 3:15for the new university president, Ted Carter. He was the chancellor at the
- 3:20University University of Nebraska before coming to Ohio State, so he has a decent
- 3:24sense on how things work inside the Big Ten. So what are Ted Carter's
- 3:30thoughts on whether Ohio State should sort of exert its power a little bit more
- 3:35in conference conversations rather than just having the one eighteenth of the decision making process
- 3:42kind of vote that it would typically have in this new Big Ten. Well,
- 3:46first of all, as you may know, in the Big Ten,
- 3:47we have a council of chancellors and presidents and everybody has an equal weight,
- 3:52and that's the voting body within the Big Ten. The ades certainly have you
- 3:57influence, and I think the thing I would tell you first and foremost is
- 4:00I'm looking for alignment not only what I bring into that council of chancellors and
- 4:06presidents, but how we are aligned together with the athletic director, with the
- 4:10coaches, with all of our sports programs. I mean, as you all
- 4:14know, we are unique thirty six Division one programs. I mean there's only
- 4:16a couple in the country that are even close to that, Stanford and quite
- 4:19honestly Navy. And there's an extra level of responsibility as this landscape is changing,
- 4:27you know, to be able to maintain that, be competitive, take
- 4:30the care of our student athletes, as Jeane Smith has done with his Circle
- 4:34Care and some of the programs the Institute of Leadership he's created. I know
- 4:40that Ross is going to continue on with not only that legacy, but in
- 4:44the room with everybody and all the different universities. Some universities should have a
- 4:49little bit of different way. And this is not trying to be bigger than
- 4:53somebody else, but this university has been at the top of performance across all
- 4:58of our sports, all of our programs compared to our peers. And we
- 5:01won't necessarily have a bigger voice in there, but our voice should matter.
- 5:06Here's an even bigger picture conversation than the Big ten level. How about the
- 5:11NC Double A and the college sports realm on the whole. What are Ted
- 5:14Carter's views on restructuring the NC Double A in a way that maybe makes sense
- 5:18for some of the realities of modern college athletics. Yeah, I wish I
- 5:23could come up here and just give you the answer and draw a wiring diagram
- 5:26for you. You know, obviously there's going to be a lot of discussion.
- 5:29I agree with Ross and that the time is coming very quickly. The
- 5:33ability to operate Division one, Division two, Division three, even FBS compared
- 5:39to the Power five or the A five, just in college football, there's
- 5:44too much of a difference, and that there's going to have to be some
- 5:46separation there clearly conference realignment, whether we are pushing to do it or whether
- 5:53it's happening. And again, as Ross just pointed out, either part of
- 5:56that solution or it's going to happen to us. So we are a large,
- 6:00powerful organization within the D one athletic organization. We should have a big
- 6:04voice in that and we should be prepared to go into that. And that's
- 6:09why as we were looking for who's going to be the next athletic director here
- 6:12at Ohio State, we need somebody that not only has a vision, but's
- 6:15been in the arena, has been in it, and Ross has been on
- 6:18the NCAA compliance committees. He's a leader within the National Association of Athletic Directors,
- 6:24so he knows the landscape as well as anybody and I'm really excited about
- 6:28that. One thing that a lot of people may not have known, and
- 6:30I will raise my hand and say I did not know until the press conference
- 6:32on Wednesday, is that Rosbiorg has fairly extensive family ties to the state of
- 6:36Ohio. So how important was it for someone like Rosbjorke to have those ties
- 6:43to the state if he's going to be the athletic director of the state University.
- 6:47I would say the connection to Ohio and understanding some of the culture,
- 6:53some of the traditions here is a plus, not a requirement. It was
- 6:57a plus. I mean, I have to fully admit to you that I
- 6:59don't have a lot of State of Ohio connections the board of trustees, so
- 7:02is something special? In mean, I'm a world traveler. My wife Lynn
- 7:05and I have lived all over the world, all four corners of the country,
- 7:09in a lot of different places. Sometimes that experience is what matters.
- 7:14And I can tell you in my relatively short time being here in the city
- 7:17of Columbus, in the state of Ohio, this is an incredible state.
- 7:20I'll say, right up to front to all of you, we have never
- 7:24been more welcome any place we've been. This was I think our twenty fourth
- 7:28move that we've made in our lifetime, it was the best move we've ever
- 7:31made, not because of the ease of moving five hundred boxes and a whole
- 7:33bunch of stuff into a house, but the way we were welcomed here.
- 7:38So I felt confident in my own experience coming here and how we would be
- 7:42welcome. That the requirement to have to be a connected person from the state
- 7:46of Ohio not necessarily requirement, a wonderful thing to have, And I see
- 7:51that as a tremendous positive, and I'm really thrilled for the family of b
- 7:56York's in their lifelong history with the state of Ohio. I think it's a
- 7:59wonderful anytime you talk to anyone about ross Byork in the college sports realm,
- 8:03you're going to hear about fundraising and NIL and how that's been a really strong
- 8:09point in his background. And given the realities of the modern college football world
- 8:13and college athletics world, and the realm of nil which has sort of become
- 8:20one of the major driving forces in college sports these days, how important was
- 8:24it to have someone with that kind of strong fundraising background to be the new
- 8:28Ohio State Athletic dirict Well, first of all, NIL name image likeness.
- 8:35I'd say we're still in the early stages of it and we're still learning a
- 8:39lot more about it. There's going to probably be more regulation to put around
- 8:41that. I think that will tie eventually to what Ross was already talking about
- 8:46in whatever shared revenue models that will go into the future. There's no doubt
- 8:50that be able to raise money for capital type of programs, capital events,
- 8:56campaigns, as well as being able to do things in the NIL space has
- 9:01to be done appropriately and has to be done in a way that the biggest
- 9:07programs can survive. You know, as I look out over the landscape,
- 9:09I mean just in the Big ten today, we're going to bring in four
- 9:13teams from the West coast, thirty six teams. We're going to be traveling
- 9:16four time zones. It's going to be extra cost to that travel. And
- 9:22if we do go to any kind of revenue sharing, the amount of revenue
- 9:24that we bring in today is going to be a little more difficult. So
- 9:28managing the budget, managing the future of fundraising, and how we're going to
- 9:33be able to manage a program this fast and this big is going to take
- 9:37some imagination is going to take somebody that's got the ability to show people what
- 9:41right looks like. And I believe Ross is that man will be able to
- 9:45do that. And speaking of the realities of modern college sports, when you
- 9:50have some of the conversations that are going on with maybe these schools are going
- 9:54to start taking over a role in paying players directly and some of the other
- 9:58realities of the sport in terms of nil and there's only so many dollars to
- 10:01go so many places, and you're still paying off big, expensive buildings that
- 10:05you've built in the past. Well, Ohio State has one of the biggest
- 10:09athletic departments in the country, thirty six varsity sports. So to Ted Carter,
- 10:16can he does he plan to maintain thirty six varsity sports? Can you?
- 10:22Is it even possible to maintain an athletic department that size with all of
- 10:26the other demands that are now coming up against your finances? We're thirty six
- 10:31Division one sports and that's the way I'm tending to stay now. Can that
- 10:35change in the future, of course? I mean the dynamics of where money
- 10:39will go and how it comes in. I mean, let's face it,
- 10:41there's two sports here. Even at as great as we are the Ohio State
- 10:46University that generate money football and men's basketball, there are some other programs in
- 10:50the country where some other sports generate a little bit more. So we're gonna
- 10:54have to think about revenue streams. But I've been around the block long enough
- 10:58that I've always been and I was a student athlete myself at Navy. I
- 11:03do not want to cut sports at all. And I've seen programs like Stanford
- 11:07and William and Mary go through that and then regret it and have to cycle
- 11:11back. I'd really like to not do that. So I'm going to stand
- 11:13here and tell you that we have thirty six division on sports. Here.
- 11:16You know, I refer to Gene and where we are today and ross where
- 11:20we're going. But my intention is to keep thirty six division on sports.
- 11:24Well. I know the university president is not necessarily the single most exciting person
- 11:28on campus, especially from a sports fans perspective, but it does feel like
- 11:31that's someone who is going to be making a lot of the very big decisions
- 11:37around the university and going to be having a big say in some of the
- 11:41decisions that you probably do care about. On a little bit more of a
- 11:45sports centric level in the coming years, So goodness, sort of have a
- 11:48little bit of background on Ted Carter, how he thinks, how he talks,
- 11:52the kind of decisions he makes. So I thought that was probably worth
- 11:56a quick run through. I probably will be the last time I'm gonna guess
- 12:01you're gonna hear from Ted Carter for a little while on this show. But
- 12:03there's gonna be plenty more to talk about on the show in the coming days.
- 12:07As of right now, Jim Harball is still a candidate for multiple NFL
- 12:11jobs. What's gonna happen with Jim Harbaugh and the Michigan program. That's gonna
- 12:13be a conversation I'm sure we're gonna have in the coming days. Ohio State's
- 12:18new Ohio State's new offensive coordinator, whatever coaching changes follow that decision, We're
- 12:24talking about that in the coming days. There are a bunch of recruits.
- 12:26There's some folks visiting this weekend, plenty of transfer portal drama, plenty of
- 12:31recruits potentially deciding the recruitments in the next couple days and weeks. It is
- 12:35gonna be a very busy, busy week and a very busy month at Buckey
- 12:39huddle dot com. We would love to see you there. They join us
- 12:41for all of it, got Kevin and Tony and I covering the team,
- 12:43Mark cover and recruiting our whole team of ex'es, and those gurus making you
- 12:48a smarter football fan breaking down what some of these coaching staff changes could mean
- 12:52for the Buckeyes in twenty twenty four season. All that and more and a
- 12:54very active and vibrant board all at Buckey huddle dot com, and of course
- 12:58we will also see you at YouTube dot com slash Puckey Huddle. We we'd
- 13:03love it if you subscribed to both of those places. Give us the thumbs
- 13:05up on YouTube, give us some comments there, we appreciate those, and
- 13:09then we hopefully we'll see you on the huddle board a Pucke huddle dot com
- 13:11to talk about all of the news as it develops over the next few days,
- 13:16next few weeks, and all of that. So that will do it
- 13:18for today. Thank you guys all for joining us. Have a great day.
- 13:20We will talk to you tomorrow.