Gene Smith may be on his way out as Ohio State’s athletic director, but as he leaves he’ll be aiding incoming AD Ross Bjork in finding the Buckeyes’ next head basketball coach.
With Jake Diebler taking over as Ohio State’s interim head coach in the meantime, Smith will prepare for Bjork’s arrival and the start of the coaching hunt this March. It's then that he'll take more of a backseat.
“Obviously we still have the remainder of the season, which I’m gonna help Jake with and help navigate,” Smith said. “Then when Ross gets here, as he shares with me his plan for the search, I’ll be there to assist him and be very much a part of it.”
Smith said he’s had “good communications” with Bjork since the discussion on whether to let go of Chris Holtmann began. When Smith decided to pull the trigger on firing the coach on Wednesday, however, the choice was his and his alone – perhaps the final large-scale call he’ll make in his 20-year tenure overseeing Ohio State athletics.
“I talked to (Bjork) a lot, but it was my decision,” Smith said. “I told him what I was going to do. It wasn’t like (I asked him), ‘What do you think?’”
Now it’ll be a matter of setting expectations and advising Bjork on the available candidates.
The former Texas A&M athletic director will steer the ship and make the final call on who to hire as Holtmann’s replacement, but Smith still wants to make the expectations clear.
“Nothing has changed. All of our programs have the same standard,” Smith said. “The blessing that we have at The Ohio State University is to recruit to this platform, to recruit to Columbus, the resources that Buckeye Nation provides us. So the standard for men’s basketball is the same. Be in the hunt. Periodically win the (Big Ten) championship and go deep into the postseason. That hasn’t changed. That hasn’t been accomplished, we need to do better.”
The character of a given candidate will also be important in the search, per Smith.
“I’ll be all-in with Ross,” Smith said. “I’ll be honest, forthright, authentic and genuine, and tell him that we’ve gotta find somebody that has the X’s and O’s and those talents and skills but they’ve gotta fit our values. They’ve gotta fit our culture.”
Ohio State’s basketball program could certainly use some juice, for monetary purposes perhaps even as much as program pride. The Buckeyes’ average attendance of 12,181 fans last year was a record-low in Value City Arena, and this year they are averaging just 10,786 attendees per game, a decrease of 11.5%.
| Year | Avg. Attendance | %Increase/Decrease |
|---|---|---|
| 2017-18 | 13,495 | +9.5% |
| 2018-19 | 13,922 | +3.2% |
| 2019-20 | 14,531 | +4.4% |
| 2020-21 | N/A | N/A |
| 2021-22 | 13,276 | -8.6% |
| 2022-23 | 12,181 | -8.2% |
| 2023-24 | 10,786 | -11.5% |
The cheapest lower-bowl tickets available on Ticketmaster for the Purdue game are selling for $51. Just to put things in perspective, if the average fan generates $50 in revenue for Ohio State between a ticket, concessions and merchandising – it is likely more than that – the Buckeyes will have lost more than $1.1 million from last year on their basketball attendance at this current pace. And again, last year was already a record low.
“There’s gotta be six, seven or eight games (a season) where we’re close to that sellout or at the sellout,” Smith said. “We haven’t had that. ... We need to get better. We need to win. And my advice to Ross is simple: Product, place, price. That’s marketing. You’ve gotta win. You’ve gotta win.”
Some may think that letting Holtmann go midseason gives Ohio State a leg up on finding the right man to bring the team back into the hunt and generate fan interest, but Smith said the difference is negligible. The timing of Holtmann’s sacking was more about switching things up and trying to give this year’s team the best chance possible to win.
“It’s not a huge gain because you really can’t begin to talk to candidates until the end of the season,” Smith said. “It’s more about these six games and where these kids are and trying to give them a spark.”
So, Ohio State will play out these six remaining regular season games, the Big Ten Tournament and a potential NIT bid barring something miraculous that sees the Buckeyes make the NCAA Tournament. Then the process, championed by Bjork and advised by Smith, to find the man to fix Ohio State’s woes will unfold fully.
