Arace: Is the incoming Ohio State athletic director going big on a new basketball coach?

The Ohio State men’s basketball coaching job has been open since Valentines Day, when Chris Holtmann was fired. Heart emoji. Associate head coach Jake Diebler took over on an interim basis, and if he wins the Big Ten Tournament, maybe he’ll get an interview. Do not blithely dismiss such a thing: Under Diebler, the Buckeyes are 5-1 with a home victory over then-No. 2 Purdue and road victories over Michigan State and Rutgers heading into their second-round conference tournament game against Iowa Thursday evening.

Mar 3, 2024; Columbus, OH, USA; Ohio State Head Coach Jake Diebler yells to the team during their NCAA Division I Mens basketball game at Value City Arena.

Ohio State is a flagship university, for good or ill. The question is, though, is it a great basketball job? OSU has won one NCAA tournament title since 1939. UConn has won five in the past 25 years, and they’re in the major metropolis of Storrs, population 15,980, about the size of the OSU athletic department.

Ohio State’s tradition is football. This does not necessarily mean that the basketball job is not attractive. It is, given the athletic department’s enormous resources and its conference affiliation. For any college coach trying to plot a career in a major sport, getting to the Big Ten or the SEC is the right path. The two preeminent football conferences are consolidating football money, and they will ultimately crush the other power conferences. USC, UCLA, Texas and Oklahoma understand this.

Ohio State has a new president in Ted Carter, who had a sterling career in the Navy, and an incoming athletic director in Ross Bjork, who survived scandal at Ole Miss and somehow got hired at Texas A&M. When Gene Smith officially steps down on June 30, Bjork will hold what may be the most prominent AD post in the country. Bjork looks great in a suit.

While…

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Author : The Columbus Dispatch

Publish date : 2024-03-14 15:54:07

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