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Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith is no dummy.
In fact, Smith is widely regarded as one of the best athletic directors in the entire country.
Smith has led the Buckeyes for nearly 20 years and has a laundry list of championships to his name. In fact, Ohio State has won exactly 24 team and 104 individual national titles in his tenure.
But sometimes even the smartest and best of us make mistakes. And that’s what Smith appears to have done at Big Ten Football Media Days.
Speaking with On3 Sports‘ Pete Nakos about the future of college football and NIL, Smith stated that he doesn’t believe in revenue sharing for players, stating that they already receive enough.
“No, we’re already revenue sharing,” Smith said. “Think about this. Let’s use J.T. [Tuimoloau]. So he has a circle of care, all that takes money. It’s unreal; they have meals at their disposal. They get cost of attendance, they get Alston money. They get free education. So, it was already revenue sharing.”
Smith, who is a former football player in his own right at Notre Dame, is instead turning to congress in hopes to fixing the NIL space.
But he said that lack of progress is concerning.
“Yeah, it’s a frustration,” Smith said. “It’s a frustration from the two years that we worked on the original NIL framework and guardrails. They weren’t passed. But you know, what? You put that behind you. When you’re a leader, you face change. I don’t even think about that anymore. I always think about, ‘Ok, what are we going to do right now? What are we going to do moving forward?’
“The last few days were about that. I think something’s gonna happen. Will it improve everything? No. Will it mitigate some things? Of course.”
His points are solid. And congress will likely need to act at some point to create some sort of overarching rule set. But claiming that players already get enough when you’re trying to recruit more elite players is a rough look.