Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Dan Hope and Andy Anders of Eleven Warriors bring you inside the Ohio State beat every Wednesday with a podcast covering everything you need to know about the Buckeyes.
Note: This transcript was AI-generated and has not been checked for errors.
[Dan Hope]
Welcome to Real Pod Wednesdays, I'm Dan Hope, he's Andy Anders, and we are joined by a very special guest today as the new president of The Ohio State University, Ted Carter, is here with us. Ted, thanks so much for taking the time.
[Ted Carter]
Yeah, thanks Dan. Andy, good to meet you guys. I'm a follower of the 11 Warriors, so I'm a fan and I read you guys.
[Dan Hope]
Yeah, we see a lot of sports memorabilia here in your office. You've got a Miracle Ice jersey, Ohio State basketball, all kinds of stuff. What does sports mean to you?
[Ted Carter]
Well, like a lot of young kids, I grew up playing sports. Not that far from here, in a small rural town in Rhode Island. My dad was a hockey player, played at Providence College.
My mom was a basketball player in high school. So, sports were really important to our family. I grew up playing a lot of different sports, like most kids.
I played baseball, I ran track, I played soccer, and before I was three years old, I was on ice skates. We lived on a pond in Rhode Island, so I started skating at a very early age. I skated better than I ran, and then I played all the way through high school.
I played a little bit of hockey at thirteen in Canada, when I thought I was going to be really somebody in hockey, and then I stopped growing like the rest of my peers. But when I got to the Naval Academy, I tried out for the hockey team, made it as a freshman, and played all four years, was a team captain in 1981. Sports was partly the reason I stayed at the Naval Academy, not knowing what I was getting into, if I was going to graduate, which I did.
But more importantly, it taught me the concept of team sports. Most of my life, whether it was in uniform or even in higher education, has been centered around things I learned in sports, particularly team sports.
[Dan Hope]
You've been here for six months now, just what have your first six months of a job been like? It's been awesome.
[Ted Carter]
This is one of the largest, most complex organizations, let alone in higher ed, not only in the state of Ohio, but in the country. I mean, you think about it, we're an organization that has sixty-five, sixty-six thousand students, thirty-five thousand faculty and staff. You know, you think about just the parents groups, the alumni, six hundred eight thousand strong, our fan base, which according to Ryan Day, he tells me, we've got over twelve million fans.
I think we could probably triple that. So it's exciting to be here, to know that we have such impact, such influence, not only in the state of Ohio, but across all Division I athletics, and quite frankly, in higher education for the entire country and the world. Can you talk a little more into how your athletics background shaped your approach as president?
You know, I was a reluctant university administrator. I grew up flying fighter jets, rebuilding aircraft carriers, operating aircraft carriers, so as I was into my mid-fifties and the head of the Navy asked me to go run the U.S. Naval War College up in Newport, Rhode Island, I had to say, that's not me, how am I supposed to do that? So they thought I was a different approach because of my operational background, and so when I took that leadership skill up to Newport, Rhode Island, that's when I started to think about, this is the ultimate team sport.
Higher education is a team sport. And then of course I got to go to the Naval Academy, a historic Division I sports program, great football program, and I was involved with Chet Gladshuck, the athletic director right away. I ended up serving on the NCAA board while I was a superintendent or president of the Naval Academy.
So it's all part of the overall mission at a place like the Naval Academy, but it's also what I like to call the front porch of a university like The Ohio State University. It's important. It's not just what the front facing or the fun part of what people think about the university.
It helps define our brand, our culture, and it's part of what attracts some of the best student-athletes in the country who want to come, be here, get their degree, but compete. We're in the block O, and that excites me still.
[Dan Hope]
You came in here at time of transition, Gene Smith, in his final six months as athletic director. What's it been like just working with Gene during these first six months?
[Ted Carter]
Well, just about anybody in the country that's involved in athletics at the university or college level knows Gene Smith. He's an icon. He will be remembered as arguably the definition of what an athletic director can and should be at a land-grant R1 research university like we are here at Ohio State.
Interestingly, I got to meet Gene Smith my first football game running the U.S. Naval Academy. So that was in 2014. Our very first game was at Raven Stadium, and there we are.
We're playing the Ohio State University. We had played them some years earlier, a game that Navy almost won. A lot of Ohio State fans remember that.
They're very happy that one went the right way. And when I got to the Baltimore Convention Center, I was supposed to be addressing about 2,000 Navy fans. And when I walked into the convention center, the whole place was packed in scarlet and gray.
And there's Gene Smith. And we kind of chuckled about it. But I got to get on a stage and address the Buckeye faithful.
And this is what I told him. I said, with Gene Smith standing right in front of me, I said, you're thinking you're going to come in here and play a school with 4,400 students when you've got 55,000 on your campus. You've got 36 Division I sports, but we got 35.
So we have over 1,000 student-athletes. And the one thing you're going to know today is Navy will never quit. And we were leading at halftime in that game.
Now, the laws of physics eventually took over Ohio State one-handedly. But Gene and I hit it off right there. And I had a chance to interact with him a couple times after that.
So to come here and be reunited with Gene and just to have the privilege to work with him for my first six months is where now in the last couple days of his tenure has been a gift.
[Dan Hope]
What was it that made you decide that Ross Bjork would be the right guy to succeed Gene Smith? What gives you confidence that he's the right guy to lead this athletic department forward?
[Ted Carter]
Two big things to take away. One is there really is no replacing Gene Smith. We had some of the best athletic directors in the country interested in the job.
What made Ross stand out was his experience. He was the youngest Division I athletic director in the country. He had been through multiple athletic director programs, some that had some controversy.
And that's been noted. I answered that at his opening press conference. I made a comment that, you know, smooth seas never made a good sailor.
And, you know, Ross had been through some rough seas. And I thought he handled things about as well as he could. And Ross has a view of the changing landscape of college athletics.
And we're going to need that kind of leadership. I mean, as we're sitting here doing this conversation, something has probably just changed again in college athletics. And Ross is that leader that's going to help guide us through these next multiple chapters that we're going to have.
[Andy Anders]
One of the biggest changes coming up here is revenue sharing. And, of course, this year operated a deficit for the athletic department. Obviously, some of that has to do with fewer home football games.
But how do you strike that balance in terms of revenue generation, in terms of revenue sharing coming up? Like, where do you see things fiscally for the program?
[Ted Carter]
Well, a couple points. As you said, a $10 million deficit. It was expected that, you know, only six home football games that year.
And actually, that's not that bad of a deficit, considering that on many years we have eight home football games. So I have no doubt we'll be able to recover that. You know, from the beginning of where we saw where athletics was going, and we knew we were going to get into this revenue sharing model, which we did support.
And, of course, it hasn't been settled yet. But we would expect over the next few months that we'll get to that. We made one big, bold statement, and that is we're going to maintain 36 Division I sports.
I mean, I watched during COVID what schools like William & Mary and Stanford went through. Even in the state of Nebraska, which happened before I got there, the University of Nebraska at Omaha cut football and wrestling at the Division II level to move into the Summit League, heavily criticized at the time. And, you know, as I've watched college landscape think about what it means to maintain these sports, it's important once you get them to do everything you can to hold on to them.
You don't want to lose that. It's too important to the student-athlete. So we've made a declarative statement that we're going to hold on to that.
Now, having said that, we've also got to look at what generates revenue. So for us right now, it's football, men's basketball. On occasion, women's basketball can be a contributor there.
And we've just got to make sure that we maintain, even with this revenue share model, that we can do everything that we can to be self-sufficient. This program has been self-sufficient, and we anticipate it will be self-sufficient going forward. And I would argue if you look across the entire landscape of college football, you're going to find only maybe three to five programs are going to be able to say that in the next model.
[Dan Hope]
Obviously, the last few years of NIL, Gene Smith has often used the term wild, wild west. It's been kind of chaos. In your opinion, do you think this revenue sharing model can fix some of the problems that have been around the last few years?
[Ted Carter]
It won't fix itself. It sets up a situation where we can actually put some more rules and guardrails around NIL. Reduce the third-party collectives, bring it inside, control it.
But then more importantly, for senior administration, whether it be at the conference or even at the NCAA level, it's got to be monitored and there's got to be rules put in place. Otherwise, we'll still be the wild, wild west.
[Dan Hope]
What do you look at as maybe other changes that need to be made in college sports?
[Ted Carter]
Well, I think instead of talking about what other changes, I think the more important piece is what should stay the same. I mean, does revenue share mean that college athletes are now professionals? Does it mean that they're employees of the university?
I would argue that we do need to everything we can at the NCAA level and our members of Congress that may be writing laws to help define what student-athletes are going to be. We've got to maintain the student-athlete part. What has to be the attraction for somebody to come and wear a jersey for Ohio State still has to be to get a degree here.
And we've been really, really successful at that. I've enjoyed that at every academic institution I've been. Division I athletes graduate at a higher rate than anybody else.
We have the same thing here. I mean, our football program graduated with the highest grade point. Our graduation rate going over some more years is only one other school in the country that was Harvard.
I mean, talk about some interesting bragging rights, right? So those are things that we should be proud of, and we should make sure that we don't lose that. So I'm a big supporter of making sure that as we go through this revenue share model that we don't lose the concept of the student-athlete.
You know, where teams are going to go, conferences, who's in what conference, what the NCAA relationship is going to be with the college football, the college football playoff. It would all be speculation here, but I think the one thing we can say is it's going to change. There's going to be change, and we're going to have to be reactive.
We're going to have to be thinking ahead. We're going to have to be strategic in order just to be able to maintain our 36 Division I programs, and yet still continue to be able to compete and win in our football program.
[Andy Anders]
What do you think has driven that academic success for the football team, but for the athletics department as a whole?
[Ted Carter]
I think it's cultural, and I go right to the leadership at the top. I think Gene Smith should take great credit in that, and then driving that through their coaches that this is something we care about. You know, our faculty representatives that are in support there, they're also doing a great job.
So there's a team of support, and you make sure our student-athletes know that when you come here, you're not coming here to just play a sport. You're coming here to get a degree. Not everybody's going to go be a professional athlete.
In fact, very few, and all of them are going to go on to be very successful in life because they came here, they got a degree here, and it wouldn't be because we taught them what to think. We taught them how to think, and then you complement that with what they learn on the field, on the ice rink, on the court, or in the pool. It's going to make them successful in life.
[Andy Anders]
Obviously, you know, athletics aren't your only job, of course, as a university president, but with all this change going on, and with how integral athletics is at Ohio State, as you mentioned, how do you strike that balance between your duties there and your other duties to the university?
[Ted Carter]
Yeah, it's a really large, complex organization. I try to practice this for people. I would say, well, you're a university president.
What do you actually do? And, of course, the first thing I'll say is, I don't actually do anything. I hire a lot of talented people to do all the really hard work.
Now, that's a little bit of tongue-in-cheek, but we really do have a lot of talent here, and where we do have positions to fill, we're attracting some of the best talent in the country. So, in some ways, I'm really a talent manager, but I also have to tend to what I call the circles of influence, and there are a lot of them, and they don't all have the same weight or gravity. So, we've been talking about sports.
That's certainly a huge circle of influence, a big circle of influence, especially when you're talking about a fan base, alumni, coaches, students, all the pieces that go with that, facilities, but then you look at the other big, big pieces of who we are and what we do. Academics, 15 colleges, four regional campuses, our faculty, which are world-class, our staff that support for all the student success, the research that we're doing here, which is now approaching number 10 in the country. We just passed Harvard.
We just passed UNC Chapel Hill. We're just about to go over 1.5 billion dollars in increasingly important research, and then the arts, for which we are very strong here as well. When you look at all those constituencies, and then you start to look outside the Oval, the campus here, now we're talking about the General Assembly, you know, that are writing state laws for how we're going to do our business.
We're going to give us our budget as a public university, and then the community itself. So, not just Central Ohio, all of Ohio. We're the state's flagship, and we should care about what the constituents of Ohio think about Ohio State, and I've said this publicly already.
We should be a university for all Ohioans, and we are. What we do in ag and ag research touches all 88 counties in the state. We have extension offices in every county.
I was just at our Worcester campus looking at our Ag Technical Institute. It's an incredible gem. I mean, 3,600 acres of just beautiful landscape, an arboretum where we've got 100 acres of some of the most amazing plants that exist in the whole world.
These are things that we have and we do. I'll give you a great example. We have seven medical colleges.
We're one of the only universities in the world that has seven medical colleges, to include a veterinary medical college that is one of its kind in three states. We have dental vans that travel all over Ohio that treat kids who are seeing a dentist for the first time, and we do that for the state. We do a lot of things like that that are so important to the state, I'm still learning every day about something else that we're doing for the people of Ohio that just makes this institution so cool.
So the point of where I was going all that is you've got to understand your landscape. You've got to understand who your constituents are, who those circles of influence are, and you've got to tend to them. You can't do them all at once.
It's kind of like 36 plates spinning all at once, but you better know which one is slowing down. It's really important because you don't want to let it fall. So that's kind of how I view my job.
I'm something of a conductor. I work very closely with our board of trustees, which are again a world-class group of men and women appointed by the governor who care deeply about this institution that do this job selfishly for nine years. That's their tenure.
I mean it is a really tough job for them to do. So we're thankful that we have all this support here, and I'm excited to be here if you can't tell that already.
[Dan Hope]
The Big Ten is now at 18 teams of Oregon, Washington, USC, and UCLA joining the conference. What do you think that those four schools bring to the Big Ten?
[Ted Carter]
Well first of all, they're all four members of the AU. So these are major research universities that are in the top now 71 schools in the country. So they're joining an elite group of academic powerhouses in the Big Ten.
That's an important price of admission to get into the Big Ten and something that was really discussed and will continue as we, you know, hold on to what we are. I mean all 18 of these schools have all their libraries interconnected electronically. It's the third largest repository of information in the world.
Just that alone is awe-inspiring. So these schools are first and foremost academic powerhouses, but they also bring two big things. They bring great football programs and they bring great fan bases, and I think that's the biggest formula to getting into the Big Ten.
[Dan Hope]
Do you think the Big Ten will continue to expand, and what are the different things that you think that this conference should be looking for when vetting potential future members?
[Ted Carter]
Yeah, I'm going to say that whatever Ted Carter thinks on this really doesn't matter because we can sit here and speculate what's going to happen next week and the week after, and whatever we come up with probably going to be wrong. What I do know is change is inevitable, and we're going to see it, and we'll determine what happens next, when the next thing happens. So, you know, we're just going to have to go into wait-and-see mode.
[Andy Anders]
Change is inevitable, I think, is an interesting way to view things because, you know, you have to embrace change, right, to learn and adapt to a major job like this. What instilled that mindset in you?
[Ted Carter]
Well, maybe a little bit in my own career. If you look at where I've been and what I've done from flying in F-4 Phantoms to being a Top Gun guy, going into F-14 Tomcats for most of my life, and then I didn't want to go be an aircraft carrier captain, but somebody said I should go do that, so I had to go to a nuclear power and engineering program. It was really hard.
I was 40 years old. I had to go do master's level plus work at 40 years old and then eventually go rebuild a carrier and command one and do all these things at sea. When you go out to sea, everything gets a vote, and a lot of it isn't yours, you know.
So, the ocean is a crazy place, and if you're involved in flying in combat or any type of operations, there are so many other elements that get a vote in what happens. So, you have to be a master of change and be willing to look at situations and be able to make decisions, oftentimes with imperfect information, and that's what's key to a lot of these types of high-impact jobs. It doesn't matter whether you have three seconds to make an information decision because you're moving at 600 miles an hour, or if you've got four days to make a decision.
At some point, you're going to have to make a decision, and that decision is often going to be based on what is the dynamics of what already has changed and even sometimes prediction of what will change without even knowing what that's going to be.
[Dan Hope]
Are there any, you know, particular lessons you think you've learned just in your first six months here at Ohio State, anything you didn't expect coming in?
[Ted Carter]
A couple of things. One is everybody in this state cares about Ohio State. Now, if you live here in the Buckeye State, you probably already know that.
I came in here sort of expecting that, but as I get around, there's a different level of interest in Ohio State than any place else I've ever been. People care about Ohio State, not just sports. They do care about that too, but it's everything.
I think because I've been so many places and I've seen so many different things, I've evolved to be, you know, if we were sitting here doing this interview when I was 25 years old and I just graduated Top Gun, I probably would have told you I knew just about everything about anything. That's kind of what happens when you go to a school like that. The longer you're around, the more you realize you don't know everything.
So when I'm in front of a group of professionals over any topic, the first thing I remind myself every time I go in the room is, I will not have the answer and I'm not the smartest person in the room. And that type of humble approach where you draw the best information, the best ideas from people, is often how you get to the best solutions.
[Dan Hope]
How well have you gotten to know Ryan Day over the last six months and just what are your impressions of his leadership of the football team?
[Ted Carter]
I've gotten to know Ryan very well and we spent some time together, some one-on-one time together. We've been at Big Ten meetings together. We've been on an airplane together.
We've had a lot of time to talk and I'm very impressed with him. I've been impressed with what he's doing within the leadership programs within football. I've been impressed with the coaching hires he's made this offseason.
He's recruiting well. I am, obviously I'm watching and I'm paying attention like everybody else. I have high expectations this year and just bottom line is, I'm really impressed with Ryan Day.
[Andy Anders]
We're sitting in this office and this might be a little off topic here, but I just wanted to ask, what's your favorite piece of memorabilia in here and the story behind it?
[Ted Carter]
Well there's a lot of things in here, but you know, as a sports fan and as somebody that played hockey and even played a lot of men's hockey, I got to go to Mike Yeruzioni's jersey from 1980 Olympic hockey gold. That came into my possession through a couple of mutual friends, but maybe even a little more interestingly is the picture from the cover of Sports Illustrated that's above. So that is an actual photograph that was given to me by Hans who used to be the photo editor for Sports Illustrated.
So in 1983, I was a young lieutenant flying off the USS Midway and it was the height of the Cold War. We were intercepting Soviet bomber aircraft that were trying to locate our aircraft carrier. I intercepted a Soviet airplane.
I was taking pictures for photographic evidence and I sent him an unclassified version of a Soviet airplane just by looking up his address in Sports Illustrated and he sent me that picture and he signed it. Wow. So I've been carrying that framed picture from the cover of Sports Illustrated to what I still think is the greatest comeback win of any sports moment ever.
So that's probably my favorite piece over there. There's a number, a couple of other pieces. The Blue Angel helmet over there, you might say that's not sports related, but you want to talk about an athletic event flying with the Blue Angels.
That was my actual last flight in the Navy flying in the backseat of lead solo airplane number five, which is that model over there. In 2016, I got to actually fly over the Naval Academy in the actual show as the head of the Naval Academy. And I was 57 years old when I did that flight.
And they videotape you the whole show. So if you pass out under high G's, there's no faking it. It's a 45 minute show.
The two seat jet had no air conditioning. It was 100 degrees in the cockpit. And they were over under bets on how many times the Vice Admiral passed out when I got back.
And the one that had zero was nobody. But that was the winning bet.
[Dan Hope]
I would want to ask you, we see when you're at the sporting events, you always wear the leather jacket with the Ohio State logo on it. What does that jacket mean to you?
[Ted Carter]
So that is a real leather jacket that is given to aviators when they get their wings of gold. And it's just a reminder that I grew up in that world. Flying in fighter jets is part of like being on an athletic team.
The most successful fighter squadrons operate and think that way. And to me, there's a crossover between what I did in the cockpits of F-4, F-14 and F-18 Super Hornets to playing athletics, to just now being just part of the landscape here, principally as an administrator, but also a fan.
[Dan Hope]
I know you've been to a lot of sporting events already. Has there been a favorite one so far?
[Ted Carter]
Oh, that one's easy. Watching our women's ice hockey team win the national championship, being on the ice with Coach Muzzerall and the women and just seeing the excitement on their face. It's hard to even put into words just how awesome that was to be there in New Hampshire, watching them beat Wisconsin.
[Dan Hope]
How much excitement is there for that first Ohio State football game as president?
[Ted Carter]
It's going to be awesome. This will not be my first Ohio State football game, but it will be my first one as president. So yes, I'm really excited about it.
I'm excited about the whole season. I got a newsflash for everybody. We're going to be really good this year.
[Andy Anders]
I love it. Love the confidence. Obviously the roster's there too, but you got to drop the puck in a Blue Jackets game too.
We were talking to Ben earlier and he mentioned that you, in terms of NHL, you kind of root for whichever team you're closest to. Are you converting to Blue Jackets fandom? Absolutely.
[Ted Carter]
Yeah. Now they're going to have a whole new team. They get a new general manager, a new coach coming in, some new players.
But you know, anything can happen. You know, the year that I dropped the puck for the Washington Capitals at an outdoor hockey game at our stadium rink in Annapolis, they won the Stanley Cup. So, and they were in the middle of the pack when that game happened against Toronto.
It was in early March, the exact same time of year that we're going to be hosting the Blue Jackets. So yeah, I'll be rooting for the Blue Jackets. I really enjoyed the Stanley Cup this year like everybody else.
It was fun to see a Canadian team against a US team and the two farthest corners of North America that you could be in Edmonton and Miami. And of course it had to go to game seven, right? So yeah, I mean, you just got to love that type of, you know, theater when it comes to sports.
[Dan Hope]
Do you have like a favorite story from your own career as a hockey player?
[Ted Carter]
Oh yeah. So team captain, 1981, the city of Annapolis and the Naval Academy created a hockey tournament in a little bit of a jest of the famous bean pot tournament in Boston. Ours was the crab pot tournament and it got started my freshman year at Navy.
So 1978 was the first year we did it. We won it. We beat Ramapo State, who was a Division III national champion.
And in the year that I was senior, we had Penn State in the tournament and the final game was Penn State against Navy. We were down four to three with about two minutes left. I was on the ice playing center.
It was five on five and I drew the puck back to best player on our team, John Knight, got the shot off, rebound right off the goalie's pad. Instinctively, I got it and just banged it in. Tied four to four.
We end up in regulation four to four. We go into overtime. The head of the Naval Academy, Vice Admiral Bill Lawrence, who had been a very famous prisoner of war, watched the whole game.
He dropped the puck. He was there. In overtime, the Carter-Johnny Knight team came in again.
This time I had the assist and John Knight got the goal. We win the game 5-4 and we carry the crab pot. You'd think we won the Stanley Cup.
I mean, I look back on it. It was all small town, but it was so big. But here's the kicker.
Admiral Lawrence wrote a letter to my parents saying how exciting it was to be there in person and to witness us beating Penn State in overtime. As I read the letter, I had that flash of moment. Now, this is a time when we were just starting to wear face shields.
It was the first year that we had face shields in ice hockey. As I took that face off, I just described to you, I remember that moment. I looked up.
Every single guy on the ice had some blood on them somewhere. I mean, that's how hard fought the game was. Both my parents sadly passed away, but when my wife and I went to take care of their household goods, that letter was still hanging in the house.
I mean, it meant that much to them. It just shows the power of writing a letter when somebody does something great. I try to remember that.
I write a lot of letters here for when our athletes do something special.
[Dan Hope]
I know we're running short on time here. Is there anything else that you want Ohio State sports fans to know about you or any message you have for them?
[Ted Carter]
I think the thing they should probably know about me is just how happy I am to be here. I don't know how it actually happened that I got to be in this job. This was not my plan.
This was not in my wildest imagination. Every day that I'm here, because I get to work with such great faculty and staff and our students, everything that is here at Ohio State, even during some of the most challenging times that we're seeing in our nation, this is an amazing place. Ohioans and all sports fans, not just Buckeye fans, should be proud of what we're doing here at The Ohio State University.
[Dan Hope]
Well, Ted, we want to thank you so much for your time. Welcome to Columbus, and we hope to have you back on again in the future. Absolutely.
[Ted Carter]
Thanks so much.
[Andy Anders]
Thank you, Ted.