Ohio State AD Gene Smith Made $18,000 For Wrestler Winning NCAA Title

Ohio State wrestler Logan Stieber earned $0 for winning the NCAA Championship at the 141-pound level. Ohio State AD Gene Smith, however, received a sweet $18,000 bonus for his achievement. Smith earns bonuses under his new contract for “exceptional athletic achievements,” which includes an extra week’s pay for individual titles in sports such as wrestling.

Earning $940,000 per year in base salary, Smith, a paragon of the amateur ethos in college athletics, could approach $1.5 million total with bonuses. Those bonuses also include athlete academic bonuses. The men’s basketball team, no longer burdened with the NCAA tournament, could earn Smith $54,000 with a collective 3.0 GPA. Study hard, gents.

For some perspective, that trifling $18,000 wrestling bonus was more than 5,800 times the amount of substantiated extra benefits that cost DeVier Posey the bulk of his senior season at Ohio State. He was estimated to have been overpaid for his summer job by $3.07. The NCAA didn’t understand how cell phone towers worked.

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[USA Today Sports]