It's a Great Day to be a Buckeye!

Seriously. We have much to celebrate. #1 Men’s basketball team heading into tourney season. Big 10 champion women’s basketball team, again. The next 2-3 weeks should be awesome and we should enjoy our successes.

And yes, well, we have this hiccup in the football program. Mistakes have been made by many people at many levels. It is a little embarrassing and not in keeping with the standards we have set.

But the mistakes are magnified by those high standards of on-field and off-field performance we have established. If Ohio State had some 3rd tier football program, no one would care (including us). But we have a great and proud program that has accomplished a great deal and we should remain proud despite the news of the past week.

We all have successes and failures, we all have moments of great personal performance and moments when we stumble. The measure of a person is not how many successes they have – it is how they handle themselves in times of success and failure. When successful, do they share the credit, do they acknowledge the team, do they remain humble, do they treat the less-fortunate with respect? And in moments of personal failure, do they accept responsibility, do they learn from mistakes, do they bear down and fix them?

Our football program has a great opportunity now to act like a winner, to set an example for others, as it deals with the issues at hand. And I expect the people in the program to work hard and handle the problems well and make us proud of how they deal with adversity. There are coaches and administrators in the land who run to new jobs or the NFL when times get tough, I am proud of our staff for putting their nose to the grindstone and working through the troubles.

Again we have great success in so many sports, and exciting basketball to follow, and a great opportunity to show the world how to deal with adversity, and so it truly is a great day to be a Buckeye.