After eleven years as Ohio State’s athletic director, Andy Geiger is retiring. Citing the fact that the job wasn’t fun anymore, he announced his retirement effective June 30, although he will still stay at the university to help with fundraising, development and student resources.

Although many people will claim that the various scandals that have dogged the university in recent months were the actual reason Geiger retired a year before his contract was up, we at The Lantern believe these issues were only a catalyst to speed up the retiring process, not the cause. Sure, dealing with Maurice Clarett’s accusations and the Jim O’Brien situation probably sapped some of the fun from running OSU’s athletics, but there’s more to Geiger’s retirement than scandal.

Quite simply, Andy Geiger is 66 years old, a year past the normal retiring age. His retirement has been in the planning for some time now. Earlier this summer, when the press conference was called announcing Jim O’Brien’s firing, many thought the press conference was going to signal Geiger’s retirement. Geiger mentioned at his press conference that he had been talking with President Karen A. Holbrook since last summer about leaving the university.

It’s unfair for the events of the last few months to overshadow the work that Geiger has done over the last 11 years to vastly improve OSU athletics. In his term, Geiger has spearheaded efforts to build or renovate several athletic facilities. And not just for the big money sports. While Ohio Stadium’s renovation and the Schottenstein Center’s construction helped out football, men’s and women’s basketball and men’s ice hockey, he’s built plenty of facilities for smaller sports. Under his watch, Bill Davis Stadium was built for baseball, Jesse Owens Memorial Stadium for men’s and women’s track and field, soccer and lacrosse and the Steelwood Center for wrestling, fencing and gymnastics.

Geiger’s efforts have resulted in an athletics department that is successful in a wide variety of sports, not just football. It’s great that OSU football won the National Championship in 2002, but it’s equally great that OSU has won 14 other national championships: fencing in 2004, men’s gymnastics in 1996 and 2001, pistol in 2000 and 2004 and nine national championships in synchronized swimming.

Equally important is the quality of education student-athletes have been receiving. OSU has had more student-athletes named to the Big Ten All-Academic Team in the last two years than any other Big Ten school, and OSU’s average student-athlete grade point average from autumn quarter 2004 was a 3.0.

Yes, Geiger has overseen a university that has been hit by accusations of boosterism and academic misconduct among the men’s basketball and football programs. But Geiger dealt with the basketball program misconduct swiftly, firing Jim O’Brien after he admitted to paying a prospective OSU men’s basketball player and then banning the OSU’s men’s basketball team from postseason play for the 2004-05 season. And if solid evidence were ever unearthed that Jim Tressel behaved in a similar way with football players, we at The Lantern believe Geiger would fire Tressel too.

Ultimately, there is overwhelming evidence that Geiger has been a positive force on the development of OSU athletics, and we will miss him.