While at work, Ohio State athletic director Andy Geiger is the engineer of the powerful OSU athletic locomotive that pulls a freight of 35 varsity sports, more than 1,000 student athletes, a budget of more than $79 million and countless fans.
“Here at a school with 45,000 students and the size of our athletic department, the number of teams and the number of coaches and athletes. How he manages to touch all of these people is remarkable,” said OSU men’s basketball coach Jim O’Brien.
Born in 1939, Geiger spent most of his childhood in Syracuse, NY, where he realized his interest in sports.
“I always had a passion for sport and probably in high school playing basketball was when I really began to get excited about it,” Geiger said.
After high school, he attended Syracuse University, where he was member of the crew team. There, Geiger decided he wanted a career in sports administration. But since there were no sport’s management programs at the time, he worked as an intern for the athletic department.
He graduated in 1961 and became the freshman rowing coach at Dartmouth, but returned to Syracuse three years later to become assistant athletic director.
Geiger went on to become athletic director at Brown University in 1971, Penn State University in 1975, Stanford in 1979 and Maryland in 1990. Then in 1994 OSU President Gordon Gee brought Geiger to Columbus.
“I was a reluctant candidate here. I have to confess, I stood on the 50-yard line at Ohio Stadium and said ‘Why wouldn’t I want to come here?'” Geiger said. “In terms of my profession there is so much energy here for what we do.”
When he arrived in May of 1994, he immediately saw things that needed to be improved and set out to make things better.
“He had a lot of experience from Maryland and Stanford that really gave him a broad experience when he got here,” said his wife, Eleanor Geiger.
Geiger said he wanted to help the department get its legs financially.
“I saw that there needed to be some work done on facilities,” he said. “We were a good football program, I think you ought to have the same emphasis across the board. If you put on the scarlet and gray, you ought to represent, sport after sport after sport.”
Geiger has improved the facilities with the construction of the Schottenstein Center, the Jesse Owens Memorial Stadium, the Steelwood Center and the renovation of Ohio Stadium. He has added women’s hockey, lacrosse and rowing to maintain OSU’s compliance with Title IX, which requires gender equality in athletics.
“I firmly believe that if you can possibly find a way to do it, you should meet the requirements of Title IX by adding sports for women,” Geiger said.
It is widely known that football is a major focus at OSU, but Geiger works hard to make sure every sport is given the best possible chance to succeed.
“The football team should not be better served than the others,” Geiger said. “We ought to be honest enough that if we can afford to have a grand tradition in synchronized swimming, like we do, then their experience should be top notch. They don’t have the media thing like the football team, but they have great coaching and a tremendous opportunity to go to a fine university and compete at the very top level.”
Geiger said the team sets OSU apart from the rest and is very proud of its accomplishments.
“Andy makes the smaller programs happen,” said OSU synchronized swimming coach Linda Witter. “In terms of my sport, it doesn’t get any better than Ohio State. He allows the other sports to take care of us. He has supported my program and makes me feel proud to be here.”
Geiger helps all of his programs and often goes out of his way to get a sport on the right track to success.
“When he sees me, he very often asks, ‘What can I do to help you? You can’t just find that in any working relationship. You have teams that are ranked by polls, and coaches are rated by their peers and various other people. But if anyone took the time to evaluate the top athletic directors, Andy Geiger is either at the top or very near the top,” said OSU men’s basketball coach Jim O’Brien.
There has been an extraordinary number of successful events during Geiger’s nine years at OSU, many of them a direct result of his work.
“There have been a lot of great moments,” Geiger said. “Winning the men’s gymnastics national championship was a high moment. It would be hard to describe anything more fun than the Final Four experience.”
But there are also moments when being the athletics director at OSU is not as much fun.
“The lowest I feel is when we have misbehavior or mistakes by our students,” Geiger said. “You feel really awful in those moments. It makes me work even harder to help them with the pressure they are under.”
Geiger said OSU does have some problems to overcome to maintain its high standards.
“The problems are to make sure we can hang on and continue to fund our philosophy. My job is about people,” Geiger said. “I should have great people here, I should have enough money available for them to be successful. It is no good to have great people if you don’t have financial resources to support them.”
The budget is in the neighborhood of $79 million, one of the largest athletic budgets in the nation. This includes travel, recruiting, coaches’ salaries, and scholarships. The athletic department this year has committed roughly $13 million to OSU in cash to fund many of its scholarships. If the tuition rises, as it has in the past few years, that number also rises.
“Consider the budget he oversees,” O’Brien said. “If he were in the business world, he would be considered one of the high-profile, major CEOs in the nation.”
The OSU Board of Trustees extended Geiger’s contact with the university through 2006 in its October meeting. Although the extension was not for extra money, his yearly salary will remain around $275,000.
Away from his desk at OSU, Geiger relaxes with his wife and his two sons, Phil and Greg. He also operates a slightly less powerful train, the G-Scale model he has in his backyard.
“His family comes first, so he tries to leave office work at the office. He has become very involved in gardening, and he has a garden railroad and he really loves that train,” said his wife.
Geiger has a piece of railroad track in his office that was found during the renovation of the Horseshoe. The rail was believed to have been used in the original construction of the stadium.
“I have always had a passion for trains,” Geiger said.
Geiger is active outside of OSU – he is the president of the Board of Trustees of Easter Seals of central Ohio, a trustee of COTA, and a board member of the Jazz Arts Group, the parent organization of the Columbus Jazz Orchestra.
“He is a really bright and really a people guy,” O’Brien said. “He has a real sense of community involvement.”
Eleanor Geiger said he cares very much about all OSU sports.
“He always has a great interest in how we are going to do in football, softball, basketball, soccer, wrestling, whatever the sport,” she said.
Witter agreed saying Geiger is great at motivation.
“He genuinely cares about the athletes and coaches. He is proud of all of us. He treats my athletes exceptionally well – he knows all their names. He motivates you to succeed, and he believes in you,” Witter said.
His love of his career and the people who make up his department make Geiger a great person to work for.
“Winning and losing are very important, but his concern for the quality of life of the coaches and student athletes is remarkable,” O’Brien said.
The future of the athletic department and its student athletes is to maintain a high level of success and do it honestly, Geiger said.
“We strive to be the best, and I don’t think that is different from other aspirations at this university, and it shouldn’t be. Our own academic standards are going to go up,” Geiger said. “Some may be surprised
to hear me say this, but this is the best thing that could happen to athletics. As the academic reputation of Ohio State rises, our ability to recruit exceptional people will go up, and I’m not interested in who we can get into the bottom of the class, but that being so attractive that we can compete for the cream of the crop.”
When asked about what OSU means to him, Geiger reached into his pocket without hesitation and placed two buckeyes on the table.
“These two are 9-0. I love Script Ohio. The dotting of the ‘I’ is really awesome. Scarlet and Gray. It is absolutely distinct, it’s ours,” he said.
