May 31, 2013
COLUMBUS, Ohio– Gene Smith, associate vice president and director of athletics at The Ohio State University, has been honored with the 2013 NAAC Organizational Leadership Award, the National Association for Athletics Compliance announced Thursday. Smith will officially be recognized at the annual NAAC Convention June 12 in Orlando, Fla.
The Organizational Leadership Award is designed to honor organizational leaders who have demonstrated outstanding commitments to promoting compliance within their organizations and on a national level.
During his tenure at Ohio State, Smith has been a great advocate for NAAC and has been an outspoken advocate for the compliance professional both nationally and at Ohio State. Smith has been involved with the association during the review of the New Enforcement Model, specifically with the D1A Task Force on Compliance and Enforcement (alongside Members of our NAAC Board of Directors), and most recently as a visible proponent for the development of the NAAC Certification Program.
Smith, a past president of NACDA, also has served on the NCAA Management Council, the NCAA Committee on Infractions, the NCAA Executive Committee, and the NCAA Football Rules Committee. Additionally, Smith completed his fifth year on the prestigious NCAA Men’s Basketball Committee in 2011, for which he served as chair for the 2010-11 academic year. From May 2011 and running through July 1, 2014, Smith will serve as a member of the NCAA Division I Administration Cabinet, which oversees and recommends membership to NCAA committees. He recently joined the Kids Unlimited National Advisory Board, an organization committed to positively transforming the lives of inner-city children growing up in Toledo, Ohio.
Smith became the eighth person to hold the athletics director position at Ohio State when he was appointed March 5, 2005. On March 17, 2008, President E. Gordon Gee promoted Smith to assistant vice president/director of athletics and he has subsequently been named associate vice president/director of athletics.
At Ohio State, the 56-year old Smith oversees the nation’s most comprehensive and one of its most successful collegiate athletics programs. The department sponsors 36 fully-funded varsity sports with more than 1,000 student-athletes regularly competing for Big Ten Conference and NCAA championships. The athletics department is completely self-supporting; it receives no university funds, tax dollars or student fees. In fiscal year 2010-11, the department transferred nearly $30 million in assessments to the university, including more than $15 million in grant-in-aid reimbursement. Smith is known for outstanding fiscal controls.
