The Long Shadow of Ohio State

SI Staff | Jun 18, 2025

Sports Illustrated

In October 2020, Sports Illustrated published one of the most important cover features in its history.  Almost five years later, that story has been brought to life in the new documentary Surviving Ohio State, reporting on the serial sexual abuse of OSU athletes and students over a 20-year period by Dr. Richard Strauss, the physician to several of the university's varsity men's teams and a member of the student health department.

Jon Wertheim's SI story "Why Aren't More People Talking About the Ohio State Sex Abuse Scandal?” put all the pieces together for readers, shedding new light on a scandal that to date had unfolded in the shadow of that of Dr. Larry Nassar at Michigan State and with the U.S. Gymnastics Team. Surviving Ohio State screened last week at the Tribeca Film Festival, and is now available on HBO, the narrative that Wertheim and SI assembled in 2020 will reach its biggest audience yet.

Producers George Clooney and Grant Heslov and Oscar-winning director Eva Orner have powerfully expanded on Wertheim's work, giving voices and faces to the athletes who were abused by a man they were told to trust, who held power over their performance and their playing time. The trauma of that abuse was compounded by the victims' inability to talk about it, stifled by a social culture surrounding men's sports built around ideals of strength, power and invulnerability. Surviving Ohio State asks some difficult questions about that culture, observing how its implicit deferral to authority created an environment that allowed Strauss to continue his abuse for so long, despite its being an “open secret.”

There's never a good or easy time to talk about sexual abuse. The topic is difficult to confront, even more so when the victims are, for instance, varsity wrestlers. Which is reason to reflect on the profound courage of the athletes speaking up in this film. These men are courageous for telling their difficult stories, and Surviving Ohio State showcases this hardship time in their lives. And in hopes that during that telling, the platform has given the audience not just a good reason to believe those stories, but broadened their understanding of who abuse victims are and what they look like. The days of organizations protecting their staff and coaches at the expense of athletes and other victims must end.  

Surviving Ohio State is meant to showcase the change. When the film premiered to a packed house at Tribeca, the energy in the room was palpable and its impact on the audience undeniable. The hope is to let the courage of its subjects, and the skills of its filmmakers, inspire the consumer, and then channel that inspiration toward a sports culture that rejects shame and silence in favor of empathy, vigilance and justice.