Ohio State Approves $100 Million Strauss Settlement. $161M+ Paid Out. 596+ Survivors. Decades of Silence.

• $100 million settlement approved 14-0 by the OSU Board of Trustees for 279 survivors — the largest single tranche in the Strauss litigation — OSU Board of Trustees, June 3, 2026
• $161M+ total paid across all Strauss settlement tranches, covering 596+ survivors from wrestling, gymnastics, football, and other programs — OSU Office of Legal Affairs
• 20 years approximate span of Dr. Richard Strauss's alleged abuse of student athletes at Ohio State University (1978–1998) — Ohio State Independent Investigation, May 2019
• 30 new plaintiffs football players who joined the Strauss lawsuit in May 2026, extending the case into a program that had not previously appeared in prior tranches — USA Today / court filings, May 2026

On June 3, 2026, the Ohio State University Board of Trustees voted 14 to 0 to approve a $100 million settlement with 279 of 280 plaintiffs in the Richard Strauss sexual abuse litigation — the largest single payout in a case that has now produced more than $161 million in total settlements covering over 596 survivors.

OSU President Ravi Bellamkondaissued a formal statement: “Ohio State is deeply sorry. These survivors waited too long. We owe them this acknowledgment and this accountability.” The university has now accepted institutional responsibility across multiple settlement tranches for abuse that plaintiffs allege university employees witnessed and failed to report for two decades.

Dr. Richard Strauss, who died in 2005, cannot answer the allegations against him. Ohio State has never contested his conduct — only its own legal liability for what its employees allegedly knew and failed to stop. That institutional silence, documented in a 2019 independent investigation, is what drove the litigation. The $161M+ is the price of that silence.

The case sits alongside Larry Nassar and USA Gymnastics as one of the largest institutional sports-abuse settlements in American history. What distinguishes it is the scope across sports programs — not a single team or federation, but an entire major university athletic department, touching wrestling, gymnastics, football, and at least eleven other sports over two decades.

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The June 3, 2026 Board of Trustees vote was unanimous: fourteen trustees, zero dissents, $100 million approved. The settlement covers 279 of 280 plaintiffs in this tranche — one plaintiff opted out, preserving the right to continue individual litigation. The board vote required no public hearing and no faculty senate approval; Ohio State’s legal team had been in structured mediation with plaintiffs’ attorneys for months prior to the board meeting.

The unanimous vote was itself a signal. Ohio State did not relitigate its institutional exposure before the board; it settled. In prior tranches, trustee deliberations involved extended debate. The 14-0 result on June 3 reflects a university that has — after seven years of litigation, a landmark independent investigation, and nine figures in total settlement exposure — arrived at a clear institutional position: pay, acknowledge, move forward.

Lead plaintiff attorney Stephen Estopinalresponded immediately on X: “Fourteen-zero. The Ohio State Board of Trustees voted unanimously to settle. 279 survivors will receive justice today. This fight has lasted too long.”

The sports represented in this tranche — wrestling (48 victims), gymnastics (16 victims), and football (30 new plaintiffs who joined in May 2026) — reflect the breadth of Strauss’s alleged access. As team physician, Strauss conducted medical examinations across multiple OSU athletics programs, giving him routine physical contact with student athletes over a span the 2019 independent investigation estimated at roughly 1978 to 1998.

This settlement follows earlier tranches that resolved claims from other survivor cohorts. Across all tranches combined, Ohio State has now committed more than $161 million to more than 596 survivors — a figure that still does not include the one plaintiff who opted out of this tranche and the unknown number of survivors who have not filed claims.

Dr. Richard Strauss joined Ohio State as a team physician in the late 1970s and remained on staff until 1998, when university administrators began receiving formal complaints about his conduct. He died by suicide in 2005 — before any criminal charges were filed. Because he is dead, no finding of criminal guilt has been or can be made. The abuse allegations rest on the accounts of hundreds of former student athletes and on the findings of a 2019 independent investigation commissioned by Ohio State and conducted by the law firm Perkins Coie.

That investigation found Strauss had sexually abused at least 177 students across 14 sports — a number that has grown substantially as more survivors have come forward through the civil litigation. The investigation also found that Ohio State personnel had received complaints about Strauss as far back as the 1970s and that those complaints were not escalated, not investigated, and not documented in ways that would have triggered review.

The institutional failure is what Ohio State has admitted. The university has not contested that its employees had reason to know about Strauss’s conduct. It has contested only the scope of its legal liability — a legal distinction that does not reduce the moral weight of what the investigation found.

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Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH-4)served as assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State from 1987 to 1994 — precisely the period when Strauss’s alleged abuse of wrestling team members was at its most documented. Jordan has been a central figure in the litigation not as a defendant but as a witness whose knowledge is disputed.

Jordan was deposed by plaintiffs’ attorneys in July 2025. His testimony: he had no knowledge of Strauss’s conduct during his tenure as assistant coach. He has maintained this position consistently since survivors first publicly accused him of knowing in 2018.

“Jim probably knew. He was there every day.”

Former Ohio State Athletic Director Andy Geiger — testimony in the Strauss civil litigation, per reporting by USA Today and The Columbus Dispatch

Former OSU Athletic Director Andy Geigertestified that Jordan “probably knew” given his daily presence at wrestling practice. Geiger’s testimony is not a finding of fact — it is an opinion offered under oath in civil discovery. No court has made a finding against Jordan. No Ohio State investigation has named Jordan as a responsible party. Jordan has sued some of his accusers for defamation.

The deposition record is sealed. What is public: Jordan was deposed, he denied knowledge, and Geiger’s testimony contradicts him. The resolution of that factual dispute — if it is ever resolved — lies in ongoing civil proceedings, not in this settlement, which does not name Jordan as a defendant or responsible party.

Thirty former Ohio State football players filed claims in May 2026, joining the Strauss litigation in the weeks before the Board of Trustees vote on the current $100 million settlement. Their inclusion signals that the case continues to expand beyond the sports programs that were central to earlier tranches — primarily wrestling and gymnastics — and into the most visible and commercially valuable program in OSU athletics.

The football plaintiffs were incorporated into this settlement tranche, accounting for 30 of the 279 covered plaintiffs. Their presence raises a question that the litigation has not yet fully resolved: how far did Strauss’s access extend, and how many additional survivors have not yet come forward?

The football additions also implicate Les Wexner, the billionaire retail executive and longtime OSU donor who served as a board-adjacent figure and major athletics benefactor during the years Strauss was practicing. Wexner was court-ordered to give a deposition in February 2026. His testimony: he had no knowledge of Strauss’s abuse despite his close involvement with OSU athletics funding. Wexner’s deposition was conducted in private; its full contents have not been made public, and his attorneys have resisted broader disclosure.

The involvement of football — OSU’s most lucrative and visible program — also raises questions about revenue-program access that were not present in earlier tranches focused on lower-profile sports. Team physicians in revenue sports have near-unrestricted access to athletes and face fewer institutional check-ins than physicians in clinical settings. The Strauss case is, among other things, a documentation of how that access can be exploited when oversight is absent.

The pattern here — wealthy donors, prominent coaches, and senior administrators all testifying that they had no knowledge of abuse that the 2019 investigation found was widely known — is the core institutional accountability problem the Strauss litigation has surfaced. The $100 million does not resolve it. It prices it.

For the survivors covered by this settlement, the Board vote ends one phase of a legal fight that has lasted years. Most of the original litigants filed their claims years after the conduct itself — in some cases more than four decades after the alleged abuse. Statutes of limitations, institutional document retention policies, and the stigma attached to male sexual abuse survivors all delayed the reckoning.

The monetary resolution does not produce a verdict. Strauss is dead. Ohio State’s settlement admissions go to institutional failure — the university’s failure to act on complaints it received — not to a judicial finding that any specific act of abuse occurred on any specific date. For many survivors, that legal architecture is the second injury: the institution that failed them now pays out without a public airing of exactly what it knew and when.

“These survivors waited too long. We owe them this acknowledgment and this accountability.”

OSU President Ravi Bellamkonda — statement on the June 3, 2026 settlement approval

The Bellamkonda statement uses the word “accountability” — a word that, in the context of institutional abuse litigation, carries specific weight. Ohio State has admitted it failed. It has paid more than $161 million. It has not, in any settlement document, named the administrators and coaches who received complaints and suppressed them. The survivors know their abuser is dead. What they wanted — and what the litigation has partially delivered — is the institution on record saying it was responsible.

The case also has implications for Title IX reform and for how universities handle team physician complaints. The Strauss litigation has been cited in congressional hearings on the SafeSport Act and in at least one proposed amendment to federal higher education law that would require universities to maintain independent medical oversight of team physicians. None of that legislation has passed. The $161 million is, for now, the only accountability that exists.

The broader pattern — a trusted institutional physician exploiting his access for years, complaints suppressed by coaches and administrators, and the full scope of harm only surfacing through civil litigation decades later — mirrors the Larry Nassar case at Michigan State and USA Gymnastics. In both cases, the institution settled. In neither case did every individual who failed the athletes face personal accountability. Nassar is serving up to 175 years in prison; Strauss died before prosecution was possible. The systemic enablers in both cases have largely avoided criminal liability.

For Ohio State’s 596+ surviving claimants, the settlement money is partial. What many have said in public statements over the years — and what the litigation record reflects — is that they wanted Ohio State to say, on the record, that it failed them. The unanimous board vote and the Bellamkonda statement deliver that, at a cost of $161 million and counting.

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