'Surviving Ohio State' Is About the Cowards Who Looked Away

Over two decades, there were over 2,800 documented cases of unwanted sexual touching and 170 reports of rape among Ohio State students. Thousands more went unreported. Every one of these assaults was committed by a single man: Richard Strauss, the university’s athletics trainer and head of student health.

Surviving Ohio State, a new HBO Max documentary from producers George Clooney and Grant Heslov and director Eva Orner, follows several male survivors — most of them members of the Ohio State wrestling team — who were preyed upon by Strauss. He died by suicide in 2005, years after the university allowed him to quietly retire and even awarded him Emeritus status.

But what this documentary is really about is the institutional silence. Why did no one in a position of authority do a goddamn thing? The first report came in 1979. Strauss retired in 1996. For nearly two decades, his abuse was so well known among athletes — not just wrestlers but students across multiple sports — that it became a running joke. A grotesque, open secret.

The coaches knew. They were told — by students, by the women’s fencing coach, even by a referee who Strauss molested in the locker room showers. Strauss routinely took multiple showers a day with male athletes in open view of the coaches. Everyone knew.

One of those coaches was Representative Jim Jordan. Jim Jordan knew. He just chose not to act. Not to speak up. Not to protect a single one of his athletes. The coaching staff treated the molestation and rape of students like it was an inconvenience, something to be managed, not stopped. I honestly cannot begin to understand it. Why protect a predator over the students in your care? Strauss had authority over the students. He had no such power over the other coaches.

Ohio State’s own independent investigation confirmed the abuse. The head wrestling coach eventually supported his athletes, until Jim Jordan stepped in and pressured him to stay quiet. And no, this isn’t just about Jim Jordan. He is one of at least 50 people in positions of authority who could have stopped this. He’s simply the most high-profile — and the one still actively denying any responsibility. OSU has followed his lead, weaponizing the statute of limitations to deny justice to its own former students, the very men who helped build its athletics legacy.

Surviving Ohio State is not sensational. It’s not a partisan attack. It’s an enraging chronicle of a predator who operated in plain sight, and the many, many cowards whose silence allowed him to continue. The documentary is a gut punch — a reminder that the harm didn’t stop with the assaults. The ripple effects are still felt today, in the lives, health, and careers of those students and everyone who loved them.

Jim Jordan isn’t the only villain. But he is one of many who could have stopped it. He could have helped his athletes get a fraction of the justice they deserve. And he still chooses not to.