Ohio Stadium, the iconic home venue of the Ohio State Buckeyes football team, is celebrating its 100th anniversary this season. The stadium will still host Ohio State home games for the foreseeable future, but athletic director Gene Smith hasn’t ruled out one potential change: the stadium’s name.
According to the Columbus Dispatch, Smith and Ohio State would be open to selling the naming rights to the legendary stadium in the future.
“Yeah,” Smith said, according to the Columbus Dispatch. “In today’s world, the way costs are, we’ll evaluate that. We dipped our toe with a great partner in Safelite with the field.”
Before the season, Ohio State signed a deal with Safelite Autoglass to rename the stadium’s field. While the venue itself is still called Ohio Stadium, the field is now officially called “Safelite Field at Ohio Stadium” with the Safelite Autoglass logo painted on the turf.
While Smith is open to the idea of a future naming rights deal, he clarified that there are currently no specific plans to change the stadium’s name.
“There’s nothing happening,” Smith said. “There’s no effort to do that now. I’m just saying the answer to your question is, ‘Sure.’ That could be five years or 10 years or 15 years (away). But to say we’d never do it, that’s just not the truth. The truth is, at some point the university may do that.”
