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SURVIVING OHIO STATE (2025) Eva Orner / Writer: Jon Wertheim, based on his Sports Illustrated article "Why Aren't More People Talking About the Ohio State Sex Abuse Scandal?" / Cinematographer: Nick Higgins (1.85:1) / Design: Danica Vallone / Editor: Charles Olivier / Talking Heads: Dan Ritchie, Mike Schyck, Mark Coleman, Will Knight, Mike DiSabato, Rocky Ratliff, Colleen Marshall, Ilann Maazel, Jon Wertheim, Al Novakowski, Russ Hellickson, Stephen Snyder-Hill, and Dr. John Lombardo / Distributor: HBO / USA / TV-MA / Length: 108 min.

It's a horror story 40 years in the making. A credentialed, highly respected sports physician for Ohio State University spent two decades on campus training, doctoring, and molesting as many male college-age students as his class roster would allow. The Columbus Dispatch reported on October 1, 2019 that the number of sexual assaults credited to Richard Strauss was nearing 1500: 1430 instances of fondling and 47 rapes. 

It feels like another 40 years have passed since producer George Clooney first announced Surviving Ohio State, or the “Jim Jordan documentary,” as it came to be called, back in February 2021. While its heart is squarely in the right place, for the doc to have made a dent, it needed to open a month before last year’s election. 

Overheard in the teacher’s lounge: “If that happened to me, I’d have kicked the guy's ass.” The chunk of macho flexing came from one of Dan Ritchie’s colleagues. A wrestler at OSU between 1988 and 1992, Ritchie turned his wrestling scholarship into a career as a public school teacher. He was one of the last victims to come forward. Like Ritchie, many of the recruits were young and impressionable: small-town conservatives taught to respect authority figures. Whatever the coach told them to do, they did. When he chose wrestling for his major, Ritchie had no way of knowing that the toughest opponent he would face would be his team’s doctor. 

Strauss was a big man on campus, but behind his back students called him “Dr. Jellyfingers” or “Dr. Funboy.” “Dr. Funboy is gonna like him,” the upperclassmen laughed as the newbie took his place in line. What followed was a form of ritualistic initiation, sexual assault as a prerequisite to making the team. Go Buckeyes!

As the boys filed in one by one through the examination room, the esteemed sports physician would set the mood by first dimming the lights. Next, with a flashlight firmly clamped between his teeth, Strauss proceeded to perform a cavity search. (He eschewed latex gloves, preferring the feel of skin-on-skin.) Two of the survivors recalled him getting so close they could feel his breath on their penis. Another experienced feelings of embarrassment at having to “talk yourself out of getting an erection.” 

Strauss saw to it that the only two people in the examination room were himself and his victim. No nurse, no assistant, no witnesses, just his swottiness against the word of an anabolistic grappler. And no matter what the prognosis — nosebleed, stubbed toe, chapped lips — each visit resulted in a full-body check, complete with genital probe. 

Students objected to being violated, but they all went along for the good of the team, as if the team couldn’t get on without first sacrificing a few of its members to a board certified rapist. Will Knight called it, “A dirty little secret that we all tiptoed around and just dealt with it.” Mark Coleman described trying to turn his anger into a positive, something to help him do better. Or was anger a necessity in order to survive and advance in the game? It was an open secret that all the boys were hip to; they even joked about it. But when it came to taking it off campus, players were too afraid to speak up — they feared self-implication. 

EVERYBODY knew. 

Strauss’s #1 rule: You have to play ball to play ball. Or dribble, or tackle, or high stick, whatever the sport. It wasn’t just wrestlers on whom Strauss set his predatory sights. This man had the keys to every male locker room on campus — wrestling, football, basketball, baseball, ice hockey, tennis — and a personal locker in each. He showered with the athletes frequently throughout the day and nobody raised an eyebrow. 

Referee Fred Feeney recalls showering next to Strauss. The two had the locker room all to themselves, but Strauss pulled up to the shower head next to Feeney. It took a beat before the ref realized that the man next to him wasn’t showering, he was fully aroused and masturbating. A palm on the ref’s backside almost led to fisticuffs. Overcome by the “asinnity of it all,” the ref resisted his first instinct to “knock him on his ass.” He did report the incident to Jim Jordan, who brushed it off with, “It's Strauss. You know what he does.” 

And what of Jordan’s involvement in a cover up? The number one wrestler in his class, he was described by his teammates as an “animal,” a religious straight arrow and all-around good guy possessed with the innate ability to open a can of whoopass on all who opposed him. Jordan became Coach Russ Hellickson’s assistant, and their combined celebrity weight was tantamount to free advertising. Potential students now had two winning reasons to flock to OSU. 

The news of Strauss's behavior first came to public light in March 2018. By then, Jordan was a prominent figure in American politics. No evidence was ever found that proved Jordan was guilty of concealment. Any attempt on the part of athletes to speak up was quashed as hearsay. Hockey player Al Novakowski went so far as mentioning Strauss’s commitment to checking for hernias to Coach Hellickson. He was told not to worry about Strauss and to concentrate on his own playing. Ritchie recalls a wrestler complaining to Jordan about Strauss’s handsy behavior. In what Ritchie determined to be an admission of complicity, Jordan replied, “If Strauss ever did that to me, I'd snap his neck like a stick of dry balsam.” Richie walked away from Ohio State. Dr. Strauss was promoted to chief physician at OSU General Health Center. 

Charlotte Remenyik coached women's and men's fencing and was the first and only female coach of a men's team at OSU. Sometimes it takes a woman to do a man’s job. Remenyik was also the first to take seriously the growing number of allegations students leveled against Strauss by lodging a complaint with the administration. Without evidence, the case couldn’t move forward. Strauss volunteered to step down as doctor of the fencing team. The demotion essentially freed even more of Strauss’s day to shower with students from the campus' dozen other athletic departments. 

If you’re one of the millions of Americans who find enjoyment in punting, hitting a ball with a stick, or applying a step-over-toe hold, God bless you. (I’m partial to movies myself.) Just so the ball-handling stays on the court, not in the college locker room. Why did the truth take so damn long to process? “Rape is rape,” as the billboards read. It’s a lot easier to accept when the victim is a defenseless woman instead of a he-man wrestler being overpowered by a milquetoast. Who knows? Maybe that was part of the appeal for Strauss.

As a piece of filmmaking, Surviving Ohio State is essentially a two-hour special edition of To Catch a Predator. What is with the menacing music ominously pulsating underneath throughout the show? Is it true crime TV’s answer to a laugh track? Director Eva Orner attempts to dramatize Strauss’s encounter with Referee Feeney by rack focusing from one streaming shower head to another. In lieu of trusting the drama inherent in the material, Orner resorts to fuzzy, tightly-cropped dramatic recreations.

Strauss was relieved of his duties with Student Health Services in 1996. Once again, that meant more time to devote to sexually assaulting students in Internal Medicine, Preventive Medicine, and the School of Public Health, three assignments he was not relieved of. When Strauss retired in 1998, he was awarded full emeritus status. 

I’ll wait while you pick your jaw up off the floor.

Just what was it that finally led to a case being filed? Not the media or one of Strauss’s victims. And you can bet the farm it wasn’t a university board member. Whatever findings the board reached were kept secret. OSU could have succeeded in dodging an arsenal of accusations were it not for the arrest of Larry Nassar, fellow serial predator and team doctor of the United States women's national gymnastics team. News of  Nassar’s atrocities traveled fast. Suddenly, OSU sports alumni, make that Richard Strauss alumni, who hadn’t spoken in decades, began setting phone lines ablaze.

No criminal action was taken against OSU. The one question heard several times throughout the course of the film was, “How was Strauss allowed to continue on for as long as he did?” I’ll take it one step further: how is Ohio State still standing? Normally I’d cut a university some slack, but in this case, the school board not only looked the other way, once they caught on nothing came of it. For a 20 year period, parents have sent their kids there. Many returned damaged, too ashamed of what people might think to breathe a word. HAPPY ENDING ALERT! It might still be going on today had Strauss not had the decency to hang himself with a cargo strap. ***

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