His baseball was unquestionable. He stressed the basics and the little things that help you win. But he may not have understood the culture when he came to Ohio State. Bill Mosiello resigned Friday to seek other opportunities. (Press Pros Feature Photos)
Just two years into his contract as the head baseball coach, Bill Mosiello abruptly resigned Friday to pursue other professional opportunities.
Columbus, OH – To some it came as no surprise.
To the Big Ten baseball community it probably came as a total shock.
Almost two years to the day he was hired, Bill Mosiello resigned Friday as the head baseball coach at Ohio State after just two seasons and a composite record of 60-51. But perhaps more telling, just a 21-27 record in Big Ten play…a fact that haunted him in his two year stint at Bill Davis.
“Ohio State was a job I thought I wanted because I was always an Ohio State fan,” he said by phone Friday afternoon. “But I needed to be back with my family in Texas. It was a selfish move on my part to take this job because of my own ambitions, and I was arrogant to think that I could change some things immediately. Now I get to go back to TCU and that’s an opportunity that I don’t want to screw up again.
“The kids here have been terrific,” he added. “I just wish I could have had some time with them before things came down like they did. I regret that.”
Huffer Chiropractic can help your athlete perform at their best – with offices in Osgood, Jackson Center, and Dublin, Ohio.
His baseball knowledge was unquestionable, as was his will to win. He often wore his emotions on his sleeve during the worst of an 11th place Big Ten finish in 2023, and I think the fact that he couldn’t turn that record into something more than an 8th place finish in 2024 became a personal ulcer that ate at his patience and pride.
While brilliant in the game, his ability to understand the ‘culture’ of Ohio State could be construed as another matter – the traditions of Ohio State baseball, and even the fact of the lone NCAA championship back in 1966. His neglectful oversight last year towards the decades-long Buckeye Diamond Club, the unofficial baseball booster group, left a sour taste in a lot of mouths, and the fact that he failed to communicate it better led many to dismiss him. They were conspicuous by their absence from Bill Davis Stadium this spring.
Highly touted when he took the job in June of 2022, Ohio State was his first head coaching position after nearly four decades as an assistant at Southern Cal, Tennessee, Ole Miss, and Oklahoma (among others), and he served two stints as a minor league manager in the Angels and Yankee organizations. He brought a professional approach to the ballpark everyday, and expected the same from amateur recruits. He had spent nine seasons at TCU previous to coming to Columbus, earning the reputation of being one of the country’s most respected assistants, instrumental in TCU making four consecutive trips to the College World Series, 2014 – ’17.
Simply put, he was accustomed to winning, and baseball being a higher priority at those schools than it is in the Big Ten. That fact was another that dogged him to the point of abject frustration. There was, and there is, a lack of expectation for baseball across ‘Buckeye Nation’, like there is for football, and quite unlike the culture of baseball in Texas and the Southeastern Conference.
“The kids have been terrific. I just wish i could have had some time with them before things came down like they did. I regret that.”
It lacked the budget and funding that he was accustomed to, or that he expected, perhaps, from a school as big as Ohio State with the deep pockets of nearly a billion in yearly revenue – with facilities aplenty to ensure leadership and success. He soon found that baseball was a bit farther down the pecking order. And that, I think, was discouraging.
While he grew up a fan of Ohio State, and eventually to understand more fully the priorities at Ohio State, I think it was the realization that it wasn’t just Ohio State. Baseball will never be respected in the Big Ten Conference in the manner of football and basketball. And if college baseball is your life’s work, that can be difficult to accept.
I’m sure there were other issues, like NIL, the portal, and conference administration not being more aggressive in making better weather for baseball a priority – to play the season later. I think it became something he believed would never happen. Because to Mosiello, a kid’s dream to play in the major leagues is to be cultivated as much as the one who dreamed of the NFL.
“When you have to travel for the first four weeks of the season to find weather warm enough to play baseball, it’s going to be expensive,” he told me this spring. “I’m not going to ask kids to play baseball in freezing weather.”
I’m sure having to bus back from the recent Big Ten tournament – 13 hours after a disheartening performance in their final two games – was an added frustration. There was an eight-hour bus ride to Iowa last season, for lack of a chartered flight. And they’re not alone, as other conference schools are forced to bus it, as well, while womens basketball teams go by chartered flights without busting the budget.
Following their elimination loss to Nebraska in the Big Ten Tournament, Mosiello said, “We have to find pitching, pitching, pitching, and more pitching between now and next year.” He meant portal pitching, of course, and the kind of experienced quality that simply didn’t emerge this past spring. What’s more, I’m not sure he saw much hope in attracting experienced quality when his own top arm, Friday starter Landon Beidelschies, took the portal route for something better, himself.
And last, it had to be a bitter pill for Mosiello after bold statements at his 2022 hiring.
Editor and publisher Sonny Fulks writes OHSAA sports and Buckeyes baseball for Press Pros Magazine.
“There is no five-year plan,” he said. “We’re focused on winning now.” To his credit, he’s said repeatedly that his arrogance got in the way of reality. And given the events of an 11th place and an 8th place finish, reality, in hindsight, would have been to take that five-year plan.
I reiterate that I enjoyed the relationship with him because there is that overtone of ‘old school’ about him…that, and I learned from him. You can’t help but learn. We often disagreed, and we would agree to disagree. So it wasn’t his ability to coach that stood in his way at Ohio State, but rather a personality that others found hard to appreciate. Bill Mosiello, as it turned out, was not that complex. But to his detriment, a lot of people barely came to know him.
What’s next? I have no idea! Hard as it is to comprehend the last two years, I wouldn’t begin to predict the next two for Buckeye baseball.
Instead of a nationwide search, I believe in the quality of the current staff, and the relationship they have with recruits and the current roster. And an outside change would almost certainly mean a roster shakeup that would set things back another two years.
As far as other professional opportunities, Mosiello loves Texas (he never moved his family to Columbus), and he loves the culture of Texas baseball. In the end he was simply accustomed to something different than what he found in Columbus – far different.
I wish him the best, there in Fort Worth, where he admits he probably should never have left. As good a baseball man as he is…it’s always been about family.
The Arbogast family of dealerships is pleased to sponsor your favorite sports on Press Pros.