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Lee Ellis of the Ohio State Buckeyes reacts during an NCAA baseball game at Bainton Field in Piscataway, United States, on April 26, 2026. (Photo by Dan Squicciarini/NurPhoto via Getty Images) | NurPhoto via Getty Images
Last weekend, the New York Knicks ended a 53-year championship drought when they beat the San Antonio Spurs to win this season’s NBA title. While not nearly as lengthy, the next evening the Carolina Hurricanes shutout the Las Vegas Golden Knights 3-0 to secure a 4-2 series win in the NHL’s Stanley Cup Final, marking their second championship in 20 years. Earlier this year, Indiana football earned its first national championship in school history, followed by Michigan basketball winning its first national title in 37 years in early April.
With participation in so many varsity sports, there are plenty of national championships that have been won by Ohio State. Obviously, football runs the show at the university, and the Buckeyes are consistently in the mix as one of the top teams in the country. Ohio State has won three national championships this century in football, with the latest coming in 2024. Along with football, women’s ice hockey has been a national powerhouse over the last decade, with Nadine Muzerall leading the program to national championships in 2022 and 2024, along with seven trips to the Frozen Four since 2018.
Along with so much success comes some failures. There are plenty of sports where Ohio State is in the midst of a lengthy title drought. Men’s hockey has never been able to claim a national title. Men’s basketball has one NCAA Tournament title, which came back in 1960, while the closest the women’s basketball program has gotten is runner-up in 1993.
Today, we want to know which Ohio State sport you’d like to see break its drought. With football winning just a couple of years ago, it’s likely answers will focus on squads in other sports. Basketball will likely be popular since they are the most popular aside from football, but there are plenty of other options that Buckeye Nation would like to see added to the school’s lengthy list of national champions.
Today’s question: Which Ohio State sport would you like to see end its title drought?
We’d love to hear your choices. Either respond to us on Twitter at @Landgrant33 or leave your choice in the comments.
Brett’s answer: Baseball
Ohio State baseball has found success in baseball in the past, winning a national championship all the way back in 1966. The Buckeyes have made the College World Series four times in school history, with the last appearance coming in 1967. While Ohio State has made the NCAA Tournament nine times since 2000, it certainly isn’t in the conversation when it comes to top college baseball programs.
When it comes to the teams you consistently see winning the national championship and competing in the College World Series, they often are located in the south or out west. Of the eight teams in this year’s College World Series, five came from the SEC, while West Virginia was the team located closest to Columbus. The last six national champions have been from schools in the SEC.
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Schools in the Midwest and Northeast aren’t often popular destinations for baseball players. With the winter often stretching into March and sometimes April, baseball teams are often forced to practice indoors, while teams from the south and west have an advantage as they can start preparing for the season in proper fashion a lot earlier. The last time a team from the Big Ten made the finals of the College World Series was Michigan in 2019. Prior to the Wolverines making it, Ohio State was the last team to make the finals back in 1966.
Not only would a team like Ohio State coming from outside of the natural footprint of where college baseball champions come from be quite a story, but the journey to the College World Series is also fun to watch. Just think of it as March Madness on steroids. This year’s regionals saw some of the top teams in the country defeated, while the super regionals had plenty of drama as teams battled to claim their spot in the College World Series.
Another reason I want to see Ohio State win a national title in baseball is that it comes during a time when normally there isn’t a lot going on in the sports world. Even though the NBA Finals and the NHL’s Stanley Cup Finals are typically going on, how often are teams from Ohio involved in those? A College World Series run would be the last shot of adrenaline for Buckeye Nation before summer hits, and we have a couple of months to recharge our batteries before football season returns.
I’m not exactly holding my breath for Ohio State to make a run to the College World Series, but at least I can see they are making progress under new head coach Justin Haire. The Buckeyes improved by 17 wins in Haire’s second season as head coach, so the future is looking bright. Hopefully, the momentum can continue, and the Buckeyes can at least make their first NCAA Tournament since 2019 and continue to build from there.
Matt’s answer: Softball
I’ll go with Ohio State softball, because this feels like a drought that is both long enough to matter and suddenly a lot less unrealistic than it did even two years ago. As Brett said, midwestern teams are generally not strong contenders in either college baseball on softball, but on the softball side of things, we have seen Big Ten powers Michigan and Northwestern do extremely well, and this season, Nebraska made a solid postseason run as well.
But back home, things have never been super promising. The Buckeyes have never won a national title in softball, have not been back to the Women’s College World Series since 1982, and their best modern postseason run came in 2009, when they reached a Super Regional before losing two close heartbreakers to Georgia, 6-4 and 7-6. For a school with Ohio State’s resources, brand, facilities, and athletic ambition, that is a pretty glaring hole on the résumé.
But what makes softball my pick is that this no longer feels like blind hope. Head coach Kirin Kumar just finished her second season in Columbus, and has made dramatic improvements to the program’s output, without much benefit yet on her recruiting (which will undoubtedly come). In 2025, her first season in Columbus, the Buckeyes batting average went from .299 to .336 and their OPS rose from .887 to 1.144. They scores 193 more runs, improved their slugging percentage from .498 to .701, and hit 82 additional home runs. That is not an incremental improvement; that is a program changing its offensive identity in real time.
In fact, in 2025, the team set program records in runs (495), doubles (102), home runs (147), RBI (471), walks (280), and on-base percentage (.443). While the numbers were not quite as strong in 2026, they were still second in the B1G in HR.
And yes, first-team All-American Jasmyn Burns was a huge part of that 2025 success — hitting .455 with 25 homers, 72 RBIs, a 1.006 slugging percentage, and a 1.546 OPS, while setting both Ohio State and Big Ten single-season home run records — but the broader point is that the entire program suddenly looked like it belonged in the modern national softball conversation.
There still is a long way to go for Kumar and the program, as they still aren’t competing at the highest level, finishing in the middle of the conference standings and a game under .500 overall. But the building blocks appear to be there, and if the head coach can use this momentum ot improve recruiting, it is only up from here.
So, give me softball. It would not have the same mainstream blast radius as football, women’s basketball, or men’s hoops, but ending that drought would feel like Ohio State finally unlocking a sport where it has underachieved for far too long. And as someone who has loved the sport and worked in and coached at the club, high school, college, and professional levels, I would be exstatic to see the Buckeyes in Oklahoma City.
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