A pioneer of the Ohio State football beat is calling it a career, with longtime recruiting insider Bill Kurelic announcing he’ll be retiring next month.
“Over the past couple of years, I have thought off and on about retirement. Over the past six months or so, I’ve thought more intently about either retiring or at least scaling back,” Kurelic wrote in a story published to 247Sports’ Ohio State site, Bucknuts, on Tuesday. “After praying about things and many discussions with my wife, in the first part of June, I decided that I would be retiring. But I wanted to think about things for a bit longer to make sure I still felt that way. As things moved forward, I felt more and more sure of my decision.
“As the line in The Lion King movie goes, ‘It is time.’ It is now time to announce that I will be retiring in October.”
Kurelic first began covering Ohio State recruiting in 1986 with the creation of his Ohio Football Recruiting News publication. As he explained in his retirement announcement, his decision to cover recruiting was inspired by a story he read in Sports Illustrated about national recruiting reporters Joe Terranova, Dick Lascola, Max Emfinger, Bill Buchalter, Tom Lemming and Allen Wallace, although he opted to provide his own coverage from a more localized perspective.
Although it took him three years to make a profit, the decision clearly paid off, as evidenced by a nearly 40-year career on one of the most competitive beats in all of sports, the last 18 years of which he spent at Bucknuts. While just about every Ohio State outlet now covers recruiting, Kurelic was one of the very first to do it, helping create a blueprint for many who followed.
Kurelic’s retirement marks the second notable transaction to take place on the Ohio State beat since the start of the 2025 season. Ahead of the Buckeyes’ Week 1 victory over Texas, longtime Columbus Dispatch reporter Bill Rabinowitz announced that he is leaving the publication and will now cover the program on a new Substack site.
About Ben Axelrod
Ben Axelrod is a veteran of the sports media landscape, having most recently worked for NBC's Cleveland affiliate, WKYC. Prior to his time in Cleveland, he covered Ohio State football and the Big Ten for outlets including Cox Media Group, Bleacher Report, Scout and Rivals.