Ohio State football: Alter grad played key role in Big Ten return

A learned skill, long snapping can allow a player to get on the field without having quite the physical gifts of most of the other players out there, but there is a catch.

“There are a lot of people volunteer to do it until the until the game is on the line,” long-time Alter coach Ed Domsitz said. “Then they sort of wish they hadn’t.”

Domsitz remembered Dr. Jim Borchers as one of his best, most dependable long snappers in his many years as coach of the Knights, and he was proud to see Borchers play a prominent role in the Big Ten’s efforts to reinstate the football season that had been postponed in late summer.

“I think that he was one of those kids who who put team first,” Domsitz said. “He did whatever he could to make things work and did whatever was asked of him.”

After excelling for the Knights in the late ’80s, he walked on at Ohio State.

Wearing No. 50, he was a four-year letter-winner and a four-year Academic All-Big Ten selection.

Nearly three decades later, he’s still a Buckeye — and perhaps the one most responsible for making sure the Big Ten had a football season this fall.

Now the Ohio State team physician, Borchers co-chaired a medical committee that worked on developing plans for Big Ten football and other sports to return to the field after the conference’s chancellors and presidents voted to postpone the season in August.

That was a task that needed to be done whether the seasons were to take place in January, April or even later in 2021 given the uncertainty of the coronavirus pandemic, but the committee’s work ultimately led to the conclusion games could be played this fall.

If not for that, Ohio State’s chance to play in another College Football Playoff would have been scuttled, but Borchers said he had more than that on his mind back in late summer.

“The goal for me was to make certain that we did it as safely as we could do it, and that we kept the athletes’ health and safety in mind,” he said.

When the decision to begin in late October was announced in September, Borchers was there to explain the medical side of things — and widely praised for his role in convincing conference leadership to reverse course.

“Behind the scenes, Borchers has been viewed as the quiet MVP of the Big Ten comeback,” tweeted national college football reporter Pete Thamel.

“League sources tell me they’re very impressed with Borchers,” ESPN’s Adam Rittenberg tweeted while the decision was still pending. “His voice and those of other doctors key tomorrow.”

After the decision was announced, Wisconsin Athletic Director Barry Alvarez — who was also part of return to play committee — called Borchers “a rock star.”

“If I had to pick one person who had the most to do with this whole thing, it would be him,” Alvarez told the Wisconsin team website. “He jumped in with both feet. He tied a lot of things together with the heart disease and the protocols that were necessary for the chancellors and presidents to see.

“I’m sure he’d be the first to give credit to other people, but he spearheaded and presented it to everyone. We owe him a debt of gratitude. He’s been on every one of these meetings, every one of these Zoom calls. He’s the one who answered a lot of the questions. He’s been unbelievable.”

In a phone interview this week, Borchers expressed pride over his role but was not willing to toot his own horn too loudly.

“Well, I think if I was able to offer some perspective and direction and be a voice for our medical sub-committee to the chancellors and presidents to be able to provide a path forward for competition and for all sports in the Big Ten, then I was glad to glad to take that on,” he said. “You always get more credit than you probably deserve and more criticism and than you probably deserve when you’re in these sorts of roles, but I’m glad that the Big Ten was able to find their way to a football season.”

That task began shortly after the Big Ten initially put all fall sports on ice in early August.

Within a day or so of that announcement, he accepted an invitation form commissioner Kevin Warren to co-chair the Return to Play medical subcommittee with Penn State athletic director Sandy Barbour.

“To be honest with you, at the time I felt like it was a responsibility that I needed to take on,” Borchers said. “And if the conference felt like that I was the appropriate person to be in that role that I was gonna do it. I felt like we owed it to the athletes and the other people at the universities to work to find our way forward, so it was something that I was happy to do.”

Domsitz remembered Borchers as “one of those kids you just knew was going to be successful,” adding, “We’re just very pleased and proud of what he’s been able to accomplish. You get a great feeling about about that. It’s not just the kid to go on and play football and succeed and go on even to the NFL. It’s very gratifying to see your former players be able to accomplish things like Jim’s accomplished, and it’s special.”

As a long snapper for the Buckeyes, Borchers shared a roster with stars such as Eddie George, Joey Galloway, Bobby Hoying and Robert Smith.

He wasn’t the biggest name from the Dayton area --that would have been Dan “Big Daddy” Wilkinson of Dunbar or even from Alter (Jeff Graham, not to mention a quarterback from Centerville named Kirk Herbstreit.

But Borchers’ unique role on those Ohio State teams might have prepared him for the unusual and unexpected task of making it possible thousands of football players across the Big Ten could play football this fall.

Becoming a doctor requires not just intelligence but years of hard work and diligence, assets required to develop into a dependable snapper, too. The title (doctor, not long snapper) bestows respect on an individual that leads to being put on committees of importance, but having the knowledge of why playing in a pandemic could be done safely was not enough.

Borchers also had to share it with conference leadership in a way they would understand and ultimately agree with, and that was arguably a more important task.

In other words, he had to make one more successful pass — except in this case, it was to reverse the decision to punt rather than facilitate it.

“I think if I did anything well at that time, was I was able to present the data to them in a way that helped them to understand not only the problem identification but the problem solution and what that solution meant and what we could expect moving forward, and what our goals were and what they were not,” Borchers said.

That meant understanding there would be positive cases, but that daily testing that became available after the initial decision was made would make monitoring potential outbreaks easier and reduce the risk of one team passing it to another.

It also meant that while the risk of complications existed — including heart inflammation — that was also something that could be monitored and managed in a medically acceptable fashion.

Convincing the conference leaders of those facts and others paved the way for a change in direction.

“I think it helps to put some framework around what we were going to be able to do,” Borchers said. “The type of risk we’d be able to mitigate and be able to look at our constituents, the student-athletes, their parents. The university community, the coaches, the medical staff. This is a way forward, and we see this as our way forward that will allow for participation but also mitigate the risk.

“We never started out and saying no one would ever get the infection. We never started out saying that everything would be perfect. We never started out saying that we’re gonna be able to eliminate the spread. No one’s been able to do that,” he said, noting even the “bubble” environments professional sports leagues created in the summer and fall did not completely keep the virus out.

“We also I think were able to maybe illustrate the limitations and what we would have to accept moving forward,” Borchers said.

He didn’t take the co-chair position to became famous, but he knew there would be some media attention along with it for better or for worse.

“That would come the territory, but I felt good about the process,” Borchers said. “I still feel good about the process. I still feel that there can be disagreement, and part of what we do every day is kind of agree to disagree at times on certain things, but at the same time, I’ll be very honest with you. I think it’s really important that at some level, there needs to be kind of a consistent voice around these sorts of issues because it becomes really confusing and chaotic when there’s not. If I could help provide that, I was happy to do it.”