Sports

30 Former Ohio State Football Players Join Sexual Abuse Lawsuit

By Curtis Jones · May 8, 2026

Al Washington was 18 or 19 years old when he says it happened. He played linebacker for Ohio State — recruited by the legendary Woody Hayes, a member of the 1980 Rose Bowl team, a future fourth-round NFL draft pick. When he and the other players experienced what they describe as unlawful examinations by team physician Richard Strauss, they tried to laugh it off.

“But it was really uncomfortable,” Washington, now 67, told NBC News. He didn’t tell anyone. He didn’t come forward when the first lawsuits were filed in 2018. He stayed quiet for 45 years.

Then in 2025, he watched a documentary about the scandal.

“As a matter of fact, I couldn’t make it through that movie,” he said. “The pain and anguish that I saw, I just couldn’t take it.”

Washington is one of three former Ohio State football players who agreed to publicly attach their names to a class action lawsuit against the university over Dr. Richard Strauss’s decades of alleged sexual abuse. The other two are Ray Ellis — a safety who spent five NFL seasons with the Philadelphia Eagles and Cleveland Browns — and Keith Ferguson, a defensive end who spent 11 years in the NFL with the San Diego Chargers and Detroit Lions, recording 9.5 sacks in his best season. All three were team captains. All three were members of the 1980 Rose Bowl team.

They are joined by 27 other former Ohio State football players who have signed engagement letters to join the litigation — more than a dozen of whom went on to play in the NFL — but who are choosing to remain anonymous for now, as the law allows. Their cases will be absorbed into the existing class action, Gonzales v. Ohio State, which is moving toward a bellwether trial in October.

The football players’ entry into the lawsuit is significant because Strauss’s abuse has been primarily associated with the wrestling program — and the football program’s involvement has been historically downplayed. Ohio State’s own 2019 independent investigation by Perkins Coie, which established that Strauss abused at least 177 male athletes, found that football players represented a smaller portion of confirmed victims relative to the program’s size. The football players coming forward now suggest that number was always incomplete.

Washington also revealed a reason for his long silence that went beyond his own reluctance. His son — also named Al Washington — served as Ohio State’s linebackers coach from 2019 to 2021. He is currently the linebackers coach for the Miami Dolphins. The elder Washington did not want to jeopardize his son’s career by speaking out against the institution that had employed him.

“I didn’t want him to be penalized for something that affected me,” Washington said.

He came forward anyway.

Since 2018, more than 520 former Ohio State students have filed lawsuits tied to Strauss, who died by suicide in 2005. The university has settled with 317 of those plaintiffs, paying a combined $61 million, while more than 200 active litigants remain. A federal judge this year ordered Leslie Wexner — the Ohio billionaire who was Jeffrey Epstein’s closest financial associate and a prominent Ohio State donor — to sit for a deposition in the Strauss-related cases. He has since been deposed.

Ohio State said it has “sincerely and persistently tried to reconcile with survivors” and remains engaged in mediation. It did not address the specific accounts from the football players announced Thursday.