Ted Carter, the 66-year-old president of The Ohio State University, voluntarily resigned Monday after admitting to the board of trustees that he allowed a female podcaster inappropriate access to the university's leadership to benefit her private business ventures.
Carter told the board he "made a mistake in allowing inappropriate access to Ohio State leadership." He did not elaborate on the nature of the relationship. What we know is this: a 38-year Navy veteran, a Naval Academy graduate, a man married nearly 45 years, walked away from a $1.5 million-per-year position over a connection to a woman with a podcast that draws just a few hundred viewers per episode.
The woman is Krisanthe Vlachos, host of "The Callout Podcast." Carter had become a regular fixture on her show, appearing in nine of the 14 videos Vlachos posted so far this year. In a photo taken at the Student Veterans of America 2026 national conference in Colorado Springs in January, Vlachos referred to Carter as her "dear friend and mentor."
The relationship wasn't limited to podcast appearances. In January 2025, Vlachos' podcast reportedly co-sponsored a performance of "Last Out: Elegy of a Green Beret" at Ohio State, in partnership with the university, JobsOhio, AEP, and the Columbus Region. A few months later, Carter supposedly used Ohio State as a sponsor for Vlachos' "Gaff-N-Go Rodeo" in Richmond, Virginia, according to the podcast's Instagram account.
That's what "inappropriate access to Ohio State leadership" looks like in practice. A podcaster with a negligible audience was landing university co-sponsorships and institutional partnerships. The question isn't just whether the relationship was personal. It's whether Ohio State resources were steered toward a private business because of that relationship.
JobsOhio, the state's private nonprofit economic development corporation, issued a careful statement acknowledging the situation:
JobsOhio is aware Ted Carter resigned this morning as President of The Ohio State University and that this situation is possibly connected to a relationship between him and the host of a podcast for veterans, which we sponsored.
The organization was quick to insist its own involvement was above board, stating that the podcast sponsorship "went through our standard and rigorous legal process, as with any sponsorship given by JobsOhio." The "Callout Podcast" opportunity, they said, was "consistent with that mission of outreach."
Maybe so. But when the president of one of the largest public universities in the country is personally appearing on a show that his institution is simultaneously funding, the word "rigorous" deserves some scrutiny.
Carter's biography reads like a recruiting poster for American institutional leadership, the New York Post reported. He graduated from the US Naval Academy in 1981, served 38 years in the Navy, and rose to lead one of the most prominent universities in the country. He married Lynda Carter on July 31, 1982. The couple renewed their vows at the United States Naval Academy Chapel in Annapolis on July 30, 2017, marking their 35th wedding anniversary.
All of that is now reduced to a cautionary tale. A man who spent nearly four decades serving his country in uniform couldn't survive the temptations of a university presidency.
Vlachos did not respond to a request for comment.
Carter's resignation is not the end of this story. It's the beginning of the accountability questions.
Consider what we still don't know:
Public universities are stewards of taxpayer trust and student tuition dollars. When a president uses that position to funnel institutional resources toward someone with whom he has a personal relationship, the governance failure extends well beyond one man's resignation letter.
There's a depressingly familiar arc to stories like this. A leader of impeccable credentials ascends to a position of power, develops a relationship that compromises his judgment, uses institutional resources to benefit that relationship, and then frames his departure as a voluntary act of accountability. Carter said he "made a mistake." The passive construction does a lot of heavy lifting there.
Nine appearances out of 14 videos in a single year is not a mistake. Sponsoring events for someone's private business through university partnerships is not a lapse in judgment. It's a pattern of decisions, made repeatedly, by a man who understood exactly what institutional access was worth.
Ohio State's board accepted the resignation. Now they owe their students, their faculty, and Ohio's taxpayers a full accounting of where the money went and who let it happen. Carter's career is over. The institutional rot he exposed may not be.
