Skull Sessions

August 2025.

St. John Arena, once the home of the basketball team, is now slated for demolition and used only for TBDBITL’s Skull Sessions before football games. This is a pretty big change to one of the most famous Ohio State traditions, and most people are pretty bummed out about it. I do acknowledge the Schott is an upgrade, but I like the design and atmosphere of St. John better.

St. John Arena is located on north campus. It is bordered by Lane Avenue to the north, Woody Hayes Drive and Ohio Stadium to the south, the women’s hockey rink to the east, and French Field House to the west.

History

The land that St. John Arena occupies was originally part of the city of Columbus, but Ohio State purchased it in the 1940s and demolished the existing houses on the site. Campus never extended beyond Woodruff Avenue until that time. Additionally, prior to the construction of St. John Arena, the basketball team played at the Armory, and later off-campus at the state fairgrounds.

St. John Arena under construction. Getting a Crystal Palace vibe here… (Historic Campus Map)

St. John Arena was designed in 1954 by university architect Howard Dwight Smith. A Mid-Century Modern design, it was built to house various Ohio State sports, most notably the basketball team. Its construction began in May of that year and was completed (aside from HVAC work) by October 1956. It has a steel frame and a fancy sheet metal exterior and interior.

1959 view of the basketball court. (Buckeye Stroll)

St. John Arena was built with 13,897 seats, and its first game was against the Butler Bulldogs, which OSU won 98-82. At this point in time, Ohio State was a powerhouse in basketball. They were national champions in 1960 and runner-up the following two years. (Bear in mind the football team claims a national championship from 1961, which is odd that both teams were good at the same time. That was also the year that the university declined a Rose Bowl invitation in an attempt to avoid being viewed as a “football school.”) 

Undated view of St. John Arena and French Field House, looking northwest. (Buckeye Stroll)

In 1998, the Schottenstein Center was built, which is the current home of Ohio State basketball. It’s kind of odd that St. John only lasted about 40 years, but it’s more difficult to modify basketball arenas than football stadiums. The Schott has about 5,000 more seats, which makes it the largest in the Big 10. (Half these seats sit empty anyways, since Ohio State basketball has been hot garbage since 2014.) Nonetheless, other sports such as volleyball, gymnastics, and wrestling still used St. John Arena until the Covelli Center opened in 2019. I think it is used as a weight room today, because the times I’ve been in there for Skull Session there has been gym equipment on the main floor.

St. John Arena is ultimately slated for demolition. The university plans to replace it with dorm space, two athletic fields for student use (like Lincoln Tower Field), and a stage for the band to play during Skull Session. This decision (and the basketball team’s move to the Schott) is very unpopular, as most Ohio State fans and Columbus residents like the more intimate nature of St. John and feel that the Schott is too corporate. I’ve heard anecdotally that St. John is in bad shape, though, and that it is outdated and falling apart.

After Ohio State won the national championship in football in 2024, the north side of St. John Arena was lit up in red and had a massive sign projected on the façade that read something like “WE TOLD YOU.” I couldn’t find a picture anywhere, sadly, and I still cuss out my professor for not canceling classes the next day. (I missed the celebrations after the game because I had early class the morning after. Otherwise, I would have gone and taken a picture.)

Lynn St. John. (Wikipedia)

St. John Arena was named after Lynn St. John (1876-1950), who served as an early basketball coach and Ohio State’s second athletic director. St. John worked with James Naismith on the NCAA Basketball Rules Committee from 1912 to 1937, and he coached Ohio State’s basketball team from 1912 to 1919. He was the second athletic director, holding that position from 1915 to 1947.

Skull Session

A view of a recent Skull Session. This view is from a game where the Athletic Band was present. (TBDBITL website)

The only thing that St. John is used for now is TBDBITL’s Skull Sessions. I’ve been to two for athletic band, but I usually prefer block or going to the bars. These are an iconic game-day tradition, though.

Skull Session’s history traces back to a simple music run-through the morning of a game, just like how the band rehearses on Lincoln Tower Field today. Band members began inviting friends and family members, and eventually so many people would show up that director Jack Evans moved these rehearsals to nearby St. John Arena. The seats have been packed with visitors ever since.

An Ohio high school band is invited to every Skull Session, and once a year the Athletic Band will play as well. These bands usually provide entertainment in the time before TBDBITL arrives, since St. John opens a while beforehand. TBDBITL begins marching there two hours and 20 minutes before kickoff, and they make a quick entrance to the sounds of the ramp entrance cadences. The band then takes their seats, and the performance begins. The first song is the Navy Hymn, which the band sings along to. Next is Fight The Team, which is played first “soft and slow,” then at the full 180 bpm.

One highlight is the football team’s entrance, which is announced via the playing of “Fanfare for a New Era.” A coach and player will give a brief speech to the audience, and the team departs to Hang On Sloopy.

Aside from rehearsing the halftime show itself, TBDBITL has several other traditions. Various “cheer groups,” which are smaller contingents of the band, will play arrangements of pop songs, fight songs, and fun digs the band makes up. My favorite is the Tuba-Fours’ “Michigan Sucks”. 

Photos

In my general day-to-day routine, this was how I saw St. John--through a frame created by the Blackwell, the Lane Avenue Garage, and Converse Hall:

A little more experimentation here…Converse Hall and the ice rink framing it:

Okay, enough of that. Here’s a wider view of the building from the packed parking lot:

That corrugated metal is doing funny things to the screen here. It looks cool in real life, though.

Detail of the chamfered corner entrance:

I like the subtle difference in tone of the masonry that makes up this part. Seems like Smith let certain stylistic tendencies die hard. Modernism is marked by slight differences like that--others are the raised band around the central window, and the smaller strips of glass on either side that match its height.

A closer look, with the cheesy, out-of-character entrance signs:

The one choice I don’t understand is the corrugated glass/plastic that most of the windows are composed of. It has aged terribly and much of it is yellowed, dirty, and foggy. I’m sure it was meant to continue the ribbed motif of the sheet metal, but I personally don’t think it works.

The metal sides look cool in the sun, but the windows under are extra crusty and covered in weeping rust stains.

North facade:

Adjacent French Field House:

Here’s the south facade in much better lighting:

North just never gets enough good light. Here, you can see St. John is very simple massing/composition-wise. I honestly like the simplicity better than all the nonsense tacked onto the Schott.

A nice detail of the sheet metal and piss-yellow corrugated windows:

Last exterior photo…here’s the southeast side:

My interior coverage is pretty spotty. The photos of the corridors were ones I took the day I visited/finished this post through exterior windows. The remainder were from 2024 Skull Session (Indiana). I’ll just organize them in the order I took them. First is this locker room, which we used to store cases and whatnot:

Entering the floor from the locker room:

Looking out on the empty arena from our seats:

Remember when the B1G didn’t include PAC teams? (Yes, I know Maryland, Rutgers, Penn State, and Nebraska aren’t traditional teams either.)

Atrocious picture, but I really like the curvy, shiny sheet metal ceiling.

Last one…here’s the arena after the high school band arrived, but before TBDBITL.

I really like the more intimate atmosphere of St. John, and honestly I like its aesthetics better, too. The only bad part is the hard wooden chairs, which make your butt numb if you sit still for too long. There’s also less legroom than the Schott. 

Here are the photos of the hallway that surrounds the base that I took today:

Just a hint of the seats from here…

The other side:

I wonder what’s gonna happen to all this Cold War-era memorabilia and awards. This maximalist aesthetic is much different from Ohio State’s current neo-Modernist stylistic tendencies, as the Schott and Covelli Center are scaled back in their level of hardware. Maybe they’ll stick them in the University Archives’ basement or something.

Sources:

https://kb.osu.edu/handle/1811/24059

https://library.osu.edu/site/buckeyestroll/

https://pare.osu.edu/framework

https://maps.osu.edu/historic/

https://tbdbitl.osu.edu/marching-band/traditions#skullsession