'A surreal feeling.' Ohio State introduces Ross Bjork as new athletic director

Ross Bjork was introduced as Ohio State's next athletic director Wednesday at a pivot point for both the university and college sports.

Bjork, who is Texas A&M's athletic director and will succeed the retiring Gene Smith, is the first major hire of new OSU president Ted Carter. It comes at a time when conference realignment, the transfer portal, and name, image and likeness opportunities have caused major disruption in college athletics.

“I think I'm the very first hire, and my goal is not to mess it up,” Bjork quipped.

Carter said he is confident he won't. A search committee recommended several candidates to Carter. He said the committee didn't give him its preference.

“From the day I started here on January 1, I was deeply involved in the search,” Carter said. “Simply stated, Ross separated himself from the rest of the candidates. He struck me as somebody who has the values here at Ohio State – integrity passion and care for our students. I measured those against all the candidates, and he was by far the leader.”

Ohio State: 5 things you need to know about new athletic director Ross Bjork

Smith's retirement isn't effective until June 30. The hiring happened quicker than most expected.

“If it looks like it's a little bit rushed, it's actually not,” Carter said. “I want to be respectful for any of those who are interviewed if they happened to be sitting ADs for those institutions to have a chance to backfill those jobs.

"There are no secrets once you get into interviews and hires. This information was starting to leak. I also want to make sure that whoever we selected had some good overlap time with Gene Smith to be ready to come in and go to work.

Bjork's five-year contract will run through June 2029. He will earn just over $2 million per year, not including performance incentives and retention bonuses.

Bjork, 51, said he hopes to wrap up most of his duties at Texas A&M in the next few weeks and start working with Smith on the transition after that.

Bjork grew up in Dodge City, Kansas, and graduated from Emporia State, where he was a fullback for the Division II program. But he said he has family roots in Ohio dating to 1851. His mother, Linda, grew up on a family farm near Williamstown near Findlay.

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Bjork said he can recall the sound of gravel on the tires as they reached the country road leading to the farm as a kid.

“I wasn't born and raised in Ohio, but I'm a product of Ohio,” he said, pointing to a large throng of family and friends in attendance. “For my family and myself, this is a surreal feeling to be standing up here.”

Bjork has been the athletic director at Texas A&M since 2019. He served in the same role at Mississippi from 2012-19 and Western Kentucky before that.

His time at both Southeastern Conference schools included controversy. At Mississippi, he defended football coach Hugh Freeze against 21 NCAA rules violation charges, including a failure-to-monitor charge and a lack of institutional control. The NCAA infractions committee said Mississippi had "an unconstrained culture of booster involvement in football recruiting."

Freeze was fired after it came to light that he'd made at least 12 calls to an escort service.

At Texas A&M, he extended the contract of football coach Jimbo Fisher two years ago to a fully guaranteed contract with no offsets, and the school was on the hook for $76 million when Fisher was fired during the 2023 season.

Bjork has acknowledged that fully guaranteed extension was a mistake.

“You take facts, you take data, you take some emotion, you take some personalities, and then you make the right decision,” Bjork said. “As we went through whatever it was at Ole Miss or what it's been at Texas A&M, you own those decisions.

“Maybe you were responsible. Maybe you weren't. But at the end of the day, it's the Harry Truman quote, 'The buck stops here.' I'm the AD. The buck stops here. If anybody wants to blame anybody, blame me.”

Bjork will oversee an Ohio State athletic program with 36 sports, far more than he's had at other stops. He and Carter said it's their intention not to cut any of the programs.

But football is king at Ohio State. Bjork had complimentary words for coach Ryan Day. He said they met for about an hour on Monday.

“Brilliant mind in the game of football,” Bjork said of Day. “High-level leader. Knows what championship football looks like and knows how to put all those pieces together.”

Referring to the three straight losses to Michigan, Bjork said, “The Game matters, and he and I talked about that. The best thing I can do is lock arms with him, figure out if there are any barriers and figure out key decisions."

Bjork must be formally approved by the university's board of trustees. Its next meeting is scheduled for February.

“I don't have to bring any core values to this job,” Bjork said. “They're already well established.

“I always say athletics is not the most important thing on campus – not even close. But we're the most visible. This is a public trust. This program belongs to the people in the state of Ohio.”

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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: New Ohio State AD Ross Bjork calls introduction 'a surreal feeling'