The Many Missteps of New Ohio State Athletic Director Ross Bjork
The Ohio State Buckeyes are hiring Ross Bjork as their athletic director, effective July 1. This is yet another indication that the United States is a remarkable country, where professional disasters great and small seemingly can be overcome with a strong jawline and a firm handshake.
Bjork is not without his merits, many of which the university documented in its release announcing his hiring Tuesday. Texas A&M, where he’s been the AD since 2019, has improved its overall academic profile for athletes. He’s fundraised to build some stuff. He’s been involved in name, image and likeness advancements at A&M. He made a few good hires. Before that, he had some good moments as the AD at Mississippi.
Perhaps most importantly to some university presidents, Bjork looks and talks the part of a major-college AD, as if out of central casting (perhaps for a parody). He can deliver buzzwords and jargon with panache and aplomb.
Bjork, while the Ole Miss athletic director, presided over the Hugh Freeze debacle.
Spruce Derden/USA TODAY Sports
But here’s the rest of the résumé, which was omitted from Ohio State’s release extolling Bjork’s hiring:
- Bjork presided over the Hugh Freeze Scandal Buffet at Mississippi from 2014 to ’16. That time period included major NCAA violations, Freeze’s rather spectacular personal scandal that cost him his job and an organized disinformation campaign about the NCAA’s investigation of the Rebels that led to a defamation lawsuit from former coach Houston Nutt. Bjork, Freeze and others at Ole Miss deliberately misled media members and prospective recruits about the nature of the violations, developing a narrative that placed the majority of the blame on Nutt.
After the NCAA notice of allegations was made public in May 2016 and it became clear that Nutt was falsely scapegoated, attorney Tom Mars filed the defamation suit on behalf of Nutt in late ’17. Bjork’s name is all over the lawsuit, and his actions are detailed extensively. Ole Miss quickly apologized to Nutt and settled the suit. (If you ever wondered how Mars became a powerful force in college athletics, this was his gateway.)
As for the sanctions incurred after the NCAA investigation: Ole Miss was given a two-year postseason ban, a 15% reduction in scholarships, recruiting restrictions, disassociated boosters and 33 vacated victories.
- Bjork replaced Freeze with one of his assistant coaches, Matt Luke. After going 6–6 as the interim coach, Luke was elevated to the full-time job by Bjork. He went 15–21 overall, 6–18 in the Southeastern Conference and was fired after three seasons by Bjork’s successor, Keith Carter.
- Bjork’s other high-profile hire at Ole Miss was men’s basketball coach Kermit Davis Jr. After initial success—a 20-win season in his first year—Davis went 54–66 and was fired before the end of last season by Carter.
After those situations, Bjork was rather stunningly hired at Texas A&M, a spare-no-expense athletic shop in the same division of the SEC as Ole Miss. This was a major upgrade for a guy some thought wouldn’t survive the Freeze era.
- Bjork’s most visible action was to award Jimbo Fisher the most irresponsible contract extension in the history of college football, which ultimately led to the most expensive buyout in the history of college football.
Fisher was coming off a 9–1 pandemic season in 2020, a sharp upward blip from previous years of 9–4 and 8–5. Flush with the success of almost making the College Football Playoff, Bjork and the A&M Board of Regents extended Fisher’s contract through ’31, paying him $9 million per year. His staff salary pool also ballooned as high as $13 million by ’23.
Most outrageously, Fisher’s buyout remained the same ski-mask robbery it was in his original contract, which was approved by predecessor Scott Woodward. If fired, he was owed the full term of the deal—at the time, $95.6 million—and it reduced by only $9 million a year. And if Fisher left, he owed the school nothing. It is, without question, the most lopsided coaching contract ever.
Sure enough, Fisher resumed mediocre production immediately thereafter. His record slid back to 8–4, then plunged to 5–7, then made a modest rally to 6–4 last season before he was fired in November at a cost of roughly $77 million. Many of those assistant coach and support staff fat salaries had to be eaten, and then a new coach and staff had to be paid.
“It was my decision, my recommendation,” Bjork told TV station WFAA of firing Fisher and eating the money. “President [Mark] Walsh agreed. You take that to Chancellor [John] Sharp. He agreed.”
- One other highlight of the Fisher era: He and his program were dinged for NCAA violations in 2020 pertaining to an impermissible contact with a recruit and violating time limits on practices and workouts. Fisher violated head coach responsibility and program monitoring rules. That infractions case led to recruiting restrictions and six-month show-cause orders for Fisher and an assistant.
- Bjork inherited successful men’s basketball coach Buzz Williams at A&M, then presided over an NCAA investigation of that program for impermissible workouts during the COVID-19 dead period and impermissible recruiting contacts. Williams was suspended for two games of the 2021–22 season and an assistant coach was suspended for the entire ’20–21 season by A&M. The Aggies also incurred recruiting sanctions.
- One of Bjork’s last acts as Texas A&M athletic director was to almost hire Mark Stoops, only to have that swatted back at him. Bjork targeted the Kentucky coach to succeed Fisher, and the deal appeared close enough to complete that Stoops began telling people close to him in the course after the season-ending win over Louisville that he was planning to leave for College Station.
But the boardroom blowback to Stoops was fast and furious, and by the wee hours of Nov. 26, the deal had fallen apart. Stoops tweeted at 1:02 a.m. that he was staying at Kentucky, doing a fine job of making that sound like a voluntary and unilateral decision on his part. “I knew in my heart I couldn’t leave the University of Kentucky right now,” Stoops said on X (formerly Twitter). It’s more believable that A&M rescinded the offer.
Having his authority publicly undercut would be enough to send any athletic director in search of his next job—but Bjork actually managed to fail upward, to Ohio State. This is certainly one of the top-five AD jobs in the country, arguably the best one.
The Buckeyes list a whopping 35 sports on their website, and they’re good at almost all of them. The football program is elite. The fan base (i.e., donor base) is massive and passionate. The facilities are top notch. The Big Ten revenue spigot is about to turn into a gusher. And highly respected outgoing AD Gene Smith leaves behind a department that has been largely stable.
The presumption was that one of Smith’s many protégés who worked under him at Ohio State and went on to Division I jobs would replace him—maybe Pat Chun from Washington State, or Martin Jarmond from UCLA, or Heather Lyke from Pittsburgh. Instead, Ross Bjork upgrades yet again.
A strong jawline and a firm handshake can take a person a long way in the modern world of college athletics. All the way to one of the best athletic director jobs in America.
