Ross Bjork took over as Ohio State’s athletic director at a pivotal point for the football program.
The Buckeyes had a veteran-laden roster and star-studded staff in 2024 that put them in prime position to win a national championship.
They capitalized on the window of opportunity.
Despite setbacks in the regular season, including a fourth consecutive defeat to rival Michigan, the Buckeyes responded with a historic run through the College Football Playoff, which featured an expanded field of 12 teams for the first time. It was their first title since Ryan Day replaced Urban Meyer at the helm of the program in 2019.
Bjork sat down with The Dispatch to reflect on the highs and lows from last year and other topics ahead of the upcoming season. The interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Q: What was the experience like of winning a national championship in your first year as athletic director?
A: As any administrator, the goals are always to put your athletes in the best position, provide resources, do all the right things off the field, but winning a national championship in any sport is always just the pinnacle of what you can do, and then football just has that special meaning. There is no way I can take credit for anything other than just being a positive voice throughout the year. It speaks to the power of Ohio State football. It speaks to the job that Coach Day has done. Getting to know him was really, really fun throughout the year, and we had to go through adversity. It made it even more rewarding.
Now it’s don’t mess it up. Make sure we continue. There’s a lot of momentum on and off the field. It gives you a great launching point early in tenure, so we’re going to capitalize on it moving forward.
Q: The swings of the season were unique to a national title season. Six months later, what’s your perspective?
A: Obviously we knew it was a 12-team playoff. Especially with a tough schedule, if you stub your toe, you’re still alive. You should never count yourself out throughout a season. Of course you want to win every game, but I think we learned a lot after the Oregon game in terms of our makeup. The ability to make adjustments on both sides of the ball was a learning lesson. Coach Day, in terms of culture and the leadership of the team, was really able to rely on the players to overcome the adversity.
We could have easily made a different choice in terms of how we responded to losing (against Michigan), but we didn’t, and that speaks to the culture. In this new era, the regular-season games are going to be magnified. They always will be. That rivalry game will be magnified. But never count yourself out. That’s a great lesson learned in today’s world of college football. This should be a long-term (perspective). This should not be a quick fix, like, ‘Oh my god, we lost that game. Shut it down.’ You’re always in it, especially at Ohio State.
You learned a lot about how to have the player durability, whether it’s depth or backing off in practice or in certain situations. We need to maybe play more guys on special teams than we would have otherwise. We learned a lot about the playability of the games knowing that you could play 16 or 17 games. There are a lot of perspectives we garnered.
Q: After the loss to Michigan, you were resolute about Ryan Day’s status. Why was it important for you to be out in front on that?
A: It goes back to just getting to know him. As I was being hired, he and I sat down for about an hour, and I walked away going, ‘OK, this guy knows what he’s doing. He’s got a plan. He’s going to overcome whatever the issues were from the 2023 season.’ I thought he was very thoughtful, very intentional, and he was excited about the continuity and adding some key pieces.
So coming out of that game, I believed in what I said. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have said it. And I thought the players could not walk into the building on Monday morning with any doubt about the status of the program. Period. We had a bad day, but we were still alive. I knew based on that loss, we would be hosting a playoff game. We would not get a bye. So we also needed our fans to show up. All of those factors said we need to come out strong and say this is our coach, he’s a great leader, we have a great team, we have tons of talent. We just wanted to be factual in our support to say this is the clarity that our program needs to have right now. It really was about the players and the fact we were in the playoff and everybody in Buckeye Nation, especially the players, needed to have clarity in purpose.
Every talking head could have their opinion about why we lost that game. That’s fine. But nobody could say, ‘Hey, what are they going to do with Ryan Day?’ If this mantra was to leave no doubt during the season, the mantra on Sunday and Monday and throughout the week was to leave no doubt about the status of the program, especially coach Day.
Q: Now that he has a title, do you sense a change in him?
A: One of the things I talked to him about when I first met him back in January 2024 and he asked me my thoughts, I said, ‘Hey coach, just from a neutral observer in this whole thing, you need to have more fun.’ We know the pressures of the job. We get it. We signed up for it. But part of this is we’re pouring into young people. We are playing games. There should be a fun element to it.
Now that he has a national championship, and we have a national championship under his leadership, the program can kind of lift the lid off. There’s a big boiling pot of water here at Ohio State every day. There’s a lot of pressure. Let’s lift the lid off that. Coach feels that. Now we can go. Let’s have fun. Let’s smile. Let’s do all the right things on and off the field. We have an amazing graduation rate. We have a 1,000 APR score. We’ve got amazing metrics in all kinds of different categories, and now we have that one metric that means everything. Everyone has seen a pep in his step. There’s a renewed sense of focus. We can let loose.
We’ve arrived at this level under his leadership. It’s happened before under numerous other coaches. But now under his leadership, I think he feels a sense of, not relief, because no coach ever feels like they’ve accomplished everything they want to accomplish, but it’s like, ‘Let’s go.’ There has been a renewed sense of confidence, or energy, or relief of pressure. You could describe it a ton of different ways. But I think we have sensed we have a leader who is established at the highest level and been here a long time now. Let’s let loose and take the program to an even higher point.
Q: What do you see as the particular trouble with the rivalry game against Michigan?
The Game is always going to be The Game. That’s never going away, but there’s almost seasons within seasons. There are games within a season. Now you have a 12-team playoff that may expand even more, I think you just have to put everything in perspective, that if the goal is always to win a national championship, then everything else kind of falls with that. How do you take that game, keep it where it’s at, the magnified scope of that game is never going to change, but is it compartmentalized differently? What we have to analyze moving forward is compartmentalizing different buckets.
The Texas game is going to have huge magnitude, and then you bookend that with The Game. If you focus on The Game when you play Texas, that’s not going to work against Texas. Compartmentalizing is kind of the mantra that I’ve kind of looked at. How do you really take it in segments, knowing that it’s always going to mean what it means, but also knowing that in most years, the loser of that game should be in the playoff most years? How do you take that perspective and keep hopes alive while also making that game what it means?
Q: There’s a school of thought, and there is a lot of other factors, that you put too much pressure on the game, that the players come out tight. Does it need be put into perspective that it shouldn’t mean life or death?
A: No one will ever de-emphasize that game here at Ohio State, just like no one will ever de-emphasize that game up north. But there is the perspective of keeping your program alive. It used to be if you did lose that game, you were definitely out. But in the new era, that’s not the case. So how do you balance that piece of it, knowing that game means so much to so many people in the state of Ohio and beyond nationally? But I think player perspective is going to help. Coach Day is going to analyze how we talk about that game in August, in Week 3, Week 7 and when we play that game. You can take a layered approach without ever de-emphasizing anything about that game. It’s just kind of a new thing that everybody is going to learn and coalesce around. It is going to be different in terms of what it means for the postseason.
Q: Looking ahead to this season, a lot of players have left for the NFL, both coordinators are gone, and there are a lot of new faces on the field and in the booth. What is your confidence or any concerns about this team?
A: As far as the strategy pieces, our coaches are evaluating things. They’re putting all the right pieces together. My job will be to support them. What I look at is more, ‘Are we preparing ourselves, summer workouts, attitude, team chemistry?’ I was with four of our guys at a charity golf tournament. They’re fired up. They are fired up about how hard they’ve worked, about the team leadership, about the team chemistry. The culture is always going to be strong here. We know there’s always going to be talent here, but we also know that there’s going to be new pieces. How they gel, how they mesh, how they come together starting on July 31, all of those things will be important, but I think there’s a ton of excitement inside the building because those guys know the work they’re putting in. Our coaches see it on a day-to-day basis. They’re getting good vibes. That’s what’s exciting. It’s Ohio State football. There’s always going to be a standard, and those guys know it.
Q: Ryan’s now more of a CEO coach. He gave up the play-calling last year, and he’s going to do it with Brian Hartline this year. How do you feel as if he’s adapted and how much faith do you have in the coordinators?
A: Back to my first meeting with coach Day, he had already made the decision to step back from the day-to-day grind, because there is so many things. Now with roster cap management and roster management in general, there is just a lot going on as a head coach. What I’ve seen is growth. I’ve seen maturity. A lot of people are looking at coach Day as one of the key voices in college football in terms of this modern era, changes, the College Football Playoff format and all the things that are happening. The expectation is that you have a voice in this industry. Coach has established himself from that standpoint.
Running the program, it’s just a big operation. Now you’re dealing with agents, and you’re obviously dealing with parents, players and all the coaches and family members of coaches. I’ve seen an evolution even in the last year and a half that I’ve been here. He’s on the right track. We’re all learning to adapt in the new era. There are going to continue to be learning moments. But he’s got a steady hand. He’s captain of the ship, and I think it’s been awesome to see him just take that elevated role to say, ‘Hey, look, I can’t be in the offensive room every hour, because if I just focus on that, then there’s five other things that I definitely have to focus on that I’ve got to.’ It’s a balance, but he’s learned a lot, and it’s our job is to help him through a lot of those things, too. Â
Q: In terms of roster management, Mark Pantoni is the general manager, a role that has grown in stature across the sport. The salaries reflect that, and his was tripled this offseason too. How important is he to structuring the roster and having someone like him in this day and age?
A: You’ve got to have somebody off the field to manage all the moving parts. You have player evaluation. Who do you want to offer? Once you do offer, you bring them to campus and you start having conversations around the revenue-share component, the third-party NIL component. That takes a lot. We’ve been living in the old era of the collective world where we weren’t really involved in it. Now, we can have those direct conversations about what your value is, what Ohio State’s package is. That’s a whole evolution that Mark has taken on. A lot of people have raced out and hired a true general manager.
Mark obviously has the title, but really coach Day is the head coach, he’s the general manager, he’s the player personnel person, and Mark is really the technical piece of the negotiation, the management of it, who do we offer, how do they fit into our cap, all of those things. It’s a nuance that has evolved, and a skill set that has evolved as well. The thing I like about Mark is he’s seen it at an SEC program (at Florida) in the old era, and he’s seen it in the interim NIL period the last four years, and now we’re in the new era. I think he’s got a good perspective on balancing it. You’ve got to have somebody and then a whole unit of people to help him and central resources where we’re all on the same page.
Q: What should a front office for a football program look like?
A: What you have to learn today is the value per position and the value per player, based on either their recruiting profile, if we think they can come in and play right away. Clearly, a Jeremiah Smith would have a higher value because we knew he was going to play right away. A developmental player may not have that value coming in. To me, that’s an ideal approach. You have to understand positional value. The fact that a lot of things aren’t transparent, you don’t really know, so you have to build your own philosophy. The market may dictate certain things, and you may have to adjust, having the wherewithal to really understand roster value, based on the number that you have to work with. Clearly at Ohio State, we’re going to value the receiver position. That’s what we’ve done. But you have to have a good defensive line, a good offensive line, a secondary. Learning that piece will prove to be successful. The other thing too is you have to have a long-term approach. You shouldn’t ever overpay. Having the stamina and recruiting chops has always been part of recruiting, but now you have to have the technical piece.
Q: What’s the challenge in making sure that 20th– or 40th-best player on your roster doesn’t look at playing another school that isn’t at Ohio State’s level, but might be higher ranked in their program, and since everyone has $18 million or so to spend, they can get a greater chunk?
A: A lot of that has to play out. It’s too early to tell. The slow and steady approach, I really believe, will win the day. If everybody has the same number and maybe the 20th person on your roster becomes the fourth or fifth on another roster, then I think it comes down to the individual person. What are they looking for? Are they looking for that, or are they looking for a program like Ohio State, which has nine national championships, the biggest fan base in college football, the city of Columbus to market itself to? We have the biggest sponsorship portfolio in college athletics. We have 103,000 people on gamedays. We sell the most merchandise. You could go down the list of metrics that are going to be difference makers for that young man that other locales don’t have. If everybody was playing equal in the past, what were the differentiating points for Ohio State? Those things are going to remain. Those things have not gone away. History, legacy, fan base, brand power, all of those things.
Joey Kaufman covers Ohio State football for The Columbus Dispatch. Email him at jkaufman@dispatch.com and follow along on Bluesky, Instagram and X for more.
Ohio State football beat writer Bill Rabinowitz can be reached at brabinowitz@dispatch.com or on Bluesky at billrabinowitz@bsky.social.
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