On Oct. 22, Ohio State’s athletic director Ross Bjork had a sit-down interview for a Q&A in his office with The Lantern’s sports editors Reilly Cahill and Ally Wolfe.

Editor’s note:

 

Here are Bjork’s answers to questions from The Lantern on the current state of Ohio State’s football team, expectations for the men’s and women’s basketball teams this season and his stance on maintaining 36 varsity sports.?

Some answers were edited for clarity.?

 

Q: How prevalent has the leadership been from what you’ve seen from the team, especially after the week two loss to Texas?

A: What I love about working with coach [Ryan] Day is he’s so intentional about leadership, about culture, about team camaraderie, about “let’s make sure that we have good young men in our program that have a solid base and a solid foundation of character,” because if you have that, of course you have to be a great player to play at Ohio State, but we don’t have to take shortcuts on the other pieces of it, character [and] academics. We’ve had the best team GPA the last six semesters in a row, we’ve had a 1000 APR score two years in a row, those other things matter in terms of how you show up on the field.?

If you’re doing all the things off the field at the right way and the right level, you’re going to perform on the field. So to me, it starts with coach Day, leadership, culture, character of the team and then that bleeds into the players.?

What I really find fascinating is, I’ll go to a practice, not every day, but on occasion, and then I’ll stay after they wrap up, and it’s amazing how many players just stay in the building, and some of them don’t even take their uniform off, they’re sitting on the bench, they’re laying on the field stretching. They just want to be around each other, and I think when that happens, there’s a unique chemistry that gets built. And then in this era, where we added 51 new players to this team, now they were all here in the spring, so they had a chance to work together, but they also haven’t had a chance to play together, and so the gelling of that, the chemistry of that, it does take time, but if you have the right leadership, then that’s going to come together, and they’re going to be on the same page and then the healthy thing is there might be some disagreement, but they can work it out because they’re great teammates and they love each other.?

Those kinds of things are built over time, but without leadership of the players, it’s really hard to have a successful organization, but without leadership from the top, then you’re not going to have all those other pieces and that’s what we have with coach Day.

 

Q: Talking to the leadership specifically on the team, obviously Julian’s Sayin’s a huge part of that leadership aspect. With him out indefinitely, how do you think the team will rally whether the new starter is Luke Fahey or Tavien St. Clair?

A: It’s unfortunate what happened to Julian, he’s a great young man, great family, we’re going to support him as he recovers. Coach [Day] has done a great job of just explaining everything. And so to your point about the indefinite part, now we have to rally.

I think that’s where you’re going to see true leadership show up and so what I saw the last couple days in the building is that guys are hungry, they’re hungry to prove themselves and prove to everybody else that, “hey look we are a team, yes we lost a great quarterback,” but now how does the team respond and so I think you’ll see a little bit of a chip on our shoulder of saying you know what we’re going to go out and we’re going to prove ourselves. And that’s the exciting thing about sports, is you face adversity, you have to kind of dust yourself off, you have to get up off the mat and then you can climb back out and perform.?

We have a great team, full of talent, full of great young men, that I think we’re just going to see rally. Then the last five games, you just let it loose and see what happens, and hopefully get ready for the playoffs.

 

Q: Transitioning over to men’s basketball. They’re coming off their first NCAA tournament period since 2022, bringing in a lot of new faces player-wise, bringing back some former players on the coaching staff. What is the expectation heading into this season?

A: We have high expectations here. There’s banners that hang in the Schottenstein Center that speak to Ohio State basketball excellence. There was a great run here under [former head coach] Thad Matta, we want to get back to that stretch where we’re being talked about on the national scene, we’re in the conversation, we’re making great runs in the tournament. So the minimum expectation is you make the tournament, but you’ve got to have the pieces to make a long run.

I really see depth, I see length, athleticism. Jake [Diebler] and the staff have done a great job of building this roster and really again adapting to the modern era of what we’re dealing with, so I’m excited about our team. I think I think the fans are going to be excited to watch the blend of really, really good experienced players that we did get in the transfer portal, key retention pieces, like [John Mobley Jr.] and Amare [Bynum], and then a dynamic freshman like Anthony Thompson and then L.J. [Smith], so I think our fans are going to be excited.?

I think the team is going to just continue to get better and be what’s expected here, and that is to be a team that makes a long run. That’s what Ohio State history has said, and that’s what Jake embraces. That’s what we embrace. So I think it’ll be a fun year.?

Now what we need, is we need the Schottenstein Center to be a dynamic home court. So if we can just get a couple thousand students a game, that place can be a fun place to be, then that feeds the fans to be more energetic. So we’ve got a few things that we’re working on to liven up the atmosphere, and we have a new video board, new LED boards, a new court last year. There’ll be more spotlight lighting that’ll be on the court that’ll make it just kind of a unique atmosphere. We want basketball to be what it should be here at Ohio State, and that’s at the top.

 

Q: Focusing on the women’s team, they’ve hosted the NCAA regional the last three years, but haven’t made it to the Sweet 16 any of those three. What’s your confidence level, not only with Coach McGuff, but the direction of the program in general?

A: We’re a Sweet 16 team every year. That’s been the standard, that’s been the expectation. We haven’t gotten there, to your point. So we’ve hosted those games, and to me, it’s been kind of a mental block. We’ve seen it, we’ve been there, we’re right there at the edge, and then at the end.?

I think that’s what coach has worked on in the offseason: is “how do we gel as a team? How do we make sure we’re built for a long run? We do so well in the regular season, let’s make sure we’re peaking, at the right time.”

We’ve got Jaloni [Cambridge], and with her at the helm, sky’s the limit. And then we’ve added some other great players as well, where we have length and size. And Elsa [Lemmil?]’s back, and she’s healthy this year, last year, she played banged up most of the year. So hopefully, with a healthy team, a deeper team, Jaloni’s right there, Kennedy [Cambridge]’s going to be a great asset as well. I think this year we can make a longer run and I know the ladies are excited about that.

 

Q: You’ve been really adamant during your time here of keeping all 36 sports, with all the changes in the new landscape in college athletics, is that still the plan??

A: We’ve talked about this since I’ve been here. We’ve talked about it pretty much every year, back to the three different versions of being an athletic director here. It’s something that we think about every single day to make sure that we have the same experience for every athlete, whether they’re on the golf team or the football team, it doesn’t really matter. It needs to be the same experience.?

We’ve been able to do that, and that’s important that we maintain that. It is a point of pride that Ohio State is a comprehensive program, and so the goal every single day is to support all 36 sports. We don’t have any runway for any other model at this point in time, but we also know that unless we have some cost certainty, that this is a fluid situation every single year.?

We tell our coaches, we’re honest with our coaches that look right now we’re in good shape, we’re in good shape financially, we’ve had a surplus the last two years. We can manage the current elements, but if things keep evolving, if costs keep going up without any sort of certainty, it just gets harder to manage.

But maintaining 36 sports will be there, but there’s things that we can do. We can probably schedule better, where we can save dollars. We can probably have better matchups. There’s certain things that we always look at to be more efficient. But the main thing of academic support, health and safety, nutritional support, where they practice, where they train, we want all of those to be at the highest level. The economics of some other buckets are going to continue to evolve as this continues to shift the landscape.?

But the Board of Trustees, president Bellamkonda, we are all aligned that 36 sports is what Ohio State stands for. Again, the people behind me kind of speak to that. That’s the goal every single day. But we also have to monitor the landscape across the country within the Big Ten, and then what that means locally.