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 changing college sports landscape and his experience working with president Ravi Bellamkonda.?

Some answers were edited for clarity.?

 

Q: You’ve been here for over two years now. A lot in college sports has changed over that time. Just how has that experience gone for you leading Ohio State athletics through a pretty notable time period in college sports.

A: I almost feel like I’m on the maybe third or fourth version of being the athletic director here at Ohio State, and that’s really phenomenal to say that, given what you said, I have been here just two and a half years, calendar year wise. But there’s so many rapid changes happening in our space right now. The industry is changing really by the minute and we may look up when this interview’s done, and there might be something that pops.?

I think it’s been really fascinating and really, really inspiring to me that we’re at a place who is on the leading edge of all these changes. We have a phrase here that we want to be best in class and we want to be leaders in the industry in the evolving landscape of college athletics, and that speaks to what Ohio State is all about.?

One of the reasons why I came here was to be at the top of the game, if you will, in college sports. But also, given all the changes that we all knew were happening in real time, knew that would happen in the future, Ohio State’s a place that’s going to embrace it. We’re going to be at the top of the game, we’re going to be on the right side of the financial equation, the right side of the enterprise equation and we’re going to have success in everything that we do, whether it’s academically, whether it’s the athletic piece or whether it’s the business pieces. We have the wherewithal to do that.

I wish I could tell you exactly the clarity that we’re going to have in six months or a year from now, because things are changing. But it’s been an awesome experience, and the people, and everything that we do here is just something that just inspires me every single day.

 

Q: The Protect College Sports Act was passed by the Senate a couple weeks ago. The Big Ten put out a statement in support of it. What kind of benefit do you think that would have toward college sports, if it does end up taking effect.

A: Back to what we talked about at the very beginning, clarity of the model in what we do in college athletics, that’s what we’re all yearning for: is give us stability, give us clarity, give us a framework of what modern-day college athletics should look like. Give us the definition of a modern-day student-athlete.?

There are many things in the bill that provide that. [It] provides a really, really firm revenue sharing cap. It eliminates the ability for us to do the third-party NIL agreements that we’re all facilitating now that we’re allowed to do right now, but it’s really, really complicated, and we want to be true to our athletes by giving them guaranteed revenue in the revenue share bucket.?

Provide some agent protections for the athletes. It provides five years of eligibility. It provides a one-time transfer exception where you can transfer once, but if you transfer twice, you have to sit out a year. There are a lot of things in there, and then there’s some things in there that we believe are unnecessary, but we can live with. Whether it’s conference alignment, whether it’s television negotiations, things like that, but the clarity of the model around the student-athlete support is the most important thing.?

We need cost certainty, we need framework. People talk about guardrails, that’s not the right word. We need framework around the model in college athletics, so the bill provides that. We hope it goes through. It’s got a long road to go in the House side of things in Congress; that’ll start in early November after the election.?

We’ll monitor, we’ll stay in touch and we’re supporting it, we hope it goes through. But if it doesn’t go through, then we have to have alternative plans. And so those things are all being worked on, both at the local level, but also the Big Ten level. So we’re knee-deep in those conversations as well. So back to what I said, this is kind of the third iteration of being an AD here, there might be a fourth iteration come December [or] January that we’ll adapt to.

 

Q: Is there anything about the Protect College Sports Act that you’re a little bit wary of?

A: I think when anytime these things come up, what we’ve learned because we’ve been working on sort of federal legislation for the last six years is if you try to do a skinny bill, is what was proposed earlier, there’s always going to be stuff that gets added onto it, and it’s part of a negotiation, and it’s Republican negotiating with Democrats and vice versa.?

There are some things that are probably unnecessary, but again, things that we can live with, and it’s mainly around pooling and broadcasting rights. We don’t think in the Big Ten we would ever get to a position where we need to do that.?

It also talks about limiting conference expansion. Again, we’re not interested in that in the Big Ten, but it has a provision in there to protect against that. So there’s probably a few things like that, we can live with it because the other things are way more powerful in terms of clarity.??

That’s what’ll be interesting, I think your point is well taken, that when it does get to the House side of things, there’s going to be negotiation, and what stays in and what comes out, that’ll be a fascinating process to follow here in the next 30 to 60 days.

 

Q: There’s talks of the College Football Playoff expanding to 24 teams. What are your thoughts on the College Football Playoff expansion?

A: We went from four to 12 teams, in obviously the 2024 season, the Buckeyes won and that was a great, great first year. I was [like] how do I top this in my first year, but just loved being around that team and what they stood for and really the journey of how to get there.?

So 12-team playoff was something that was needed to expand and now, really given the landscape shifts that we’re talking about, the parity, the revenue share, the transfer portal era, the roster limit to 105 players, the conference championship games were really waning in terms of meaning and impact, we played against Indiana and we were [No. 1] going in, they were [No. 2], and then we lost, they won, and we went to two, and they went to one, so did it really impact seedings? Not really.?

There was a lot of dynamics where the game is evolving, and so 24-team playoff is going to happen for the 2027 season. There will be more hosting of home games on campuses. So if you’re seeded one through eight, you’re going to host a second-round game. If you’re seeded nine through 16, you’re going to host a first-round game, so more campus games.

I think the regular season is actually going to be more impactful. We protect games like playing Texas this year. Next year, we’re playing Alabama, if it stayed to a 12-team playoff, we could look at it and say there’s no reason to play those games because if you lose like we did this year against Texas, your margin for error just decreases. In an expanded playoff, it keeps those games alive.?

We’ve supported it, we think it’s the right thing to do for the evolution of the game, we think there’s more parity. But here’s the thing about Buckeyes: we have to maintain our place at the highest standard of the game, and so that takes resources, that takes the Woody Hayes project, all of the things that we’re doing, we’re not just maintaining, right? Because then you fall behind. We are excelling. But the playoff is, I think, fuel to get us to a place where we can continue to invest and make sure that we keep the rightful place, at the top of the game of college football.

 

Q: Ravi Bellamkonda became president last spring, how has that relationship been working with him??

A: I think the best decision that our Board of Trustees made was immediately pointing to Ravi Bellamkonda and naming him president immediately and not going through an interim step or not doing an elongated search. Let’s have clarity. There is so much momentum happening, and Ravi was a big part of that, being the provost and so, to me, that was the best decision, let’s not have any uncertainty, right? Uncertainty in higher education right now is not a good thing, right? Because there’s so many moving parts. We’re talking about the athletic piece, but we could get into the whole element that’s happening in higher education, having clarity, having certainty, having stable leadership.?

Ravi was hired in January of 2025, we won the national championship, and he thought this was easy. So he and I had a great relationship already.?

We definitely see things alike. We definitely have this spirit of growing Buckeye Nation and being really, really creative and energetic around what it means to be a Buckeye. So I love his attitude.?

He’s a quick study around the governance and the regulatory pieces around college sports. In fact, I really believe momentum was created around the Protect College Sports Act on the Senate side because president Bellamkonda and three other presidents from the Big Ten went to Washington, D.C. and they went through a whole process of what it would mean to have this clarity.?

He’s leaned in, he’s energetic. I love his vision. I love his charisma. He’s just a great person to be around. He’s infectious, the athletes love him, our coaches love him. So it’s been an unbelievable transition, and the fact that he is the president did not allow any uncertainty to creep in, and that allowed us to keep going. And so it’s been a great six months, I guess, for him, and just diving into the athletic piece specifically.