At his inaugural news conference on Wednesday, Ohio State athletic director Cwas formally introduced to the OSU community and took questions from reporters.
In this week’s Press Coverage, which you can watch in the video above, Eleven Warriors’ Dan Hope and Andy Anders talked about Bjork’s and Ohio State president Ted Carter’s remarks on a variety of subjects and how they might affect Ohio State athletics in the future.
During the more than hour-long press conference, a number of topics were covered, but Bjork’s endorsement of Ohio State head coach Ryan Day—whom he referred to as “a brilliant mind in the game of football”—was one of the most noteworthy.
Bjork and Ted Carter, the recently appointed president of Ohio State, expressed their desire to maintain all 36 of OSU’s Division I sports programs in spite of potential modifications to the NCAA model that would involve income sharing with athletes.
“Our facilities are amazing,” Bjork remarked. “Those won’t be left sitting around. But football is king, and we know that. It’s something that other varsity sports must acknowledge.”
Bjork stated that he thinks the high-revenue programs must combine in the near future to establish their own model for college sports, with the Big Ten and the SEC emerging as the two dominant conferences in the constantly shifting landscape of college sports.
“We are the two leaders, our conferences are,” Bjork stated. “… I think we have to shape it and we have to monitor what’s gonna happen within the landscape.”
Bjork also talked about his error at Texas A&M, when he gave Jimbo Fisher a 10-year, $95 million contract extension before firing him two seasons later. He said he will learn from this going ahead.
“Gene (Smith), who was an AD since he was 28, was my age when I was, I believe, 37, and I am now 51. Thus, you create the best choice possible by combining all of those experiences with data, facts, and personality traits, according to Bjork. Finally, it’s the famous Harry Truman saying, ‘The buck stops here.’ Since I’m the AD at the end of the day, please place the blame on me.”
On Eleven Warriors’ YouTube page, you can view the most recent edition of Press Coverage as well as the full video of Bjork’s press conference.
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