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.
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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.
