Ross Bjork 'fully aware' of Ohio State's rivalry with the 'Team Up North'

The Ohio State Buckeyes introduced Ross Bjork as the school’s new athletic director on Wednesday. In doing so, he took questions from members of the media.

Among the things Bjork was asked was just how aware he was of Michigan, or the team up North, and despite being new to the job, he’s already fully aware of the rivalry.

“Who? Yeah, I gotcha,” Ross Bjork said. “Team up North. Is it the school up North, the team up North…Okay, it’s the team. Yes, fully [aware].”

Bjork pointed out that his knowledge of the rivalry and The Game isn’t anything new, going back to when he first started watching college football and when there were a limited number of games to watch on TV.

“Again, if you grew up a football fan, I grew up in Southwest Kansas and it was typically Oklahoma–Nebraska on TV at the end of the year, and it was Michigan and Ohio State, and it was USC–UCLA. Those are the games that were on TV back then when I grew up.”

Ross Bjork is on his fourth stop as an athletic director, having held the same role at Western Kentucky, Ole Miss, Texas A&M, and now Ohio State. However, he does not have a prior stop with a Big Ten school.

“So, obviously again, if you follow my mom on Facebook, she has more posts about Ohio State than Texas A&M,” Bjork said. “So, of course, I’m aware of The Game.”

Bjork is inheriting a football program that is one of the best in the country. However, the Buckeyes have lost three straight to the Wolverines. That’s something that he’ll look to change in the coming seasons and get back to another long winning streak, like the 15-1 stretch against Michigan that Ohio State had from 2004 to 2019.

Ross Bjork addresses previous controversies at past schools

Ross Bjork faced some controversy while at Texas A&M, particularly as it related to Jimbo Fisher‘s contract.

“As we went through whatever it was — at Ole Miss, whatever it’s been, at Texas A&M — you own those decisions. If they happened on your watch, maybe you were responsible and maybe you weren’t. But at the end of the day, it’s the Harry Truman quote, ‘The buck stops here.’ I’m the AD. If anybody wants to blame anybody, blame me. So I don’t know if I have time to explain the Coach Fisher transition. That takes a long time. But that was something that the institution wanted a commitment for high-level football for a long time,” Bjork said.

“There was a market condition that was going to happen at the end of that football season in ’21. There was going to be an opening, and they wanted security. It was my job to execute it. It was my job to make the right recommendations and the right structure. We did that. That was approved by university leadership, and I’m the one who executes it and I’m the one who’s responsible at the end of the day. And so those are the things we went through and that’s how we made decisions every single time.”