Ross Bjork addresses previous controversies at past schools with head coaches Hugh Freeze, Jimbo Fisher

As Gene Smith prepares to retire, Ohio State announced the next step in its succession plan by introducing Ross Bjork as the university’s next athletic director. Bjork will officially arrive in Columbus July 1 from Texas A&M after starting his athletic director career at Western Kentucky and Ole Miss.

At his last two stops, Bjork worked through two high-profile coaching situations, inheriting Hugh Freeze at Ole Miss and Jimbo Fisher at Texas A&M. Both went through their share of controversies — although under vastly different circumstances. Freeze dealt with the NCAA due to recruiting violations, while Fisher received a record-setting buyout in his contract extension which came under Bjork’s watch. He ultimately fired the coach this past season.

When asked about the Fisher situation during his introductory press conference on Wednesday, Bjork cited a famous quote from former president Harry Truman to say it’s on him to make the right decision. If it doesn’t go well, it’s ultimately his mistake.

“As we went through whatever it was — at Ole Miss, whatever it’s been, at Texas A&M — you own those decisions,” Bjork said. “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.

“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.”

The Freeze situation at Ole Miss ended up costing him his job. The NCAA accused Ole Miss of multiple recruiting violations under his watch, and Ross Bjork defended Freeze through the process. Then, a personal situation came up in which Freeze allegedly made a call to an escort service from his university-issued cell phone. While he said it was a misdialed number, it ultimately led to Freeze’s resignation.

Bjork addressed the issues on Wednesday, pointing out the university’s compliance reputation to that point. But when the personal issue came up, he said it was handled appropriately.

“We went on facts,” Ross Bjork said. “You can say whatever you want about perception or whatever. But the facts are, our compliance record was really strong in terms of day to day — there was a lot of outside forces. There was a lot of outside forces that infiltrated. But as far as the head coach, we knew exactly what was happening from a compliance standpoint, and then he had a personal failure. And as soon as we found out about it, we took action and said, he cannot be the head coach anymore.

“And that was a very, very direct decision that again, it happened. But how do you deal with it, to me, is more telling than the thing that may have happened behind that.”