Ross Bjork, athletic director of Ohio State University, and President Carter plan business plan for sports
Ohio State athletic director Ross Bjork and President Ted Carter see new frontiers in the NCAA, Big 10 and NIL, with Ohio State playing a major role in the future
The Ohio State University Board of Trustees’ newest committee will focus on what President Ted Carter calls “the front porch of the university”: athletics.
The committee met for the first time Wednesday to coordinate decision-making between the Ohio State athletic department and the trustees.
“No more than 30 minutes can pass without something changing in our landscape,” said sports director Ross Bjork during the meeting.
Bjork outlined some of these changes during the committee’s 20-minute public meeting.
Some of the most consequential changes will come from the House-NCAA settlement of an antitrust lawsuit filed against the NCAA by former Arizona State swimmer Grant House in 2020. The lawsuit challenges the NCAA’s name, image and likeness rules. The settlement, approved by the NCAA in May, consolidates three antitrust cases brought by student-athletes.
In short, the settlement allows schools to pay their athletes directly, an extraordinary shift for an association and member schools and conferences that had fought the idea for years and tens of millions of dollars in legal and lobbying costs, as USA Today previously reported. Bjork called the settlement the first “legal roadmap” that college sports must follow over the next decade.
The bill provides $2.8 billion in back pay to former NCAA athletes over 10 years and allows colleges to opt for revenue sharing going forward, Bjork said. Colleges can opt for a share of up to 22 percent of their average athletic revenue, which amounts to more than $25 million a year, he said.
A significant portion of these back payments will go to football and men’s basketball, Bjork said. He hopes the agreement will present a more concrete plan by the first quarter of 2025.
In addition to revenue sharing, the agreement also eliminates NCAA scholarship limits per sport and establishes roster limits per sport. All of these agreements will go into effect next year.
Bjork said Ohio State will likely lose about 150 student-athletes due to roster limitations.
It also gives conferences and the NCAA the ability to regulate NIL, from an “open market” to third-party structures, Bjork said.
Bjork also spoke about Ohio State’s goal of retaining all 36 of its Division I teams.
“There is a lot to do, a lot is on the table,” he said.
Carter told The Dispatch in an interview last week that the sport has been self-sustaining for more than a decade and that the university does not plan to use taxpayer money or student fees to support all teams in the future.
“We’re still going to have scholarships and programs,” Carter said. “Some of these sports will maybe look and act more like club sports, but they’ll still compete at the Division I level and they’ll still travel and compete.”
As college sports continue to change and adapt, Bjork wants Ohio State to be the best in its class and a leader in today’s world.
Sheridan Hendrix is a higher education reporter for The Columbus Dispatch. Sign up for her Mobile Newsroom newsletter here and for Extra Credit, her education newsletter, here..
@sheridan120
