Man, you won’t believe what I just went down a rabbit hole on – figuring out how much the Ohio State athletic director makes. It’s wild!
First, I started by just poking around on Google, you know, the usual. I typed in “Ohio State athletic director salary” and got a bunch of news articles and some official-looking university pages. I figured those were a good place to start.
- I scanned through a couple of articles, trying to get a general idea. Some of them mentioned Gene Smith, the previous athletic director, and others were already talking about the new guy, Ross Bjork. It seemed like there was a lot of transition stuff going on.
- Diving into the Ohio State’s official website, I found some financial reports, but man, those things are dense! I’m not an accountant, so I skipped over a lot of the jargon. I was just looking for that one juicy number: the salary.
- I also looked for any interviews or press releases where they might have talked about the new athletic director’s contract. Sometimes, those have more straightforward info.
After spending a good chunk of time reading and clicking, I finally pieced it together. I saw that the old guy, Gene Smith, was making some serious bank. I found out he got a base salary around $1.58 million in 2023, but with bonuses and stuff, he took home over $2 million that year. Crazy, right?
Then, it got even more interesting. They hired this new athletic director, Ross Bjork, from Texas A&M. It looked like Ohio State really wanted him because they offered him a starting salary of $2 million, which is way more than the old athletic director’s base salary. Plus, he gets all sorts of other perks, like a car allowance, a country club membership, and even money for his family’s travel. They really rolled out the red carpet for him!
So, after all that digging, I learned that being the athletic director at a big school like Ohio State is a pretty sweet gig. You make a ton of money, and you get all these fancy benefits. It’s definitely a high-pressure job, but the paycheck makes it worth it, I guess.
It was a fun little investigation, though. I always like learning about this kind of behind-the-scenes stuff. It makes you appreciate all the work that goes into running a huge college sports program.
