Ohio
Ohio State to pay search firm $125K for help in hiring of Ross Bjork as athletic director
Ohio State is set to pay $125,000 to a search firm that assisted with the hiring of Ross Bjork as its next athletic director.
The school retained Collegiate Sports Associates to help find candidates to replace Gene Smith, who is retiring at the end of June after nearly two decades leading the Buckeyes’ athletic department.
According to a copy of an invoice obtained by The Dispatch through a public records request, CSA charged $62,500 for executive search services last October.
An additional professional fee payment of $62,500 from Ohio State is due later this year, a school spokesperson said. Bjork begins his tenure as athletic director on July 1 and will also be a senior advisor for the Buckeyes starting in March.
CSA is based in Raleigh, North Carolina, and was founded in 2010 by Todd Turner, a former athletic director at Connecticut, North Carolina State, Vanderbilt and Washington.
The firm has assisted with the placement of athletic directors at 43 Division I schools, including Georgia, Michigan State and Nebraska, among others, as listed on its website.
More: New Ohio State athletic director Ross Bjork to make $2 million a year as part of contract
It’s also been involved with searches for football coaches, men’s and women’s basketball coaches, other administrators and conference commissioners between the Big South Conference and Southern Conference.
The one-page invoice does not specify the services provided by CSA in Ohio State’s search for an athletic director in recent months, but firms typically aid schools by vetting a pool of candidates and contacting them.
Bjork, who has been the athletic director at Texas A&M since 2019, said last week that CSA reached out to him “right before” the Christmas and holiday season.
CSA worked with a search advisory committee of 14 people that OSU formed last fall in order to “help nominate candidates and provide input and feedback.”
Ted Carter received a list of finalists from the advisory committee when he began his tenure as the university’s president earlier this month, leading to final interviews.
Carter did not identify other finalists last week at a news conference introducing Bjork, though The Dispatch learned that Pat Chun, the Washington State athletic director who worked in Ohio State’s athletic department from 1997-2012, was among them.
More: Join the Ohio State Sports Insider text group with Bill Rabinowitz, Joey Kaufman Adam Jardy
Since becoming an athletic director at Western Kentucky in 2010, Bjork has built a reputation as a strong fundraiser.
In the 51-year-old administrator’s most recent stop, he led one of the largest fundraising campaigns in the history of Texas A&M’s athletic department, a capital campaign that resulted in the construction of several facilities, including an indoor football complex.
Jeff Toole, the athletic department’s chief financial officer, told USA TODAY Sports last week that it has put $270 million in projects.
But Bjork also brings some baggage to Columbus, largely from his role in two high-profile coaching controversies.
He gave former Texas A&M coach Jimbo Fisher a mammoth contract extension in 2021 that resulted in a record $77 million buyout when he was fired two years later.
Previously as the athletic director at Mississippi, he defended former coach Hugh Freeze amid an NCAA investigation that included 21 rules violations. Freeze was later implicated in the infractions case and resigned after it was found he made a phone call to a number tied to an escort service.
And Mississippi settled a lawsuit with the coach who preceded Freeze, Houston Nutt, after Nutt claimed that school officials made false statements regarding him during the NCAA investigation into Freeze’s violations.
“Certain statements made by university employees in January 2016 appear to have contributed to misleading media reports about Coach Nutt,” the university conceded in a statement following the settlement. “To the extent any such statements harmed Coach Nutt’s reputation, the university apologizes, as this was not the intent.”
Joey Kaufman covers Ohio State football for The Columbus Dispatch and can be reached at jkaufman@dispatch.com.
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Cincinnati Reds legend and well-known gambler Pete Rose was possibly more than just curious about Ohio State football’s 2012 season when he texted Buckeyes coach Urban Meyer.
Appearing on “The Triple Option” show with Alabama running back Mark Ingram May 6, Meyer told a story about his relationship with Rose.
After OSU hired Meyer, the Reds asked him to throw out the first pitch at a game. Meyer threw to his son, Nathan, and walked into the dugout, where Rose, MLB’s all-time hit leader, was waiting to greet him.
“I couldn’t get enough talking about ‘Big Red Machine,’ and he wanted to talk college football,” Meyer said on the podcast, explaining how the two spoke for hours and exchanged numbers.
Meyer said that during his first season, Rose texted him early on. He wanted information about the team, like news on Braxton Miller’s shoulder injury.
“I told that to someone, and they said, ‘You’re an idiot. Do you know he’s trying to get information from you for gambling, and you could get in trouble?’ ” Meyer said.
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Though Meyer asserted that he never disclosed much, he started to steer the conversations clear of college football after he realized Rose potentially wanted information for gambling.
The two had another conversation in Las Vegas, where Rose told Meyer he gambled daily after retiring.
Rose was banned from baseball for betting on the sport, something he admitted to in his 2004 autobiography. Rose was reinstated in 2025 and so is considered eligible for the Hall of Fame.
Still baseball’s most prolific hitter (4,256 hits), Rose died in 2024.
GIRARD, Ohio (WKBN) – Over 100 athletes came together for the 5th Annual Trumbull County Special Olympics Invitational Saturday morning in Girard.
These athletes represent five different schools across Trumbull County to compete and spread the message of inclusion, achievement, and sportsmanship.
The Invitational continued its long-standing tradition of honoring the legacy of Randy Suchanek while celebrating the dedication and accomplishments of Special Olympics athletes throughout the region.
“You can hear all the excitement for this, for the athletes that are here today,” said superintendent Bryan O’Hara. “They work hard all year long to participate. We’ve always worked hand in hand with the rotary to get this accomplished is a lot of work behind the scenes.”
Participating schools included Ashtabula, Geauga, Columbiana, Kent-Portage and Trumbull Fairhaven
“There’s a lot of nice participation from girard students as you see behind us, and a lot of participation from the community helping out,” Girard-Liberty Rotary co-president Andy Kish added.
O’Hara added that the event keeps everything in perspective, seeing the athletes compete in the spirit of fun, along with the courage and determination that they show.
Alex Sorrells contributed to this report.
Out of prison, Indiana’s caviar king back on Ohio River to find fishing holes taken
David Cox, of English, Indiana, says once he began setting his nets again after a two-year prison sentence and a three-year ban on commercial fishing, all of his once-secret spots were taken.
Can you eat fish from the Ohio River?
In 1975, future presidential candidate Michael Dukakis, then governor of Massachusetts, bet 20 pounds of New England cod that the Red Sox would defeat the Reds in the World Series. If things went south for Boston, Ohio governor James Rhodes promised to send Dukakis 10 pounds of Lake Erie perch and 10 pounds of Ohio River catfish. The Reds ended up winning and the cod was sent to the Convalescent Home for Children, in Cincinnati.
At the time, people were still eating catfish from the Ohio without too much concern. The fish were also served at several restaurants along the river.
There were warnings in 1977
But two years later, in 1977, The Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission released the results of a study of contaminants found in the tissues of Ohio River fish. They warned anglers in cities such as Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Louisville, Wheeling and Gallipolis that man-made chemicals known as PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, had been discovered in the river fish. Later, high concentrations of mercury were discovered in the fish, too.
Thanks to the Clean Water Act of 1972 and the environmental regulations that followed, the river is now cleaner than it was in the seventies. And it’s still teeming with a variety of fish, including catfish, striped bass, drum and black bass, among other species.
But even though PCBs were banned by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1979, they are still found in fish, since they remain in the sediment in the bottom of the river. “Organisms live in the sediment and fish feed on them,” Rich Cogen, the executive director of the Ohio River Foundation told The Enquirer. Mercury is also a big problem, according to Cogen.
So the question is: Can you eat fish caught in the Ohio River?
The short answer is yes. But it depends on what species you are eating and where along the river you caught it.
There are also very strict limitations on how frequently you should eat them, according to the web site for the Ohio Sport Fish Consumption Advisory, part of the Ohio Department of Health.
In areas of the river between the Belleville Lock, located 204 miles downstream from the river’s origins in Pittsburgh, to the Indiana border, the advisory agency currently recommends consuming Ohio River fish no more than once a month max. That area includes Adams, Brown, Clermont, Gallia, Hamilton, Lawrence, Meigs and Scioto counties.
Here’s where to check
Recommendations change throughout the year, but you can keep up by visiting the Ohio Department of Health’s Sport Fish Consumption Advisory page, which provides updated information on when certain fish, usually bottom feeders such as carp, are deemed too dangerous to eat at all.
Here’s who should take a pass on Ohio River fish
The agency also warns that people who are more likely to have health effects from eating contaminated fish, includingchildren younger than 15 years old, pregnant women and women who are planning to become pregnant to avoid Ohio River fish altogether.
Just because you have to limit the amount of fish you eat, doesn’t mean the river is a bad place for fishing, as long as you limit your intake or do catch-and-release fishing. Just make sure you have a proper fishing license before casting your line.
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