REPORT: New AD Candidate Emerging As Top Target To Replace Gene Smith

Ohio State Buckeyes athletic director Gene Smith is set to retire on June 30 this year, after spending nearly 20 years with the school. During his time with the Buckeyes, Smith helped lead the athletics program to elite-level status, paving the way for national titles, conference championships, and much more throughout his tenure. With that in mind, Buckeyes decision-makers have been hard at work attempting to find a replacement for Smith. And now, according to reports, they may have found their man.

Per ESPN’s Pete Thamel, Texas A&M Aggies athletic director Ross Bjork has emerged as the top candidate to replace Smith, with the process expected to be wrapped up in the coming days.

Bjork has been with the Aggies since 2019, spending the last few years and change attempting to revitalize the Texas A&M football and basketball programs from the ground up. The road there has been a tad rocky for Bjork, who played a huge role in the 10-year extension of head football coach Jimbo Fisher in 2021, which turned out to be a disaster for the program. Fisher would eventually go on to be fired this fall, just two years after the extension, forcing the Aggies to pay a record-setting buyout of more than $75 million to replace him – breaking the previous record held by Gus Malzahn by more than $54 million.

Bjork eventually found Fisher’s replacement in former Duke head coach and Texas A&M defensive coordinator Mike Elko, after a controversial coaching search. Before his time at Texas A&M, Bjork was the athletic director at Ole Miss from 2012-2019, helping the Rebels to navigate and NCAA investigation and their own head coaching controversy with Hugh Freeze. After firing Freeze, Bjork elected to hire Ole Miss legacy Matt Luke, who was fired after three years.