Latest news with #RossBjork
USA Today
7 days ago
- Business
- USA Today
Ohio State men's athletic program take home the 2024-25 Capital One Cup
For the first time since the award was established for the 2010-2011 athletics season, the Ohio State men's athletics programs have won the Capital One Cup, handed out annually to the best men's and women's Division I athletic programs. Ohio State won with a total score of 113.5 points, well ahead of second-place Penn State, which captured 82 points. Ohio State took home the title because of several top-ten finishes this past year, led by the first-place finish of the College Football Playoff-winning football team. Other top ten finishes include soccer (3rd), wrestling (5th), fencing (6th), tennis (6th), gymnastics (7th), and lacrosse (9th). 'I want to thank Capital One for its stewardship of this important program that ultimately honors student-athletes, coaches and the support staffs who take great pride in what they do,' Ross Bjork, Senior Vice President and Wolfe Foundation-Eugene Smith Endowed Athletics Director, said in a statement. 'We had a highly successful and memorable year on the field in 2024-25, a testament to the hard work, dedication and commitment to excellence that our student-athletes display. 'I continue to be inspired on a daily basis by the people who uphold and enhance Ohio State's long-standing tradition of excellence in everything that we do.' Finishing behind Ohio State and Penn State, and rounding out the top ten for the 2024-25 year include Florida (81 points), Texas (66), Cornell (64), Vermont (63), Notre Dame (62), LSU (60), North Dakota State (60), and Arkansas (58). 'We are happy to celebrate the Ohio State University men's athletics program for a fantastic year of competition, defined by dedication and resiliency," said Stephanie Mosley, Senior Director of Brand Sponsorships and Experiential Marketing at Capital One said in a statement. "We are proud to continue our Capital One Cup program, which has awarded over $5 million in student athlete scholarship fund donations.' The women's athletic program finished 38th in the Capital One Cup standings. And ... as a reminder, the entire Ohio State athletic department finished 8th in the Learfield Directors' Cup standings for this year. Contact/Follow us @BuckeyesWire on X (formerly Twitter) and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Ohio State news, notes and opinion. Follow Phil Harrison on X.
USA Today
27-06-2025
- Business
- USA Today
Big Ten and PayPal announce partnership for direct revenue share payments
We all know and love PayPal, and now it appears as though the popular payment platform has entered into an agreement with the Big Ten to be the official payment system for direct revenue-share payments to athletes. This is on the heels of the House Settlement that not only provides the distribution of a settlement to past athletes, but also paves the way for direct revenue share payments to athletes going forward. For Ohio State's part, Athletic Director Ross Bjork announced that the $20.5 million allotted for payments will fund all scholarships, then split between four sports; football, men's and women's basketball, and women's volleyball. It's not just the Big Ten that announced the arrangement with PayPal, but the Big 12 as well. 'We're proud to help lead this transformation in college athletics by making it easier and faster for student-athletes to receive funds and continue to bring trusted and innovative commerce solutions to the heart of campus life,' said Alex Chriss, President and CEO, PayPal in a statement. 'From receiving institutional payments to making everyday purchases, we're helping student-athletes, families, and schools engage in new ways that are modern, secure, and built for the future.' 'We look forward to partnering with PayPal to ensure a secure, rapid and reliable way for student-athletes to receive institutional payments as we welcome in this new era in college athletics,' said Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti, also in a statement. I still can't believe we are at this point in college athletics, but time to embrace it and move forward. It's a good thing that these kids are getting what they've deserved for a long, long time. Contact/Follow us @BuckeyesWire on X (formerly Twitter) and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Ohio State news, notes and opinion. Follow Phil Harrison on X.
USA Today
23-06-2025
- Business
- USA Today
The reason Ohio State chose women's volleyball as one of four sports for revenue sharing
The new House Settlement is going to be a game changer in how college athletics is managed and consumed. Name, Image and Likeness will still be a thing, but now that universities can pay athletes directly, there are some decisions to be made. What sports make up the bulk of the direct payments (roughly $20.5 Million) by each university, how do they allocate those funds, and can all of the current sports survive? Those are the same questions Ohio State Athletic Director Ross Bjork has had to wrestle with as well, and he met with the media last week to discuss the strawman plan that OSU will be operating under the new parameters. Of course, the bulk of the money left over after all of the scholarships are funded will go to football, and to no one's surprise either, some of that money will go to men's and women's basketball -- two other revenue generating sports -- but there's one other sport Ohio State decided to fund through direct payments, and that one is a little bit of a surprise to some when the roughly $18 Million allocated after funding scholarships is available to distribute. To be equitable, you had a feeling (and rightfully so) that another women's sport would be in the mix, but no, it's not softball, an extremely fast-growing sport that other colleges are sure to pour money into, but rather, women's volleyball. That might be a head scratcher for many, but according to Bjork, there is reasoning behind including women's volleyball into the model. 'We think, with the attention that our program can receive, we think the Columbus market, volleyball is a booming sport,' Bjork said. 'The Covelli Center is an amazing atmosphere, so we thought volleyball could be a sport that could drive more revenue, but also the attention that it gets within the Big Ten.' It's true that volleyball is huge in the Big Ten. Teams like Penn State and Nebraska have a rabid following, and it's clear the brass at Ohio State believe the same can be true in Columbus. Head coach Jen Flynn Oldenburg is excited to have the women's volleyball team included, saying it'll allow her staff to attract some of the better talent available to come to the banks of the Olentangy and be a part of building and maintaining something. 'To be one of four sets the tone for the conference and our program,' Oldenburg said in a press conference. 'Volleyball is big in the Big Ten, and in order to compete, you have to keep up with the big dogs. By saying we're one of the four at Ohio State to get revenue share, we're going to compete with the big dogs.' As we all know, and have seen across college athletics, though, money to bring in talent can only get you so far. You have to be able to identify the right talent, take it and build a culture, develop it into better players, and get the collection of bodies to work together to achieve a goal as a cohesive team. It'll be interesting to see where the Ohio State women's volleyball team goes from here. It's a good thing to be included in the revenue sharing, but it does put a lot of pressure on the program and staff to produce results. The clock is now ticking and eyes are watching. Contact/Follow us @BuckeyesWire on X (formerly Twitter) and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Ohio State news, notes and opinion. Follow Phil Harrison on X.
Yahoo
22-06-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Texas A&M HC Mike Elko has already proven to be an elite recruiter
When Texas A&M hired Mike Elko as the program's head football coach in November of 2023, the Jimbo Fisher era was chaotic, to say the least, as the Aggies failed to live up to their recruiting success, which included landing what many still consider the greatest recruiting class during the 2022 cycle. Former Texas A&M Athletic Director Ross Bjork, now with Ohio State, initially wanted to hire Kentucky head coach Mark Stoops to succeed Fisher. However, after a bizarre night before Elko was officially hired, which included online pressure from the Aggie fan base, the decision was made. Advertisement Elko's two-year head coaching stint at Duke included a 16-9 record, with nine wins during his first season in North Carolina. After serving as Jimbo Fisher's defensive coordinator from 2018 to 2021, Bjork and the Board of Regents were highly familiar with his elite defensive playcalling and player development. However, Elko faced immediate questions regarding his ability to recruit at a high level, especially in the SEC. But after landing the 10th-ranked 2025 signing class, these worries slowly disappeared and have all but evaporated after last week's and this weekend's immense success in the 2026 recruiting class. After three 2026 commits, including four-star wide receiver Aaron Gregory, shut down their recruitment, showing high confidence in Elko and his staff. With 19 commits after landing five stars Tristian Givens (edge) and Brandon Arrington (cornerback) over the last two days, Texas A&M's No. 2-ranked cycle features four top-100 ranked prospects, including three committing since Tuesday, as four-star running back KJ Edwards was the first domino to drop. As Jaxson Callaway notes, Elko has now beaten out the likes of Tennessee, Texas, and Oregon since early last week. According to several analysts, this is just the start, with several priority prospects set to announce their commitments next month. Advertisement Relationships and a clear understanding of how the Aggies' coaching staff will develop each recruit have been a winning strategy thus far. They will hopefully result in better on-field results for years to come. Contact/Follow us @AggiesWire on X and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Texas A&M news, notes and opinions. Follow Cameron on X: @CameronOhnysty. This article originally appeared on Aggies Wire: Texas A&M footbal HC Mike Elko has proven to be an elite recruiter
New York Times
17-06-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Can the CFP selection committee be fixed … or replaced? Let's dive into the data
Eighteen months from the start of the 2026 College Football Playoff, the event has no format, and the people in charge of putting one together are hitting the reset button on the topic. That's a reset, not quite a restart. Everybody involved seems keen on the idea of expanding the 12-team model that will be used this season, which itself features a tweak on the inaugural 12-team Playoff's seeding structure. Sixteen teams is the most likely number, because bigger is the easiest thing to agree upon. Though it should be noted: Everything is subject to change right now. Advertisement How to pick teams and fill the bracket is the real sticking point of the moment. 'I think what we need to do, from our perspective, is we need to take a step back,' Ohio State athletic director Ross Bjork said during a news conference with media last week in Columbus. 'There's so much work that has to be done. We believe in what we believe in. We're willing to listen, and I think that's a position that we have to take, but playing it out in public and staking claim, what good does that do?' A Big Ten-backed plan to populate the bracket with mostly automatic qualifiers from the power conferences, determined by league standings and play-in games, has been discussed for more than a year, but now there is renewed interest within the SEC in a format heavy on at-large bids. The SEC's recent pivot away from AQs at its annual spring meetings caught some in the Big Ten off guard. 'One week it was 4-4-2-2-1,' Bjork said, referencing the distribution of automatic bids among the Power 4 leagues in the Big Ten's preferred expansion model. 'That had a lot of traction that was out publicly, and then the next week, it was 5+11, but have we accomplished anything yet? No. So let's play it out where it should be played out in these conversations, where the authority lies.' The authority lies with the 10 FBS commissioners and Notre Dame's athletic director, who make up the CFP management committee. More precisely, the power lies with the SEC and Big Ten. Regardless, the larger group will gather in Asheville, N.C., this week for its fourth in-person meeting since the end of last season to talk about the not-so-distant future of the College Football Playoff. The focus will be on the selection process, which everybody seems to take issue with in some form or another, while politely acknowledging that selection committee members are making a good-faith effort to do a difficult job the best they can. Advertisement 'I think anything we can do to make the postseason more objective and less subjective is going to be better,' Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin said at SEC meetings in Destin, Fla. 'Whether you could do that some other way than automatics? I don't know, but I think that's the goal.' Not surprisingly, every conference commissioner looked at the selection committee rankings last year and thought their league's teams should be ranked higher. In the SEC in particular, leaders have asked questions about whether the committee is properly weighing strength of schedule. 'We learned something the first time through (the 12-team playoff),' SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said. 'And that raises the need for deeper analysis and understanding. If we're gonna just incentivize wins, playing fewer winning teams can get you to more wins. I don't think that's great for football.' So how to 'fix' the selection process? The possibilities include: The SEC concluded its meetings by handing out a seven-page document, filled with charts and graphs to visualize various popular advanced metrics used to evaluate and rank college football teams. The conclusion, according to the SEC, was that the depth of quality in the conference has been unmatched over the past decade: In general, SEC teams were facing the toughest competition. Among the handful of rating systems cited was SP+, a forward-looking measurement that evaluates teams on a play-by-play basis, sprinkling in a program's recent history and recruiting rankings. The irony of the SEC using average SP+ rating over the last 10 years to indirectly make the argument that its teams were given short shrift by the selection committee last season is that the rating's creator disagrees with the conference's premise. 'It was definitely conflicting hearing the SEC refer to me as the one of the reasons why it should get more Playoff teams when I say the opposite,' said Bill Connelly, who created SP+ 17 years ago and started working for ESPN in 2019. Advertisement Connelly has a derivative of SP+ that he says more accurately equates to selecting Playoff teams. His resume ranking includes raw results of games — i.e., wins and losses — which SP+ does not. While the final SP+ ratings of 2024 placed Mississippi at No. 2 and Alabama at No. 4 — neither made the CFP field — the SP+ resume rankings on selection Sunday were not quite so bullish. Alabama was ninth, good enough to squeeze into the field over SMU using just those numbers; the committee chose the Mustangs over the Crimson Tide after SMU lost the ACC Championship Game to Clemson on a last-second field goal. But even using the resume ratings, Ole Miss would have missed the 12-team field at No. 11, squeezed out by conference champions Clemson and Arizona State of the Big 12. CFP selection committee members do not lack statistics to help them evaluate teams. The 13 committee members receive a large binder packed with information on each FBS team, provided by SportSource Analytics. Offensive numbers. Defensive numbers. Strength of schedule. It's a lot. Maybe too much? Connelly, like many media members, has taken part in the annual mock selection sessions run by the CFP to provide a window into its process. He said the side-by-side comparisons of teams in the CFP binders, with green shading showing which team has the advantage in each category and red shading highlighting deficiencies, is probably not the best use of visualization. Not all components of performance are created equal. 'It can be a useful exercise, but it's definitely worse than using good advanced stats,' Connelly said. Consolidation could help. But Connelly said even he wouldn't recommend using just one rating system but rather a combination of several. Brian Fremeau, whose FEI rating system has been ranking college football teams since 2006, echoed Connelly's sentiment. Even he doesn't take his own numbers as the last word. Advertisement 'There's definitely an assortment of (rating systems) that I'd bring to the table, not a single one,' said Fremeau, whose ratings use possession-level data to evaluate teams. 'I believe there's a single data source that the committee uses, and I don't say this as distrust of them or that kind of source, but I actually think a variety of sources would be just a better approach. Because one source, and I'll say this about my own stuff, doesn't tell the whole story.' The NCAA men's college basketball committee has leaned into a more metrics-based approach in recent years, with the NET rating fueling a quad system to evaluate wins and losses, and committee members regularly citing the popular efficiency ratings. Connelly cautioned that this type of a system wouldn't translate well to football, where teams play only 12 regular-season games, compared to 30-something in basketball. Not enough data points. The CFP's staff has been evaluating the data provided to the selection committee and expects to present some ideas to the managers this week. Ultimately, though, the commissioners need to decide what they want to emphasize. Once upon a time, the Bowl Championship Series used a compilation of computer ratings and human polls to determine which two teams would play for the national title. The formula underwent near-constant tweaks, eventually to a point where human polls were heavily weighted and the computer ratings acted almost as a tiebreaker. 'The reason why everybody thought the committee was a good idea is because everybody hated the BCS formula,' Connelly said. 'The reason everybody hated the BCS formula is because it could only pick two teams. If you're picking 16 now, or 11 at-large, whatever we end up getting here, that formula, that exact kind of formula approach where you mix subjective and objective, would work fine.' Last year, a simulated BCS formula would have produced a very similar set of rankings to the selection committee, with the exact same teams ranked in the top 16 and few differences in the order. Here it is, what we've been waiting for — the season-ending simulated #BCS rankings. How will the @CFBPlayoff rankings compare? — (@BCSKnowHow) December 8, 2024 Fremeau said he wouldn't want the CFP selection process to be devoid of human input. The margin between teams is often so slim it requires a well-informed panel to make a decision. 'I wouldn't want people who don't understand the data at all,' he said. 'I don't think they should be bound by: The number said this, and therefore it's the only thing.'
