As he stood on a makeshift stage on the Covelli Center floor for an introductory news conference on Wednesday afternoon, Ross Bjork gestured toward a spectator.

Bjork, the Texas A&M athletic director who was hired this week to lead Ohio State’s athletic department beginning this summer, raised his left arm to point in the direction of Ryan Day, the Buckeyes’ football coach who was seated in a row of folding chairs.

“This guy right here,” Bjork said, “he’s going to get it done, and it’s going to be a lot of fun when we win those championships.”

The line drew applause from the small crowd that included members of the university’s board of trustees, coaches and staffers among the attendees.

In his first public appearance as the next athletic director at Ohio State, Bjork was eager to throw his support behind Day.

Over five seasons at the helm of the Buckeyes, Day has gone 53-8 overall, three times leading them to the College Football Playoff and putting them on the cusp of a national championship.

But only one of those appearances has come in the last three seasons, a stretch that has coincided with consecutive losses to archrival Michigan, the longest skid by Ohio State in The Game in a quarter century, raising the pressure from a fervent fan base.

It’s been almost a decade since the Buckeyes captured the first national title of the playoff era, and the last time they finished atop the Big Ten was in 2020.

Bjork described himself as a “football guy.” In the early 1990s, he was a fullback at Emporia State, a Division II program in Kansas, and has spent the last 12 years running athletic departments in the Southeastern Conference, a league in which the sport reigns king. Before arriving at Texas A&M in 2019, he had been at Mississippi.

During the final stage of the interview process on Monday, Bjork spent an hour with Day, a meeting that seemed to leave him encouraged about the direction of the program.

“I was really impressed when we sat down,” Bjork said.

It was the official introduction for the newly acquainted colleagues, who Bjork said had previously known each other largely through mutual friends within the college athletics industry.

“We had great conversation,” Day said. “A lot in common. We both have the same vision.”

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At multiple junctures, Bjork offered praise for Day with his most extensive endorsement coming at the podium.

“He’s a brilliant mind in the game of football,” Bjork said, “a high-level leader, knows what championship football looks like and knows how to put all those pieces together. We get it. The Game matters. He and I talked about that.

“The best thing that I can do is lock arms with him, figure out if are there any barriers, figure out key decisions. He’s the coach. He’s the strategist. He has to build the roster. It’s my job to say, ‘What are the infrastructure pieces? What are the culture pieces I can help you with?’ And then let him go to work. By all accounts, those things are all coming together.”

As one of the wealthiest athletic departments in the nation, Ohio State has committed significant resources to football, especially staffing.

Day was one of only five coaches at public universities last season earning $10 million or more, and the salary pool for assistant coaches has led the nation.

Financing a larger investment in facilities might be next on the horizon.

Gene Smith, the Buckeyes’ current athletic director, said last year that they have surveyed expansion and renovation of the Woody Hayes Athletic Center, which has housed the football facility since 1987.

The building includes an indoor practice field, as well as offices and meetings rooms. A renovation of the east wing in 2019 added a players’ lounge and revamped kitchen and dining room.

During the interview process, Bjork said the state of the facility was discussed, though not as an urgent matter.

“It was a general conversation,” he said, “that it’s on the radar.”

He held off on giving further thoughts about the WHAC, pointing out he was still trying to familiarize himself with the campus, acclimation that should pick up in March when he begins a transition period.

Bjork will spend his first four months at Ohio State as a senior advisor, an overlap period before taking over for the retiring Smith in July.

“I don’t even know where my office is, let alone the football building,” Bjork said. “Every stop, I do a full tour. And here it’ll probably take 10 days to look at every facility. I want to look at every bathroom, every locker room, every office, every weight room. I want to look at everything so I have a full understanding so when somebody comes to met and says, ‘We need to change this,’ I can say, ‘I saw that, are you sure?’ Or, ‘I think you’re right, here’s a way to do it.’”

In a period in which the relaxing of transfer rules has increased movement among players throughout college football, Bjork referred to management of the roster as “really, really improvement.”

The Buckeyes have made several high-profile additions out of the transfer portal this offseason, including adding Kansas State quarterback Will Howard and Mississippi running back Quinshon Judkins.

“You got to make adjustments,” Bjork said, “and he’s doing that.”

Joey Kaufman covers Ohio State football for The Columbus Dispatch and can be reached at jkaufman@dispatch.com.

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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Ross Bjork, new Ohio State athletic director, praises Ryan Day