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“THERE’S GOOD BONES IN THERE.” Ross Bjork told The Columbus Dispatch this week that Ohio State is still planning to renovate the Woody Hayes Athletic Center — hopefully sooner rather than later.
Facilities used to be all the rage. College football’s top programs engaged in an arms race to boast the best dining room, film room, team room and weight room. Then came the NIL era, followed by the current revenue-sharing era, and facilities shifted to the back burner. But that doesn’t mean state-of-the-art buildings are no longer important for current and future coaches and players.
Bjork said as much to The Dispatch, emphasizing the importance of Ohio State raising public awareness and building momentum as the Buckeyes prepare to update their nearly 40-year-old football facility.
“We have advanced that project to the next round from a planning and fundraising standpoint. Sometime this spring, we hope to create more visibility around how much money has been raised, the timeline and the total cost of the building. Show some images, things like that,” Bjork said. “We want to create some public awareness, public momentum around the Woody Hayes complex. We would also couple that with the ice rink, making sure we get the ice rink in the same stage, if you will. Here's the funding outline, here's the timeline, here's where it could go, here's what it looks like. And then we have some other projects that we want to create visibility around that we want to get off the ground.”
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For now, Bjork hasn’t shared how much Ohio State has raised for the renovation. However, he estimates it will cost the Buckeyes around $100 million to complete the project.
The goal, Bjork said, is to create a more efficient building within the current footprint.
“What we're looking at is basically you would renovate all the existing spaces inside the current footprint,” Bjork said. “From all the offices and film breakout rooms, to the locker room, to the training room. We would move the equipment room to the back of the building, so it would actually have a loading dock. Right now, it's in the center of the building, so when you have deliveries, you're going down hallways and you might have a meeting going on. Just creating more of an efficient building inside the footprint. And then there'd be new spaces built, new weight room, new offices for the coaches, and really kind of a new entrance, a new lobby. But the rest of the building would be basically gut-renovated.
“There's good bones in there, there's good space, we just need to organize it better, expand it, modernize it, and it'll be the best building in the country. Now buildings are going to be built on efficiency. How does a player get from this point to that point in a quick amount of time? How do they train? How do they recover? How are they taught the game? Film rooms. Right now, we can't fit the entire organization in the team meeting room. People are literally standing in the hallway. Things like that are just not functional in this modern era.”
Ohio State has invested heavily in keeping up with the changing economics of college athletics. Bjork knows the next step is to ensure the team’s facilities meet the same standard. In a sport where marginal gains matter, efficiency, functionality and modernization aren’t luxuries — they’re necessities. By maintaining a top-tier building, the Buckeyes stay at the forefront of the sport.
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