Ohio State is preparing to embark on a $125m renovation of its football headquarters, with athletic director Ross Bjork declaring the time has come to modernise one of college football’s most recognisable facilities despite the financial upheaval that continues to reshape the sport.

The project will deliver the first major renovation of the Woody Hayes Athletic Center in almost two decades and forms part of a wider vision that Bjork believes will eventually make Ohio State the first university to operate a $500m annual athletics budget. Taken together, the announcements underline the financial reality of the modern college landscape, where facilities investment, revenue generation and roster management have become increasingly intertwined in the NIL era.

“We just have to go, it’s time to go,” Bjork was quoted by The Athletic. “We’ve talked about it, but again we’ve been in this triage mode of adapting to NIL, adapting budgets. We’ve added scholarships to keep 36 sports, we just need to go.”

Ohio State has discussed expanding the Woody Hayes Athletic Center since the latter years of former athletic director Gene Smith’s tenure, but successive waves of change across college athletics — including NIL legislation, conference realignment and the arrival of direct revenue sharing with athletes — have repeatedly delayed the project. Now, with a significant proportion of the funding either secured or pledged by donors, the Buckeyes expect to break ground within the next 18 months.

The renovations will dramatically reshape the football programme’s day-to-day working environment. Plans include an expanded locker room and athletic training area, a completely new weight room, upgraded coaches’ offices and position meeting rooms and a redesigned team auditorium capable of accommodating the entire squad — something the current facility cannot do.

“The individual position rooms are in the same place as the coaches’ offices, so if (offensive line coach) Tyler Bowen needs to have a private meeting and somebody wants to watch film, somebody has to leave,” Bjork revealed. “We have people in closets now. We’ve got to get them out of there.”

The construction project will not come without disruption. Ohio State expects the football programme to vacate the facility for more than a year during construction, with temporary operations likely to be split between existing campus buildings, including the Fawcett Center, which currently houses the athletic department’s administrative offices. Bjork, however, said the university intends to ensure the temporary arrangements remain worthy of one of college football’s premier programmes rather than simply finding available office space.

The investment follows another landmark year for the Buckeyes. Powered by their 2024-25 national championship-winning football season, the institution generated a school-record $336m in revenue during the ensuing fiscal year while recording operating expenses of just over $320m. The department continues to support all 36 varsity sports and has repeatedly insisted it has no intention of cutting programmes despite the escalating costs of competing at the highest level. Instead, Bjork believes the university’s commercial potential remains largely untapped.

“It’s going to happen,” he said of a projected $500m annual athletics budget. “It could happen three years from now, two years from now, five years from now, but we will have a $500m athletic budget at some point in time very soon. We have that capability.”

Bjork, who arrived in Columbus in 2024 after athletic director roles at Ole Miss and Texas A&M, has made fundraising and commercial growth central pillars of his strategy. He believes Ohio State’s enormous national following provides opportunities that few universities can match.

“There’s a lot of data that shows we have 12 million fans,” Bjork said. “If one percent of those people would join Buckeye Club, that’s 120,000. Right now, we have about 25,000 donors — and that’s a great number — but, if you think about how we take the size and scale of Ohio State and maximise it, there really is no ceiling for our programme from an engagement enterprise, value, revenue [point of view]. We have to make sure we’re nationally competitive and make sure we have a financial and sustainable model.”