Ross Bjork Update: Studio 12

Athletics Director Ross Bjork made his weekly appearance Wednesday on the Athletics Department's official radio show, Studio 12. We've got the audio and notes from his appearance below.

Notes from Bjork's Studio 12 appearance on Wednesday:

• 2:30 mark (college football starts Saturday, FBS one week later) Might be most watched FCS game in history of college football on Saturday night. As we get closer to September, I believe SEC made right decision delaying start of season. Gives us more time. More data on table. One point of data was what happens with other leagues, NFL, NBA, MLB? Now we’re seeing college football rolling out. Don’t know UCA and Austin Peay’s testing protocols, or the Sun Belt conference game the next week. What are we looking for right now? They’re playing Saturday but what happens next Wednesday or Thursday and they test again. What has happened? Outbreak because of game? We need to be monitoring that. Next couple weeks very important, also because campuses opening up. Knew we’d see a surge among students and we’re seeing that. Hope we can manage it. Next couple weeks lots of data points and we’ll take it day by day. All we can do.
• 4:00 (optics of Aggies practicing good) No doubt. Was out at practice last night. Flying around, having fun. Getting in shape. Learning offense and defense. Installing. Scout team running Vanderbilt. Reality points that say let’s keep marching forward. Not in an all clear yet but a good sign we can operate this athletics scene and have right protocols. Testing once a week, that’s going well, knowing we may have a spike. Seeing those pics, those videos from practice, it’s a great sight. Watching the players bounce around and have fun and smile, fist bump…that’s really cool to see.
• 5:30 (mental health improvement of things starting to line up) They came here to compete and get education, go to class, hang out with teammates. But also to play at highest level. When you take that away from them it’s a big void on mental side of this. A&M has always been a leader well before I got here in this. Our staff has been stretched over last six-month period. But now have some sense of normalcy, are practicing, can see light at end of tunnel. Gives lot of clarity to athletes. Mental side of this and the compounding health effects of this entire ordeal we probably won’t know full outcome maybe for a couple of years. But this is fun to watch. They needed it.
• 7:15 (NCAA clearing up eligibility questions) Couple things. One, back to mental clarity piece, we think we can play a full season, believe in protocols, but let’s just say worst happens and we start and have to cancel. Or, say don’t play volleyball or basketball. Whatever happens, no matter how many games you play or don’t, this year doesn’t count a year of eligibility for fall athletes. Don’t know what will happen in winter sports but if same thing happened we’d extend it. Just having that piece of clarity, they can go out, play, compete at highest level. May get modified or cancelled, but don’t have to worry about it costing a year. On mental side, that helps. Other thing that helped is soccer always had a flexible scheduling model, had certain number of days to play. Volleyball did not. But NCAA gave volleyball same flexible model. What that means is we as an SEC, we’re looking at having a fall segment for volleyball, soccer and cross country, then having a spring segment and would then play NCAA championships in the spring. NCAA cancelled fall championships for those sports. Let’s move them to spring. Volleyball can play 6-10 matches in the fall, soccer 6-10 matches plus the SEC Tourney. Cross country can have a few meets then the SEC Championship. Hoping we can have some clarity on that and announce in coming days. Those athletes are competing just as hard as football. Been practicing since early August. Need to give them some clarity. What are they practicing for? Right now can’t answer that. Need to answer that question. 
• 11:00 (basketball buying time) Looks like we’ll have some decision making in September. I’ve kind of gone back and forth, part of me says delay start till December or even January. Other part of me says why do we need to delay if we have data and protocols? Is there any science or medical advice that says we should? Shouldn’t delay just to delay. Should delay for right reasons. Hope in the next 3-4 weeks can have really good clarity in what basketball looks like. Practices start late September, early October. First games are first few weeks in November. Need to get that settled as well. I can see us starting later but can also say hey, if it’s safe and can do it, who says we can’t start on time, or a few weeks later? Lot of different things floating around out there right now.
• 13:15 (practicality of patient approach) Have to at least try. That’s our job. Putting everything on table, our job is to provide those opportunities until they say we can’t. That’s been our approach, that’s been SEC’s approach. Believe that’s been best way to go about this.
• 16:00 (saliva test breakthrough) Through contact we have in NBA and at A&M we heard about that test and we sent to SEC. Commissioner’s task force has been looking at it. Don’t have it available at this point in time but do have a third-party testing service that will begin working on our campus the week of September 7. We’ll have 3 tests a week leading up to first game. Once first game happens we’ll test on Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. I’ll be tested as part of travel party. Coaches. Athletic trainers. Obviously student-athletes. What we hope is as more science advances things like this come up. Right now we’re doing nasal swab. Doesn’t have to go up as far as it once did. Things like cheek swab, saliva test, those things are emerging. We hope as this thing gets going it will be part of the testing system. We don’t have yet. SEC is looking at it, third-party agency will have access to look into it. If it comes about during season and we change protocols think it’ll be best for everyone.
• 18:15 (cost of all this) Cost piece keeps evolving too. Originally we had all these things, cleaning, technologies. As you learn more maybe you don’t have to clean everything outside, with UV light, virus is gone in higher temperatures. We’ve learned a lot. Right now we have a number of what it’ll cost for fall sports, that the SEC will charge us for if you will. We’ll have to pay for it here at Texas A&M. If you get the saliva test and it’s cheaper, that number can go down. We’re going to spend right around $1.5 million on testing just in the fall. That’s a big number. At same time we’re losing revenue. It’s a message to donors, that’s why we have an appeal out there. Those type of messages are so important right now. Educate our donors, let people know what’s happening. That’s what we’re trying to do.
• 20:00 (return of students and message of overwhelming health care system) Think the word I’ve heard used among medical experts is co-exist. Don’t want anyone to go to hospital, or in the ICU, and obviously don’t want the worst case to happen. But there is this sort of co-existing phase right now. There are key metrics we’ll have to evaluate as a university community. We see an increase was reported yesterday, somewhere around 360 students at A&M tested positive either through testing system here or self-reported in their community. Key then is how many go to hospital, how many are symptomatic, how many are asymptomatic. As of yesterday, 9 people in hospital in Brazos County with COVID. Need to keep that manageable. We have a good relationship with CHI St. Joseph Health. Talk to CEO often to see what they’re thinking and tracking. Definitely something we have to watch. Key message now is to not let guard down. Another reason why it was smart to delay, let’s avoid large gatherings right now, be smart, do the right things and let’s get through it. And we probably can’t let up until early 2021 and maybe longer. That’ll be the messaging as we see this increase with our students. Hopefully doesn’t impact hospitals in communities. What does next week look like, the first week in September? What does the following week look like? What do some of the games look like around the country? Not there yet. Can’t let up. Wear the mask. Let’s try and play college sports. 
• 23:30 (state happy with measures taken) I look at Texas Dept of Health and Human Services dashboard every day. I look at the hospital numbers. Really every day since July 22 the numbers have steadily gone down. Got to keep that up. Staying in touch with our local health authorities, Brazos County, the state government. Got to do that to stay on top of this. We can’t let up. We all have to do our part. Stay consistent. Let’s not give up on this. Feels good to watch football, but that also means better wear mask and keep distance on Monday. Still got ways to go.
• 25:30 (the Aggie commitment announcement) We wanted to really listen to our student-athletes and our staff and understand what was happening on our campus and in our department and communities. Wanted to take time to get feedback. Lot of things came out yesterday as part of Aggie Commitment were result of conversations with the core group in B.L.U.E.print. The Student-Athlete Advisory Committee. Our staff. One of cool things I want to see is the honoring of first black student-athletes in each sport. Doing our research on that. Will put a mural up in the Nye Academic Center. Things like that to really bring this to life. Hey, there’s someone who helped pave the trail in front of me. Want to be intentional about this. Just need to continue on this journey.