Aggie Town Hall w/Ross Bjork
Oct 27, 2020 | General
Athletics Director Ross Bjork held another Aggie Town Hall on Tuesday, taking questions submitted by fans.
You can get questions in for Ross on future editions by filling out the form at the bottom.
A big game coming up Saturday night.
What's cool is, look, we're obviously were ranked in the top 10. If you listen all the national conversations, a lot of people are pointing to this game—one, because Arkansas is obviously playing well. They could easily, maybe should be, 3-1. They've been opportunistic as well. They're playing an exciting brand and they're playing hard. Sam Pittman, he’s getting the most out of these guys. So people are talking about this game. And the other thing, and we have a question related to this, the game’s in Kyle Field, right? And it was originally scheduled before COVID to be played up in AT&T Stadium. So that's a big deal. Arkansas hasn't been on campus since 2012, so that's a big deal. And our students are fired up. Ticket pull has looked great all week, despite some cold and rainy weather yesterday and today. So I think we're going to hit right at that 27,000 capacity. Based on the enthusiasm, a night game, Halloween, perfect football weather…it's just going to be a great, great weekend, and I know our team is fired up.
Midnight Yell changes.
Yeah, they've opened it up (the second deck). They're going to be around 3,500 for capacity at Midnight Yell on Friday night. And so that's up from about 2,500 for the Florida game. So again, just slowly but surely opening things back up, and just we're taking it as smart as we can and trying to be really judicious about all of this.
Excitement for the student-athletes getting to compete.
It's really cool. I mean that that's why we're here, right? We're here to host games, to support student-athletes. Obviously receive an education. But to see our teams competing…we have three top-10 teams right now. Soccer, volleyball, football. We need to keep it going. We're off this week in volleyball. Soccer is on the road. Obviously, we’ve got the big football game here at home. Swimming has already kicked off their season. We're playing golf right now up in Nashville, the men's team was in second place going into the final day. Women have had two tournaments. Tennis. It's really cool to see really a full athletic department up and running. Basketball is right around the corner. So I’m really proud of our athletes because they've gone through a lot just with all the emotional pieces of this, the protocols. We're testing three times a week. If you're playing, that's a lot. That's taxing. I just did my test a few minutes ago. We all have to go through it. They want to play, and that's why they're here. So we're grateful we can provide the opportunity.
Future of Arkansas series.
First of all, I need to really complement my colleague at Arkansas, Hunter Yurachek. Before the schedules even got modified in any way, shape or form, knowing that this could be a possibility, he and I started a dialogue about okay, look. We’re designated as the home team for 2020. If we're only playing a conference schedule, I can't give up one of our let's say five opportunities and play a neutral site game when it's our home game. He totally understood that. They actually moved a game from Little Rock back to Fayetteville as well, because I think they were playing in Kansas City against Missouri. That's what it was. They moved that game, so he understood the dynamics. So we started this before anything got moved, to be prepared. We approached the Cowboys and said, look, public health-wise, we think we can host our game on our campus safely. We're going to move the schedule around. We're starting later. The first game was actually the original date of the Arkansas game, September 26th. We need to move this game back on campus, and the Cowboys obviously agreed. They're obviously going through the same thing with their protocols.
So it's one year back on campus. Next year, we’ll return to AT&T Stadium. From that standpoint, really Arkansas gave up a home game, if you will, in Fayetteville by returning that game to AT&T Stadium for the ‘21 season. And then we'll play ’22, ’23, ’24, that’s the last year of the current agreement. Our plan, and again, Arkansas still has some work to do, our plan is to move that game back to campus after the contract is expired in ’24. We think this game deserves to be on campus. It's an SEC game. We need to play as many of those games on our campus as possible. Obviously, we'll see the benefit of that on Saturday night with our home crowd. So that's what the contract is. It's a one-year agreement where it moves to campus for this year because of COVID. Moves back to AT&T Stadium for four years, ’21, ’22, ’23, ’24. And then after that, we need to really sit down with Arkansas and determine how do we get this game back on campus? Hunter and I will work together and hopefully we can make that happen. That's the plan.
Frequent communication and collaboration with SEC Athletic Directors.
Today's Tuesday and we just had an AD Zoom meeting this morning. Went from 9:30 to about 11:15. You know how many zoom meetings we've had as ADs since March 11th? We've had two in-person meetings because we met on Thursday, March 12th. That's when we shut the SEC basketball tournament down. And then everybody went back to their campuses. We had another meeting on July 17th, in person in Birmingham. We've had 84. 84 athletic director Zoom meetings since March the 11th. You talk about conversations…you know what? There hasn't been one where it's been like, man, this is kind of a waste of time. Hey, we're just spinning our wheels. Every conversation has been something that we've had to deal with. We've got to make decisions we have to maybe predict about what might be coming and strategize around what are the options as we move this thing forward. There hasn't been a meeting where it's been like, you know what? We can skip this. Hey, you know what? There's not anything to talk about on the agenda. Think about that. 84. Then all the one-on-one conversations, whether it's within the SEC, whether it's colleagues here in the state of Texas, because that's been important, that we're on the same page, whether it's colleagues in other conferences. It's been fascinating. But Hunter’s been great, and he understands the dynamic and the rivalry and all the issues that came about with that game.
Chance of more fans at Kyle Field, and chance of tailgating.
I'll take that kind of in reverse and talk about priorities. The first priority is to make sure we can play the game safely. That's number one. Knock on wood, so so far, so good with all of our protocols. But we also know we sort of live test by test, each of those three tests per week. The second priority, at least from a fan experience standpoint, is to make sure we can have some fans in the stadium. Right now we're at that 25% capacity. And then all the things that happen outside the stadium, I don't want to say they're not a priority, but we've got to make sure we protect those first two things. That's the number one and number two priorities. Let's play the games, keep our players safe and then let's make sure we can have some fans in the stadium. And then after that, just the logistics around it, the protocols that would have to be in place, there's a lot that would have to take place around making sure that we would have a tailgating environment. The other thing is, look where we are is a state. The numbers of cases are going up. The number of hospitalizations are going up. Brazos County has actually maintained a pretty flat number right now in those two categories. But we have to be mindful that we still have a public health issue that we have to deal with. Let's not disrupt things outside the stadium that would impact things that could happen inside the stadium. So that's tailgating. But you can pull up, you can have a cooler, you can have food, you can have family, you can have a lawn chair. You can “tailgate”. It's the large scale, the tents, the grills, the big-time setups, those are the things that are off limits. But people can pull up. I've seen it the first two games. People pull up and they have a good time. And as long as people are smart and use common sense, then that could be tailgating.
As far as expanding, you know, into more fans again, we need to be mindful of just our environment Right now. I don't see any way that we would go to a large increase. It might be an incremental increase, meaning that maybe we release some single-game tickets. And it may be dependent on what does ticket pull look like? Ticket pull I think for the Arkansas game will probably go full capacity for students. And again, like I said, we'll probably at that 27,000 number. But what happens around Thanksgiving? The Ole Miss game is the Saturday before Thanksgiving. The last day of classes are on November 24th. That's the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. How many people show up for the LSU game, meaning students. So maybe we add some single-game tickets in a strategic manner. And does that increase capacity a little bit? That's how we'll look at it. But I don't see us going from a 25 percent to hey, now we're at 50. I don't really see that. I don't know if our community is ready for that. And so again, let's take it kind of step by step. The more time we have, the more information we have to make the right decisions. And that's how we'll approach it. It’s just patience. It's also hard to believe we've only got three home games left. Two after Saturday. The fact that we're playing, we need to be thankful and blessed. And the fact that we have some fans at 25%. We've had the most fans of any college sporting event so far in the country. We need to be thankful for that, and we just need to protect that as long as we can these last three games.
The noise generated by the 12th Man.
Unbelievable. And with limited capacity. Just look at the last team that we played, their head coach thought there were 50,000 people. Sam Pittman said yesterday that he thinks there'll be 50,000 people, meaning 24,000 sounded like 50. Sounded like 80. And that's what we challenged Aggies to do is bring it. Bring the noise. And let's make Kyle Field that that home field advantage, even though we only have 27,000 people.
The 2021 baseball season.
We've heard Commissioner Sankey. He's been on the record publicly, saying that we're going to play spring sports. We’re going to play SEC baseball and softball and track and everything else that we do at a high level in the SEC. And so our expectation is that we will play a full season. Now, when do we start? What does nonconference look like? Those things we're just now starting to really have those conversations. But to me, before we leave for the winter break, we need to have an idea of what the schedules do look like. I think that's fair to our athletes, so there's not this uncertainty hanging out there. But I agree. I know from our perspective we're going to do everything we can to have a full season. 56 games, 30 SEC games. Obviously, we know about the midweek games, and here in Texas, we have plenty of opportunity to play a lot of great teams here for midweek and in those early-season three-game series. That’s our expectation. I hope we can pull it off. Again, we don't control the virus. The virus will control where we are. What do the next three months look like? What does flu season look like? All those things will really dictate where we are. But that's our expectation. Let's have a full season. Let's play. Kids deserve it. Coaches deserve it. Everybody's been working hard, and I hope we can pull that off.
Aggie Band performing at halftime.
Yeah, that's a tough one because it's it means so much. The Band really epitomizes so many great things about Texas A&M. And again, right now the priorities are let's play the game. Let's have fans in the stands. The Band has been there. Obviously, they'll be there in the stands, and that's been great. I don't see that changing where we can have the Band on the field. I think the decision of just making it a season-long decision is in place right now. We’ll evaluate it, but I don't really see anything changing right now. The Band has been great. They've been understanding. We filmed their halftime shows on Kyle Field. Let's make the best of a worst-case scenario. At least they're performing. At least they’re in the stands. We can play all the all the songs that we need to play while they’re in the stands. But I don't see them getting on the field this year. It's unfortunate, but if you look at the priorities, playing the game, having fans, that's what we're looking at.
Energy of having fans and students in the stands.
We've got over 10,000 students for both games. We could have close to 14,000 for this game. I was walking by ticket pull on Monday morning and a young man stopped me who's a student here and he asked if I was the athletic director. We talked for probably 10 minutes or so and just the look on his face of saying thank you for allowing us to be there. Thank you for getting football. And I'm like, hey, it wasn't just my decision obviously, it was a collective universe of college athletics coming together to make all this happen. But just to see that look on his face of thank you, we have something to look forward to. When you walk in Kyle Field, you do feel like okay, we're playing college football. Yeah, there's people yelling. Man, we're getting after it. It's loud. People think there's 50,000 people. They think there's 75,000 people. All the TV commentators are like boy, I think Texas A&M is over 25 percent. No, we're not. But the Aggies bring it. Just to have those examples out there, that makes you feel good. But again, we've got to be safe. We've got to wear our face coverings. We've got to stay disciplined and distant and all those things. But I think you're right. We have to bottle this and use this as a springboard when we get into the spring and get into next year and get back to whatever normal looks like. We've got to use this.
Chancellor Sharp protecting the college experience.
And just not giving up on that on that vision. Again, safety's first at all times, but just saying we believe there's a way to do this. We believe that we can have the right protocols in place. We're only gosh, I think, five weeks away from the end of the semester. The caseload, the numbers here at Texas A&M have really been managed well, and people are handling this. We need to keep it going. We need to finish strong. That's the key.
Bowl season looking different.
It already has. We've already seen some bowl games canceled. We have a new agreement with a bowl game in Las Vegas, very restrictive attendance policies in place. So what happens there? If the semifinals are the Sugar Bowl and the Rose Bowl, and those games were played today, no fans. So it's already going to look different in some manner. How many games, what the matchups are. Every team is eligible. You don't have to be at six wins. So does a team that's 2-8, do they just say, hey we're not going to play. Or, do they want another opportunity? It's going to look different. I can't sit here today and say we're going to have this many games and they're in these locations. I think it's all going to be really, really fluid up until probably the first of December. Then the playoff selection is on December 20th, which is very late compared to when it normally is. So it's going to look different. I think we all just need to buckle up, let's finish this season strong and put the Aggies in the best position.
A varsity men’s soccer program.
Right now it's not something that would be a priority for us, in terms of adding any sport. There's so many things that go into it. Title IX is really the first equation that you have to look at. How many women's athletes, how many women's teams, how many men's teams. All those things. People ask me about gymnastics quite a bit here. They ask me about men's soccer. I think men's soccer could thrive here, I really do, based on our demographic, based on where we sit. The SEC has Kentucky and South Carolina, are the two that play in the SEC. I think those are the only two. So it's not an SEC sponsored sport, which again, is another one of those things that goes into the equation. But we have not looked into it. We've not looked into adding any sport. To me, I want to be successful in all the sports that we have. If there's an opportunity that presents itself, then we'll look at it.
#AskRoss
Submit your question here and listen to his monthly appearances on the Texas A&M Athletics Podcast to see if yours got answered!
