Aggie Town Hall: Episode 2

Each Monday, our Director of Athletics Ross Bjork will answer questions from fans in our "Aggie Town Hall" segment. You can submit questions for a future edition here.

We welcome you to Aggie Town Hall, our weekly 12-minute visit with Ross Bjork, your Athletics Director at Texas A&M. Joining us here will be Will Johnson and Andrew Monaco, the voice of the Aggies, and we'll jump right into it.

First of all Ross, Kathryn Danby, Class of '95 out of Houston, writes: Ross, this fall, can you commit to having Brenda Tracy come speak to the football team? This is an opportunity for Coach Fisher to demonstrate his commitment to fighting sexual assault and encouraging a culture to speak up against violence.

Yeah, good afternoon, everyone. Howdy to Aggies everywhere listening and watching this Facebook live and this Zoom session that we're having. So we're all used to this. I appreciate the question. You know, we pour a ton of resources into educating our student-athletes--all of our student-athletes, not just our football young men--on the sexual assault piece, the Title IX piece. We have speakers throughout the year. We have educators throughout the year. You know, we're not sure if Brenda is on the docket for this year or not. Those things are being lined up. I can tell you that she was here a few years ago and spoke to Texas A&M student-athletes. But I can assure you that we take this topic very seriously. We're constantly educating. We're constantly putting out reminders of this topic area. And we take it very, very seriously. Thanks for the question.

Ross, Brian is Class of '91 and he asked, what are the cost implications to the athletic department should athletes in spring sports be given an extra year of eligibility?

You know, as we're as we're recording this at a little after 3:00 Central time (Monday), the NCAA Division I Council is actually meeting right now to talk about this very thing, whether or not we extend eligibility to our spring athletes who seasons were obviously abruptly canceled. We've done the calculations here. If everyone returned for an extra year in our spring sports, it would be about $565,000 in additional costs to the athletic department, and so that's the full number. Obviously not every athlete would take advantage of it. We don't know exactly how the rule will come together. I guess we'll find out later today. And this question may be either in date or out of date, depending on what happens. But the gross number would be $565,000. We'll see how it all shakes out. in the next couple of hours.

Ross, we actually received a few questions along the lines of what you were just talking about, and Philip was one of them. And it's almost kind of a follow up to what Bryan just asked. I don't know if they got together and planned this…but Philip is asking, Is that why it's so complicated? Why is the D-1 vote on seniors' extra eligibility, and truly not just seniors, more complex than it seems?

You know, boy, we could probably spend our full 12 minutes just talking about this and then some. You know, when that came out on that Friday, March 13^th, the NCAA put out a statement. Here at Texas A&M, we've been in full support of whatever can benefit our student-athletes, knowing that this is a trying time. We want to be a part of that equation and being part of the let's fix this versus having this linger. And so, the reason why it's so complex is, is it senior class only? Or does it apply to every freshman? Does it apply to the junior class, et cetera? Sometimes financial aid is agreed upon over a four-year period of time where one year, and we're talking about the equivalency sports, one year you might be on a 25% scholarship, and the commitment was to go up to 75% the next year. And then you went back down to 25% and then went back up to 75%. So there's different equations out there across the board for our student-athletes. And then what's happened, because of the financial fallout of all of this, it's now become a financial consideration for some schools. Can everyone afford to do it? We just gave out our gross number of over half a million dollars. That's not just laying around somewhere. I mean, we'd have to be creative and find that money. And so you're talking about the finances of it that has now become complicated within the world that we live in within the NCAA. So there's a lot of different layers to it. There's roster management. There's some student-athletes like I said that would take it and some who wouldn't. There's some coaches who would want some athletes to come back and some that wouldn't. So what's fair from that standpoint? It's multi-layered, and hopefully that gives some clarity or confusion to our question there.

Ross. I have to back up to what Andrew and Will were just talking about here and just ask if you had a crystal ball in front of you, and you said, hey, here's what I think the NCAA might do or in your best-case scenario, as an AD a school the size of A&M, what would you do to address this issue?

Oh, you know, like I said, it's 3:17 when we're recording this or broadcasting live, whatever way you want to look at it. Like I said, we may know in the next couple hours. Here's what I believe. I believe what should happen is leave it up to the institutions. Let the coach sit down with the athlete and figure out hey, you know what? I have a spot for you, or I don't have a spot for you. I have a spot for you, and this is the scholarship amount that that I have left over. Have those conversations. And so whatever way we go, we need to be cognizant of the student-athletes. We need to have conversations with them. So my guess is if I had to handicap this, I think they'll leave it up to each institution. But like I said, this is evolving. It's changing. We've known over the last couple of weeks that every time we make a decision it might be out of date two hours later. But that's my belief, and that's what I believe will happen with this Division I Council vote.

A question has come in from the person who actually began the organization called the Reach Project, his name is Max Gerall, Class of 2018, and he writes in how can we work with the REACH project as an athletic department to support Leon (O'Neal) and the visible Aggies at Texas A&M University to help the group in Wess, in SSC workers, and those who, frankly, are the front-line faces off our fans when they first get to one of our venues?

Yeah, one of the things that just as this thing evolves constantly is, you know, one, we have to be organized in terms of how we operate. So we've been trying to get up and running, understanding the full magnitude of the fallout. We don't have all those answers yet. We don't know exactly how many employees this impacts yet. We don't know exactly the nature of operations in the next month or so. And so, I saw that tweet last night and we want to support Leon. And we're so glad that he can utilize a platform to support a great cause. And we want to be a part of that. Determining exactly how we get involved as an athletic department is evolving because we don't understand where the starting point is, what's the end point, how long this thing will last, what is the true sort of fallout. So we want to be smart. We want to be cognizant. But also when we see an opportunity, like Leon did, we want to be able to support that through social media. So I'm glad our student-athletes are out there showing some leadership.

Before we wrap up, what is the message that you want to send in an air of uncertainty right now to not only our student-athletes who are our first priority, but certainly to our fans, our donor base and all of us that join together to make up the impressive 12th Man? What is your message as the AD right now?

I think the message that I want to get out there is that our student-athletes are trying to thrive as best they can in this environment. We had a SAAC, Student-Athlete Leadership Council, call on Friday. It was so cool to see about 35 of our student-athletes in this exact same setting talking about their experiences, talking about the support that they're receiving, talking about hey, we're all going to get to get back together someday. And when that happens, isn't this all going to be cool? And they were talking about we have a traditions night in Athletics where we basically do almost like a mini Fish Camp. And so they were talking about hey, how do we get ready for that in August? The hope and the belief in the understanding that this is going to be temporary, Yes, it's no fun. No one likes to go through it. But this is gonna be temporary. There's going to be normalcy on the other side. It may take a lot of work to get there, but your athletic department, your leaders in athletics, especially your student-athletes, everyone is coming together to make sure that we're moving in the right direction so that we can continue to thrive as an athletic department. So I think the Aggies would be very, very proud of those efforts in the conversations and the work that's taking place.

We can save this for next week, because we seem to get this every week, Ross are we either updating Reed or building a new arena?

(laughter) We've done a lot of work to study what needs to happen around Reed Arena. I think Reed Arena actually has some great bones to it but obviously needs a face lift. I've described it as tired. Those things still apply, obviously given the financial situation that we're facing. And like I said earlier about the relief funds, we don't know where the depths of all this are yet. So until we really have a full understanding, we're just gonna continue to plan, continue to have concepts around Reed Arena, and make sure that we do the right thing in the right course of time.

Ross we just put the football roster on the website, Max Wright's now a tight end. You feel good about it?

I do. I do. I saw Max before we left for the SEC Tournament, and he's working on his quickness and agility. Obviously, he's got to work on his hands as well, but I think he's gonna enjoy that challenge of playing tight end. It'll be fun to see.

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Aggie Town Hall: Episode 2

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