Aggie Town Hall: Episode 8
May 11, 2020 | General
Mike Wright: Hello again, everyone and welcome to the Aggie Town Hall. It is presented by CHI St. Joseph Health, the official healthcare provider of Texas A&M Athletics. With our athletic director Ross Bjork, the voice of the Aggies Andrew Monaco and Will Johnson from 12th Man Productions, I'm Mike Wright. Welcome into our weekly edition here and let's get it started with Andrew Monaco with first question up for the AD, Ross Bjork.
Andrew Monaco: I hope you all had a great Mother's Day yesterday. Howdy, everyone. Ross, Lee Crews, Fightin' Texas Aggie Class of 1989 from Woodsboro, Texas, asks has a decision been made on college entrance requirements for incoming freshmen with all the SAT and ACT exam opportunities being cancelled?
Well, howdy and good afternoon, everyone. That's a great question. That seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle, but basically as long as someone has the minimum requirements in the core courses, and they have a GPA of 2.3 or higher, then the NCAA is waving those ACT and SAT scores. And then if you don't meet those other parameters and you have a previous test score, then it's sort of a sliding scale. And then if you haven't taken the test and you don't meet the 2.3 and you don't have the core courses, then whatever institution that you go to has to file a waiver. And it looks like the NCAA will be granting a waiver of all of those. So it's sort of a layered kind of tiered approach, but in a sense, they're throwing out the ACT and SAT scores for the time being, based on some other criteria as well. Great question, though.
Will Johnson: Ross. We've got one from Jason Nitch, who submitted through Twitter. Reed Arena and its renovation, things like that, have been a bit of a topic. Jason gets pretty detailed here. He wants to know if Reed Arena would consider replacing the handrails and cables that go around the second deck with a tough plexiglass so when you sit in the second deck, it's not blocking your line of sight of the court. Of course, he says, only if this is allowed for safety code.
That's a great question as well, and safety code is the key to all of that. There are arenas out there, other facilities that have put plexiglass in the place of the handrails and things like that. That's something that I know has been talked about at Reed Arena, is how do we do that? It really comes down to, are we going to do a major project? So do we build a new arena? Do we renovate Reed Arena? And then if you're doing kind of these piecemeal projects, how does that fit in to the overall building? And really, that's how we're approaching it. There may be some things that we look at with Reed Arena. Like something I want to look at is we have the doors, right? And when you're on the concourse, there's a door blocking you from hearing or being a part of the seating bowl. We may look at just putting these little doorstops and opening up the doors during a basketball game. So we might do some of those things, and we'll add the handrail to the conversation, but we know that we could probably do a few things to Reed Arena. But then we really need to answer the question, what do we do overall? And that's what we're working on as well.
Mike: Ross, there are two questions that frequently get asked by friends of mine, it doesn't matter where they're calling from, in state or out of state. I'll go with one right now, and it's this topic that will not go away. We're glad that they're happy about it and enthusiastic about the uniforms, but Daniel Gilbert sends along a question out of San Antonio, Class of 2023. He wants you to nail down a specific date for the new football uniform release. You're the guy that can make it happen.
I wish. I need to get adidas on the phone so they can tell us exactly what date. And really the whole plan is that we get the uniforms here, we can put them on some of our student-athletes and really kind of do the unveiling that way. And so we've only got graphics, and we don't want to do it in a graphic form. We want to do it in a live form, if you will. So we're waiting on the exact date of the arrival of these jerseys. And when that happens, then we'll have an exact date of the unveiling. I wish I could give it to you. I wish I could tell you here on May 11 that exact date, but I just can't. Stay tuned.
Mike: We did have some exciting plans for it. And we hope to be able to go through with those but this Covid-19 thing upended that. Andrew up next on one of the other questions we get quite frequently here.
Andrew: Jeremy Lovell on Twitter using the hashtag #AskRoss, yes or no to 2020-2022 football.
Wow, three seasons?
Andrew: We think it's 2020-21. So take both of them.
Yeah, that could be the 20, 21 and 22 seasons...Yes, we're playing football. I'll just talk about this fall. We'll focus on the fall of '20. You know, really, if football's impacted, your whole athletic department's impacted in a great way. Not just a financial piece, but just the logistics of the scheduling. So the way we're approaching it is that we are going to play. We're going to play with the full experience. We're going to play a full schedule. We're planning accordingly. It could look differently in terms of how it's operationalized and fan experience and things like that. But that is the plan. Our campus is going to be open for fall classes, that has been announced. And so those plans are coming together. And the plan is that we're gonna have football, which means we're gonna have cross country and soccer and volleyball in the fall. And, oh, by the way, we have swim meets that happen pretty early in November, and we start basketball exhibition in early November. So football overlaps with a lot of our athletic department, and our plan is that we're moving forward.
Mike: Ross to that end let's talk a little bit about the schedule on campus. They always say well, why can't you do this? Why can't we bring our athletes back to our facilities? I think it's no secret, this is my opinion, our facilities are the cleanest, we can control that environment. We know that other gyms were opening up, so there's a lot of discussion right now about why we have to wait to the end of May, but isn't it because you've got a university dictate? You also have the SEC and your peers in that group to consider as well?
Right now we have a prohibition on any voluntary or required activity, in a physical sense, in our facilities, on our campus. So all of our facilities are shut down. Our indoor practice facilities, our basketball courts, of course our weight rooms. They can come into the training room if need be. We've had our nutrition center open, but even academics has been closed and all those are taking place in a virtual setting. So until the SEC, until we as a conference, decide that we can open up voluntary activity or countable, whichever way that goes, we cannot open up our facilities. I have stated publicly that if we have commercial fitness centers, those open in Texas on May 18...what happens with our university recreation center? They're looking at plans to also reopen on May 18. If those facilities are open, I have a hard time telling our student-athletes that okay, you can go there, but you can't come here. We're not there yet. There's a lot of planning and a lot of things that have to happen to get our weight rooms open on a voluntary basis. But we're working on that. We're working with our university leaders. The SEC, we have an athletic director conference call again tomorrow. We'll have another one on Friday. It's gonna be talked about there as well. So it's an ongoing dialogue, and I hope that in the coming days and weeks that we can have some news on that. Because if the state of Texas is opening, then Texas A&M should be able to follow suit with all the same guidelines, all the same parameters. Our job will be to protect our student-athletes, but that's how we're looking at it. It's out there, because Texas keeps opening in these waves, and when that's happening, we need to be able to pivot on our campus as well.
Mike: Doesn't it just break your heart, though, when we know that we have our student-athletes, some of whom are in town, or they're calling and they say, hey, we'd like to come back into the facility right there. It hurts us that you can't allow that just right now.
It's tough.
Mike: But that shows the dedication that those male and female athletes have.
And we know we know by social media posts, we know a lot of student-athletes are here and we know they're working out. We know they're going to places with their friends or teammates. We know it's happening. We would rather safeguard them in our facilities first and foremost.
Mike: Will, let's shift to a lighter bit of a topic here. It was quite the evening last week.
Will: Yeah, it still deals with our student-athletes, but a little more fun last week. The BCAs are a chance to honor what they do on the field of play, in the classroom and in the community. Ross we had some great presenters throughout the evening, but you were the host that held it all together. Your reaction to last week's BCAs that we held virtually for the first and hopefully last time ever.
Well, I was the only one that they could convince to put on a coat and tie during these times. So I guess I won by default, because I was willing to put on a shirt and tie and a sport coat. And then our 12th Man Productions crew obviously made me look very good by editing all of the mistakes that I made so that made it work. But really, it's a testament to our student-athletes, just showcasing them. But you know, with the high-profile nature of what we do here at A&M, and to be able to have a celebration...even though we can't be together, it felt big time. I mean, you're watching this and there's unveilings and we had superstars introducing our nominees and announcing award winners. I'm not sure there could have been a better line up across the country in college athletics than what we had. I couldn't get on the Instagram deal with Von Miller. I couldn't figure out live TV Instagram. I need my 14-year-old son, Payton, to help me out with that next time. But I heard that was pretty cool as well. So just think about the celebrity feel, if you will, that we had. It was really cool. But most importantly, celebrating the student-athletes.
Andrew: Ross, how proud are you of all those numbers that come out of the A.D. Honor Roll and the Team GPA being so outstanding? We've talked about this before. Our student-athletes are so impressive. It had to be terrific for you to be able to intro...and for some, introduce to, the Aggie family past greats and what will be some future greats.
Yeah, the academic numbers continued to pile up. I think we had had 76 on the SEC Honor Roll, I believe that was our all-time best as well. We did a virtual recruiting overview with Coach Williams a few weeks ago with some of our donors, and he's highlighting that academic success on there, as they're doing their unofficial and official visits. We're doing official visits over Zoom right now, even though we can't really call it that just because they're not here. But a lot of recruiting talks are happening right now over Zoom and highlighting that academic piece, that's important. And we have the numbers to back it up. Really for the past, probably a year and a half, we've had the best academic profile of our athletic program, and we believe that we can even get better than where we've been. So sky's the limit.
Andrew Monaco: I hope you all had a great Mother's Day yesterday. Howdy, everyone. Ross, Lee Crews, Fightin' Texas Aggie Class of 1989 from Woodsboro, Texas, asks has a decision been made on college entrance requirements for incoming freshmen with all the SAT and ACT exam opportunities being cancelled?
Well, howdy and good afternoon, everyone. That's a great question. That seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle, but basically as long as someone has the minimum requirements in the core courses, and they have a GPA of 2.3 or higher, then the NCAA is waving those ACT and SAT scores. And then if you don't meet those other parameters and you have a previous test score, then it's sort of a sliding scale. And then if you haven't taken the test and you don't meet the 2.3 and you don't have the core courses, then whatever institution that you go to has to file a waiver. And it looks like the NCAA will be granting a waiver of all of those. So it's sort of a layered kind of tiered approach, but in a sense, they're throwing out the ACT and SAT scores for the time being, based on some other criteria as well. Great question, though.
Will Johnson: Ross. We've got one from Jason Nitch, who submitted through Twitter. Reed Arena and its renovation, things like that, have been a bit of a topic. Jason gets pretty detailed here. He wants to know if Reed Arena would consider replacing the handrails and cables that go around the second deck with a tough plexiglass so when you sit in the second deck, it's not blocking your line of sight of the court. Of course, he says, only if this is allowed for safety code.
That's a great question as well, and safety code is the key to all of that. There are arenas out there, other facilities that have put plexiglass in the place of the handrails and things like that. That's something that I know has been talked about at Reed Arena, is how do we do that? It really comes down to, are we going to do a major project? So do we build a new arena? Do we renovate Reed Arena? And then if you're doing kind of these piecemeal projects, how does that fit in to the overall building? And really, that's how we're approaching it. There may be some things that we look at with Reed Arena. Like something I want to look at is we have the doors, right? And when you're on the concourse, there's a door blocking you from hearing or being a part of the seating bowl. We may look at just putting these little doorstops and opening up the doors during a basketball game. So we might do some of those things, and we'll add the handrail to the conversation, but we know that we could probably do a few things to Reed Arena. But then we really need to answer the question, what do we do overall? And that's what we're working on as well.
Mike: Ross, there are two questions that frequently get asked by friends of mine, it doesn't matter where they're calling from, in state or out of state. I'll go with one right now, and it's this topic that will not go away. We're glad that they're happy about it and enthusiastic about the uniforms, but Daniel Gilbert sends along a question out of San Antonio, Class of 2023. He wants you to nail down a specific date for the new football uniform release. You're the guy that can make it happen.
I wish. I need to get adidas on the phone so they can tell us exactly what date. And really the whole plan is that we get the uniforms here, we can put them on some of our student-athletes and really kind of do the unveiling that way. And so we've only got graphics, and we don't want to do it in a graphic form. We want to do it in a live form, if you will. So we're waiting on the exact date of the arrival of these jerseys. And when that happens, then we'll have an exact date of the unveiling. I wish I could give it to you. I wish I could tell you here on May 11 that exact date, but I just can't. Stay tuned.
Mike: We did have some exciting plans for it. And we hope to be able to go through with those but this Covid-19 thing upended that. Andrew up next on one of the other questions we get quite frequently here.
Andrew: Jeremy Lovell on Twitter using the hashtag #AskRoss, yes or no to 2020-2022 football.
Wow, three seasons?
Andrew: We think it's 2020-21. So take both of them.
Yeah, that could be the 20, 21 and 22 seasons...Yes, we're playing football. I'll just talk about this fall. We'll focus on the fall of '20. You know, really, if football's impacted, your whole athletic department's impacted in a great way. Not just a financial piece, but just the logistics of the scheduling. So the way we're approaching it is that we are going to play. We're going to play with the full experience. We're going to play a full schedule. We're planning accordingly. It could look differently in terms of how it's operationalized and fan experience and things like that. But that is the plan. Our campus is going to be open for fall classes, that has been announced. And so those plans are coming together. And the plan is that we're gonna have football, which means we're gonna have cross country and soccer and volleyball in the fall. And, oh, by the way, we have swim meets that happen pretty early in November, and we start basketball exhibition in early November. So football overlaps with a lot of our athletic department, and our plan is that we're moving forward.
Mike: Ross to that end let's talk a little bit about the schedule on campus. They always say well, why can't you do this? Why can't we bring our athletes back to our facilities? I think it's no secret, this is my opinion, our facilities are the cleanest, we can control that environment. We know that other gyms were opening up, so there's a lot of discussion right now about why we have to wait to the end of May, but isn't it because you've got a university dictate? You also have the SEC and your peers in that group to consider as well?
Right now we have a prohibition on any voluntary or required activity, in a physical sense, in our facilities, on our campus. So all of our facilities are shut down. Our indoor practice facilities, our basketball courts, of course our weight rooms. They can come into the training room if need be. We've had our nutrition center open, but even academics has been closed and all those are taking place in a virtual setting. So until the SEC, until we as a conference, decide that we can open up voluntary activity or countable, whichever way that goes, we cannot open up our facilities. I have stated publicly that if we have commercial fitness centers, those open in Texas on May 18...what happens with our university recreation center? They're looking at plans to also reopen on May 18. If those facilities are open, I have a hard time telling our student-athletes that okay, you can go there, but you can't come here. We're not there yet. There's a lot of planning and a lot of things that have to happen to get our weight rooms open on a voluntary basis. But we're working on that. We're working with our university leaders. The SEC, we have an athletic director conference call again tomorrow. We'll have another one on Friday. It's gonna be talked about there as well. So it's an ongoing dialogue, and I hope that in the coming days and weeks that we can have some news on that. Because if the state of Texas is opening, then Texas A&M should be able to follow suit with all the same guidelines, all the same parameters. Our job will be to protect our student-athletes, but that's how we're looking at it. It's out there, because Texas keeps opening in these waves, and when that's happening, we need to be able to pivot on our campus as well.
Mike: Doesn't it just break your heart, though, when we know that we have our student-athletes, some of whom are in town, or they're calling and they say, hey, we'd like to come back into the facility right there. It hurts us that you can't allow that just right now.
It's tough.
Mike: But that shows the dedication that those male and female athletes have.
And we know we know by social media posts, we know a lot of student-athletes are here and we know they're working out. We know they're going to places with their friends or teammates. We know it's happening. We would rather safeguard them in our facilities first and foremost.
Mike: Will, let's shift to a lighter bit of a topic here. It was quite the evening last week.
Will: Yeah, it still deals with our student-athletes, but a little more fun last week. The BCAs are a chance to honor what they do on the field of play, in the classroom and in the community. Ross we had some great presenters throughout the evening, but you were the host that held it all together. Your reaction to last week's BCAs that we held virtually for the first and hopefully last time ever.
Well, I was the only one that they could convince to put on a coat and tie during these times. So I guess I won by default, because I was willing to put on a shirt and tie and a sport coat. And then our 12th Man Productions crew obviously made me look very good by editing all of the mistakes that I made so that made it work. But really, it's a testament to our student-athletes, just showcasing them. But you know, with the high-profile nature of what we do here at A&M, and to be able to have a celebration...even though we can't be together, it felt big time. I mean, you're watching this and there's unveilings and we had superstars introducing our nominees and announcing award winners. I'm not sure there could have been a better line up across the country in college athletics than what we had. I couldn't get on the Instagram deal with Von Miller. I couldn't figure out live TV Instagram. I need my 14-year-old son, Payton, to help me out with that next time. But I heard that was pretty cool as well. So just think about the celebrity feel, if you will, that we had. It was really cool. But most importantly, celebrating the student-athletes.
Andrew: Ross, how proud are you of all those numbers that come out of the A.D. Honor Roll and the Team GPA being so outstanding? We've talked about this before. Our student-athletes are so impressive. It had to be terrific for you to be able to intro...and for some, introduce to, the Aggie family past greats and what will be some future greats.
Yeah, the academic numbers continued to pile up. I think we had had 76 on the SEC Honor Roll, I believe that was our all-time best as well. We did a virtual recruiting overview with Coach Williams a few weeks ago with some of our donors, and he's highlighting that academic success on there, as they're doing their unofficial and official visits. We're doing official visits over Zoom right now, even though we can't really call it that just because they're not here. But a lot of recruiting talks are happening right now over Zoom and highlighting that academic piece, that's important. And we have the numbers to back it up. Really for the past, probably a year and a half, we've had the best academic profile of our athletic program, and we believe that we can even get better than where we've been. So sky's the limit.
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Fightin' Texas Aggie Band Halftime: Auburn
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Fightin' Texas Aggie Band Halftime: Utah State
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