Aggie Town Hall: Episode 7
May 04, 2020 | General
Mike Wright: We thank you for sharing some time with us again. Welcome in to the Aggie Town Hall. It's presented by CHI St. Joseph Health, the Official Healthcare Provider of Texas A&M Athletics. I'm Mike Wright along with the Voice the Aggies, Andrew Monaco, and from 12th Man Productions, Will Johnson. Our athletic director Ross Bjork joins us as always. Will, you're up for the first question for today's Aggie Town Hall.
Will Johnson: Thank you, Mike. We're gonna go back in time a little bit for this one because I remember this program that Rebecca, class of 2008 from San Antonio, is asking about. Ross, she wants to know when she was a student, there was something called the 12 Man Team Rewards program. You could collect stamps for every home game you went to across all sports, excluding football, and every stamp collected earned increasingly cooler prizes, as she describes it. Rebecca misses that. Is there any chance we could bring it back?
Great question and Howdy, Rebecca. Thanks for submitting that question. You know, as I was making my rounds late summer and early fall, I kept hearing about this program and people were talking about it. We have something in the plans. When we hired Michael Thompson and brought him from Ole Miss, there's a platform out there. It's really a rewards program that's app based. People can have it on their phones, and when you walk into a facility, there's sort of a beacon that syncs the app with you being there. So we have some initial plans. They may be on pause a little bit, given our current Covid-19 situation, but we have some thoughts, we have some ideas. We want to launch that type of activity hopefully here soon because it does have an impact on attendance. Obviously, football and baseball are gonna have great attendance. But we need to drive attendance at all of our sports and do everything in our power to market the programs. So the app-based program is something that we have in mind. It's on the list, and hopefully here in 6 to 12 months, maybe 18 months, we can we can launch it and get something like that back. But I think we can get away from like the punch cards and the old school. Technology has come a long way. Great question, though.
Andrew Monaco: Ross Taylor Ramrath, Class of 2014, is in Sugar Land. Very impressed by your leadership that you've brought to Aggie Athletics. Can you share your personal leadership philosophy and maybe recommend a great book or two you've enjoyed on leadership?
I appreciate that. And thanks for the kind words. And, you know, as we've gone through this, we've always said there's no manual for dealing with this. My personal leadership style is really about service. I've got this picture that I keep on my iPad, it describes leadership. It has a mountain, and it has a stick figure on the top of the mountain and it says "boss". And basically that person's looking down at everyone else like, good luck down there. And then on the side of the mountain, it says leader. And that person's on their stomach and they're lifting people up. So to me, it's about service. It's about helping others. It's about a greater-good mentality. And so that's really the leadership style that I apply. And I said there's no manual, but we do read books, and I've got a few. I was able to prepare. So here's one that I really like, it's called Extreme Ownership. It's by a guy named Jocko Willink. He's a former Navy Seal. I'm a big John Maxwell fan, and this one is his newest, called Leader Shift, so it's sort of shifting the mentality of leadership. We can't go anywhere without our faith, and this is a great one (The Leadership Lessons of Jesus). It has so many practical lessons. I've actually pulled it out during all of this because it's got really practical stories in it. And then Coach Childress gave me this book back in the fall, and it's really about mental toughness. Every day you got to get up, Chop Wood, Carry Water. Chop wood, carry water. And so those are just a few that come to mind. I tell you what, the guy to follow on leadership books is Buzz Williams. You go to his Twitter feed, that guy's amazing. He's so efficient about his reading, and I've learned a lot just observing him and how he leads and how he reads as well. So thanks for that question.
Mike: I wanted to dove tail on the Buzz comment, Ross. I mean, a lot of people wonder how Texas A&M did what they did, and coming off of those 10 wins that Andrew got to witness first-hand courtside. I don't think there's any doubt as to why they did what they did when Buzz has those guys with such buy-in. That's the key of a leader.
Well, you were courtside, Andrew. We all saw it firsthand and really kind of turned the page I think right before Christmas, with that Oregon State win. After really being probably the worst Power 5 team the first month of the season and then to flip it. I think the KenPom stat is amazing where going into conference play we were not favored in any game at all and to get 10 wins, I think we are the only team to do that since KenPom started recording. So pretty cool stuff that we were able to see their with coach Williams.
Mike: Max, from the Class of 2018, writes in from Houston and says, how can we work together to support the hundreds of what he refers to as the invisible Aggies who have been laid off and will be laid off until August or thereabouts?
Great question. I appreciate you asking about that because, you know, sometimes as time goes on we forget about some of these initiatives that get started really early in any sort of crisis. There's a project out there called the Reach Project. They have a GoFundMe page, and it was designed specifically for this. I think I looked it up this afternoon. They've raised about $49,000 and we've been able to promote it, and some of our student-athletes have promoted it, the University has promoted it. So Reach Project, and they have a GoFundMe page. And really, that's the best way that we've discovered to support this particular group of staff members who serve A&M.
Will: This comes from Karen, she wants to know when will athletes be allowed to return and begin workouts, and is June a possibility?
Right now, to me, anything's a possibility. We made headlines...we do know that people are watching this because last week we talked about a July 1st date, right? And then that made some news, and that was reported on. And so we appreciate everyone watching this. I think right now anything's a possibility. We have to keep everything on the table. I've been pointing to May 1st as a sort of time that we really need to see where we are. And so there's a lot of great data points out there regarding where we are as a region, the Brazos Valley, the state of Texas. So right now anything's possible. We haven't been given any sort of clearance. We still have May 31st as the SEC prohibition on any in-person activity, and so we have to determine what happens on June 1st, and we haven't got quite to that point yet. So right now every possibility is on the table. We have to follow all the guidelines that are out there. We have to follow our phase-in program within our state. The NCAA just came out with core principles, and we'll look at that and really kind of blend those principles with the local plans that are in place. And we know that our student-athletes are chomping at the bit to get back to it. Many of them are already here in town, but not being able to come to our facilities not being able to come to campus. So we want to go as really as smart as possible, but as quickly as possible, with the health and safety being first and foremost. We just don't have that exact timeline yet. And all those things are evolving. And let's see how this May 1st reopening goes here in Texas, and then we'll have more information to make those decisions.
Andrew: Ross, can you give us an exact date of the football uniform unveiling?
I wish. Part of one of the challenges with Covid-19 was we were gonna unveil them at the spring game. Well, obviously, we didn't have a spring game. We had a cook off. We had Terry Price's cook off instead. You don't want to wear uniforms when you're eating a lot of meat. So we couldn't do that. Right now there's a little bit of a challenge with sort of that supply chain. And we're trying to get an exact timeline on when we can have some samples here, we can model them. So we don't have an exact timeline yet. It's amazing how many people ask me about it. Hey, when are they coming in? What's the day? I keep asking our folks, and right now it's kind of up in the air, depending on sort of supply chain timelines that we don't really have control over. Covid-19 with some impact on it. The uniforms are made overseas, so we can imagine all the challenges. But we're optimistic. We're hopeful. We know we'll have something, and we're working on some plans, so it's basically stay tuned, to be determined. How about that for a short, long answer?
Andrew: It was exact as you could get.
Mike: Good dance around! I got to say, as people are sequestered, you get back to old topics that didn't frustrate you as badly, but now that we're all going through the Covid situation, Ross, it's come up again about the old UT rivalry and wanting to play the school about 100 miles from here. Talk about where your mindset is and what you're thinking about that ballgame. Has it been a priority for you during out throughout this Covid thing?
To answer that specific question, no. It hasn't been a priority, and it hasn't really been a priority since I got here, last July the 8th when I started this job. But I've gotten a lot of questions about it. Not from Aggies at all. Aggies are like, let's move on. We have moved on. Moved on a long time ago. I get it mainly in the in the social media space. I get it from the media who cover college football and cover the state of Texas. But really, for the Aggies, it's not a topic. It really isn't. Yeah, there was some banter on Twitter yesterday, I decided to reply this morning, and I think people...look, you can't take Twitter too seriously. Twitter is not real life, I hope people realize that. Twitter is not real life. It's a great tool to promote things, but it also, it's just fantasy land sometimes. And so I decided to reply and have a little fun. We've gotta have fun with this. You've gotta be able to laugh at yourself. And so I used the word sites. S-i-t-e-s, instead of sight, meaning eyesight. And I'm not sure a lot of people picked up on that. But we had a little fun and, yeah. We can have fun on Twitter. It's not real life, but that topic is in the past, and we've moved on, and there's a lot of a lot of ground to cover moving forward. Let's make it a championship game matchup, in the national championship game, and I think that'd be a lot more fun.
Mike: Thanks for joining us, anything in wrapping up?
Well, I was just gonna say it's a big week. It's finals week here at Texas A&M, and we also have our BCAs show on Wednesday night on YouTube at 7 p.m. Central time, where we celebrate all the student-athlete achievements and hand out a bunch of awards. We tried to get like Chris Fowler, Kirk Herbstreit, as the host this year. A big-time media personality. And they got me instead. So I'm not sure what happened with that. Maybe just because I'm the new guy, I'm still new enough where they can have me on there. But please stay tuned to that. That will be a lot of fun as we celebrate our student-athletes.
Will Johnson: Thank you, Mike. We're gonna go back in time a little bit for this one because I remember this program that Rebecca, class of 2008 from San Antonio, is asking about. Ross, she wants to know when she was a student, there was something called the 12 Man Team Rewards program. You could collect stamps for every home game you went to across all sports, excluding football, and every stamp collected earned increasingly cooler prizes, as she describes it. Rebecca misses that. Is there any chance we could bring it back?
Great question and Howdy, Rebecca. Thanks for submitting that question. You know, as I was making my rounds late summer and early fall, I kept hearing about this program and people were talking about it. We have something in the plans. When we hired Michael Thompson and brought him from Ole Miss, there's a platform out there. It's really a rewards program that's app based. People can have it on their phones, and when you walk into a facility, there's sort of a beacon that syncs the app with you being there. So we have some initial plans. They may be on pause a little bit, given our current Covid-19 situation, but we have some thoughts, we have some ideas. We want to launch that type of activity hopefully here soon because it does have an impact on attendance. Obviously, football and baseball are gonna have great attendance. But we need to drive attendance at all of our sports and do everything in our power to market the programs. So the app-based program is something that we have in mind. It's on the list, and hopefully here in 6 to 12 months, maybe 18 months, we can we can launch it and get something like that back. But I think we can get away from like the punch cards and the old school. Technology has come a long way. Great question, though.
Andrew Monaco: Ross Taylor Ramrath, Class of 2014, is in Sugar Land. Very impressed by your leadership that you've brought to Aggie Athletics. Can you share your personal leadership philosophy and maybe recommend a great book or two you've enjoyed on leadership?
I appreciate that. And thanks for the kind words. And, you know, as we've gone through this, we've always said there's no manual for dealing with this. My personal leadership style is really about service. I've got this picture that I keep on my iPad, it describes leadership. It has a mountain, and it has a stick figure on the top of the mountain and it says "boss". And basically that person's looking down at everyone else like, good luck down there. And then on the side of the mountain, it says leader. And that person's on their stomach and they're lifting people up. So to me, it's about service. It's about helping others. It's about a greater-good mentality. And so that's really the leadership style that I apply. And I said there's no manual, but we do read books, and I've got a few. I was able to prepare. So here's one that I really like, it's called Extreme Ownership. It's by a guy named Jocko Willink. He's a former Navy Seal. I'm a big John Maxwell fan, and this one is his newest, called Leader Shift, so it's sort of shifting the mentality of leadership. We can't go anywhere without our faith, and this is a great one (The Leadership Lessons of Jesus). It has so many practical lessons. I've actually pulled it out during all of this because it's got really practical stories in it. And then Coach Childress gave me this book back in the fall, and it's really about mental toughness. Every day you got to get up, Chop Wood, Carry Water. Chop wood, carry water. And so those are just a few that come to mind. I tell you what, the guy to follow on leadership books is Buzz Williams. You go to his Twitter feed, that guy's amazing. He's so efficient about his reading, and I've learned a lot just observing him and how he leads and how he reads as well. So thanks for that question.
Mike: I wanted to dove tail on the Buzz comment, Ross. I mean, a lot of people wonder how Texas A&M did what they did, and coming off of those 10 wins that Andrew got to witness first-hand courtside. I don't think there's any doubt as to why they did what they did when Buzz has those guys with such buy-in. That's the key of a leader.
Well, you were courtside, Andrew. We all saw it firsthand and really kind of turned the page I think right before Christmas, with that Oregon State win. After really being probably the worst Power 5 team the first month of the season and then to flip it. I think the KenPom stat is amazing where going into conference play we were not favored in any game at all and to get 10 wins, I think we are the only team to do that since KenPom started recording. So pretty cool stuff that we were able to see their with coach Williams.
Mike: Max, from the Class of 2018, writes in from Houston and says, how can we work together to support the hundreds of what he refers to as the invisible Aggies who have been laid off and will be laid off until August or thereabouts?
Great question. I appreciate you asking about that because, you know, sometimes as time goes on we forget about some of these initiatives that get started really early in any sort of crisis. There's a project out there called the Reach Project. They have a GoFundMe page, and it was designed specifically for this. I think I looked it up this afternoon. They've raised about $49,000 and we've been able to promote it, and some of our student-athletes have promoted it, the University has promoted it. So Reach Project, and they have a GoFundMe page. And really, that's the best way that we've discovered to support this particular group of staff members who serve A&M.
Will: This comes from Karen, she wants to know when will athletes be allowed to return and begin workouts, and is June a possibility?
Right now, to me, anything's a possibility. We made headlines...we do know that people are watching this because last week we talked about a July 1st date, right? And then that made some news, and that was reported on. And so we appreciate everyone watching this. I think right now anything's a possibility. We have to keep everything on the table. I've been pointing to May 1st as a sort of time that we really need to see where we are. And so there's a lot of great data points out there regarding where we are as a region, the Brazos Valley, the state of Texas. So right now anything's possible. We haven't been given any sort of clearance. We still have May 31st as the SEC prohibition on any in-person activity, and so we have to determine what happens on June 1st, and we haven't got quite to that point yet. So right now every possibility is on the table. We have to follow all the guidelines that are out there. We have to follow our phase-in program within our state. The NCAA just came out with core principles, and we'll look at that and really kind of blend those principles with the local plans that are in place. And we know that our student-athletes are chomping at the bit to get back to it. Many of them are already here in town, but not being able to come to our facilities not being able to come to campus. So we want to go as really as smart as possible, but as quickly as possible, with the health and safety being first and foremost. We just don't have that exact timeline yet. And all those things are evolving. And let's see how this May 1st reopening goes here in Texas, and then we'll have more information to make those decisions.
Andrew: Ross, can you give us an exact date of the football uniform unveiling?
I wish. Part of one of the challenges with Covid-19 was we were gonna unveil them at the spring game. Well, obviously, we didn't have a spring game. We had a cook off. We had Terry Price's cook off instead. You don't want to wear uniforms when you're eating a lot of meat. So we couldn't do that. Right now there's a little bit of a challenge with sort of that supply chain. And we're trying to get an exact timeline on when we can have some samples here, we can model them. So we don't have an exact timeline yet. It's amazing how many people ask me about it. Hey, when are they coming in? What's the day? I keep asking our folks, and right now it's kind of up in the air, depending on sort of supply chain timelines that we don't really have control over. Covid-19 with some impact on it. The uniforms are made overseas, so we can imagine all the challenges. But we're optimistic. We're hopeful. We know we'll have something, and we're working on some plans, so it's basically stay tuned, to be determined. How about that for a short, long answer?
Andrew: It was exact as you could get.
Mike: Good dance around! I got to say, as people are sequestered, you get back to old topics that didn't frustrate you as badly, but now that we're all going through the Covid situation, Ross, it's come up again about the old UT rivalry and wanting to play the school about 100 miles from here. Talk about where your mindset is and what you're thinking about that ballgame. Has it been a priority for you during out throughout this Covid thing?
To answer that specific question, no. It hasn't been a priority, and it hasn't really been a priority since I got here, last July the 8th when I started this job. But I've gotten a lot of questions about it. Not from Aggies at all. Aggies are like, let's move on. We have moved on. Moved on a long time ago. I get it mainly in the in the social media space. I get it from the media who cover college football and cover the state of Texas. But really, for the Aggies, it's not a topic. It really isn't. Yeah, there was some banter on Twitter yesterday, I decided to reply this morning, and I think people...look, you can't take Twitter too seriously. Twitter is not real life, I hope people realize that. Twitter is not real life. It's a great tool to promote things, but it also, it's just fantasy land sometimes. And so I decided to reply and have a little fun. We've gotta have fun with this. You've gotta be able to laugh at yourself. And so I used the word sites. S-i-t-e-s, instead of sight, meaning eyesight. And I'm not sure a lot of people picked up on that. But we had a little fun and, yeah. We can have fun on Twitter. It's not real life, but that topic is in the past, and we've moved on, and there's a lot of a lot of ground to cover moving forward. Let's make it a championship game matchup, in the national championship game, and I think that'd be a lot more fun.
Mike: Thanks for joining us, anything in wrapping up?
Well, I was just gonna say it's a big week. It's finals week here at Texas A&M, and we also have our BCAs show on Wednesday night on YouTube at 7 p.m. Central time, where we celebrate all the student-athlete achievements and hand out a bunch of awards. We tried to get like Chris Fowler, Kirk Herbstreit, as the host this year. A big-time media personality. And they got me instead. So I'm not sure what happened with that. Maybe just because I'm the new guy, I'm still new enough where they can have me on there. But please stay tuned to that. That will be a lot of fun as we celebrate our student-athletes.
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