Ross Bjork's February Aggie Town Hall

Athletics Director Ross Bjork took questions from the 12th Man during his monthly Aggie Town Hall on Tuesday afternoon. You can watch the event below, and we've have select quotes from the session posted below.

Have a question for Ross? Use the form at the bottom to submit for future shows.

When we left off in January, we kind of had a topic that we closed with. And we got together after that January town hall and thought it would be nice to open with the same topic. And it dealt with kind of your philosophy on scheduling because you continue to get that question, about do you play Texas. How do you schedule, what do you look at, and what is your matrix on evaluating future opponents?

So I like the question. We're booked with a power five game all the way through 2029. So our rotation of those power five games there (Miami, Notre Dame, Arizona State, Louisville), home and home, are with those teams. And we're booked through 2029. So the earliest opportunity that we have to add a power five opponent is 2030. We're in conversations right now with lots of different programs. The philosophy for that particular game, and then we'll talk overall here in a second, is big brands, stadiums that are like-sized stadiums. So think of Big Ten, right? Think of things out on the West Coast. Great places to visit. So although Louisville may have 65-70,000 seats, but really, it's a destination. You look at all those things. So that's really what we're looking for in 2030 and beyond, is those kind of things. 

Overall scheduling? We have eight conference games. Toughest league, toughest division, bar none in college football. I don't really see that changing anytime soon, right? So the eight SEC games will remain. Then we play four non-conference. One of those has been a Power 5. The other three? Two FBS that come here, we pay them a guarantee. And then the other has been an FCS game, and we've been able to rotate that game with a lot of in-state opponents. Community-relations wise, we've been able to keep a couple of those games within the A&M system. Prairie View A&M, Tarleton State come on the schedule. So really that's been the philosophy. And until somebody tells us that we have to change that related to the College Football Playoff, we're going to keep that rotation and keep that philosophy in mind.

Again, if fan attendance and fan experience dictates another route that we need to go? Then you have to look at that as well. We know that the Arkansas game…I'm not sure why we have to keep clarifying this, we've said it 1,000 times…when the Arkansas contract expires at Jerry World, we will move that game back to our campus. I think Arkansas feels the same way. And so that game will add in some years an eighth home game. As we look out past 2024 there's going to be some years where we have that Power 5 opponent coming to Kyle Field and then the Arkansas game is the home game. So there's some years that we have eight home games because of the way things were already scheduled, the way these non-conference games were already booked. So that's the matrix, if you will. You probably think we're really sophisticated, but we have a website that we go to, it's called Gridiron, and it's all organized and we push a couple of buttons. There's a person who keeps track of that website, and that's where all the games are outlined and monitored. And that's the matrix, if you will.

With the way that A&M is trending, if TV comes to you and says, we want you in one of those preseason games, that becomes another conversation, doesn't it? 

Yeah, but we're booked. We're booked until that 2029 timeframe. And that's the whole Texas thing keeps coming up, like, hey, we'll move…it's not that easy. It's not that easy just to slide things around and move things around. There's no reason to play that game. And the earliest you could even play it is 2030 and who knows what the landscape looks like by that point in time. And so if we're approached by those neutral-site games, then it’d have to be 2030 or later because of the way we're scheduled out right now.

When do we expect to know what maximum seating capacity at Kyle Field will be this fall?

We sent out season ticket renewals on February 2nd, and we really based those renewals off of the 2019 season, right? Because last year we were limited at 25 percent. And then, anybody who was a new season ticket holder in 2020, those are the people that got a renewal form to renew. So if you opted out of the 2020 season but you had tickets in 2019, you got a renewal. And so those renewals went out on February 2nd. Our approach as we sit here today on February the 23rd is that we will operate at full capacity, that we’ll have full stadiums, will have the full experience. We'll have the Aggie Band back on the field. We’ll do all the things that we normally do. There may be protocols. We may be wearing face coverings. We don't know all those answers yet. But that's the plan as we sit here today. Full stadium, full season ticket allotment, student section full. People are going to be vaccinated at a really, really high level, those are all the projections. The whole herd immunity, all those things…we should be just in a much better place. But if we have to pivot, we know we can. We've said the virus will dictate. But as we sit here today, that's a great question, and I don't think we've really said anything officially. We appreciate you asking that question. So renew your tickets, buy new season tickets, and let's fill up Kyle Field like it should be.

The other thing, and I wrote this down on my notes here when we got the question, is there was a study that was just put out by medRxiv, and there were four doctors, Georgia Tech, Boston Medical Center, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard was intertwined in here somewhere. A study of all NFL communities, all NCAA FBS communities that hosted football with fans, and basically the bottom line study was they could not detect a spread from any attendance of live football games from last fall. So again, great data, vaccines coming. All those things are in place. And so we just need to stay the course, stay diligent, keep wearing our masks, hopefully get vaccinated, and that's our plan. Full stadiums.

When is the football team locker room going to be renovated? It seems like Alabama and other SEC schools are renovating. Ours last took place in 2014.

It's a great question. I would say if COVID had not struck last year, we had lots of plans and concepts going at the time to look at the Bright building and see what kind of refresh we needed to do there. And we're just talking football, but what does our indoor practice facility need? It's a little short. It's a little narrow. Jimbo really likes to use that pretty much every day. That space needs a look. An example is our player lounge is across the walkway from our locker room. Normally, your player lounge is integrated into your locker room space, so we need to look at all of that. Our team meeting room is probably too small now, believe it or not, because of the size of the staffs now. Your rosters may be a little bit bigger. And so we need to look at, can we make that team meeting room a little bit bigger? We need more academic space. So the point is, it's on the list. We dusted off all of those master plan concepts, we’re reviewing all those things now. it takes a lot to kind of ramp these things up. It's not like you can just put it on a sheet of paper and draw a few things out. It takes architects and engineers and campus planning people, so we’ve re-engaged that process. Those things are moving forward, but it's kind of in a really, really quiet phase. You won't see a lot publicly, but things are happening behind the scenes.

The Pavilion at Ole Miss is a spectacular college basketball venue and was constructed during your time as AD there. What would it take to get a maroon version of the Pavilion in College Station for our men's and women's basketball teams?

Another great question. And honestly, something that is on the list in terms of looking at all the master plan and the different concepts. Really the question is, Do you renovate and expand Reed Arena? Or do you build a new one? And that's really his question, can you build a new arena, a new pavilion, which is the name there at Ole Miss. 

The question about new is location. Where would you put it? The other complicating factor…West Campus. Although it seems like it has a lot of space, a lot of that space is accounted for. Either there's a parking lot there, so you have to mitigate loss of parking, or it’s planned out for the next round of capital projects related to academics. So one is site. The other thing is, we have a beautiful Cox-McFerrin Center, and we have just spent a lot of money updating the locker rooms in there, the lobbies, the hallways, the offices, and that's where we operate day to day for men's and women's basketball. And so if you put a new arena somewhere else, you kind of lose that detachment of: we operate here day to day, we walk right into Reed and we play the games. And so, at this point in time, I would say we're more focused on a renovated and expanded Reed Arena. And when I say expanded, I don't mean necessarily seating capacity. I mean amenities. Premium seating. Wider concourses. Better restrooms. One of things that I love about The Pavilion design is, the way we designed it, pretty much no matter where you stood in the building you could always feel the game. You could hear it, you could see it and if you were standing up a drink rail eating a hot dog you're watching the game, and then you could go back to your seat. The thing about Reed Arena is the concourse is cut off from the seating bowl. We have cinder blocks and doors. And so how do we expand the kind of the connection to the game no matter where you are in the building? How do we make the student section more impactful on the game? Right now they’re in the end zone. Those are all the things that we want to study. So I would say that we would lean at this point in time to a renovated Reed Arena because the new one comes with a lot of complications. We’re studying those things again. We hope to have some progress here in 2021 at least in terms of what's feasible, what's possible, what those concepts are. And then, what I always say about capital projects, it's time and money. Takes time to get everything going. Takes time to plan. Takes time to raise the money, and then you have to obviously be able to finance it in some way, shape or form. Luckily, we're at Texas A&M, we have resources, we have people that will commit, and we just need to put that vision together. COVID got in our way, so we’re going to dust these things off and get back after it.

Can you explain how A&M men's basketball missed seven straight games because of COVID? I thought it was a two-week quarantine.

We were ready to go. We were ready to play Alabama last week and then the weather canceled the game, and then we had another positive case within our program. We actually have individuals within our program that are symptomatic, and so their ramp up time, their recovery time to get back to full speed, has been longer because there have been some symptoms. And so again, health and safety is number one. That's the number one priority. We said that from the very beginning. If it takes us a little longer to get back into a safe environment, then we're going to take our time, and whatever it is, it is. We were going to play Alabama with six or seven players, Arkansas six or seven players. But we had that latest positive test which extended some quarantine period for some people. The other thing about it is we've been so good for six months. We had no positive cases within our program. One of the protocols is if you had been positive earlier, you are clear from any testing or quarantine for 150 days. So anybody that tested positive last summer, that 150-day window is gone. We didn't have that to work with. And so it just it compounded itself. It's unfortunate, because we want to play. Buzz has made that very clear. Whenever we're able to play, we're going to play. That's the compounding elements that made the two-week period, if you will, just a little bit longer. And it's unfortunate, because our guys want to play. 

Are there any plans to get the tennis program an indoor facility?

Yes, it's on the list. It's part of our master plan. But also there could be some unique things in the community as well, to maybe even partner with some community resources as well on an indoor tennis facility. Because really, for college tennis, you only need it when you need it, when there's inclement weather. The rest of time, you're not in there practicing. Tennis really is meant to be played outdoors. And so we're looking at some partnership opportunities. Do we build our own facility here on campus? That conversation has been in the works even before I got here in the summer of 2019. Again, we're dusting all those things off. We're engaging now in conversations so hopefully we can announce some things in due time. We definitely need an indoor tennis facility, no doubt about it. We are the last program in the SEC that does not have access to sort of a dedicated indoor facility. So it's a need. We need to have it. And it's on the list, as they say. 

Can you explain everything that went into moving that student section to right field?

I thought it was great, and it was loud. I walked in probably right at the first pitch, and it was loud. And I was like, wow, where is this coming from? Oh, yeah, right field. We were full based on capacity of social distancing. Really, where it originated from, is we know where our students normally sit in the upper deck. And as season ticket renewal process and people opting into season tickets started happening, we said, you know what? We're not going to be able to accommodate our students like we normally would. What can we do? And so Kevin Hurley put together a plan with our facility staff and with our external team and our ticket office. What if we added bleachers? We can have them erected for the entire season. So we did that on the berms and then obviously there in right field. And I think based on the first weekend it was a big hit, that's for sure. And it also gives us a glimpse…again, it's another project that is on the master plan list: we need to do more things at Blue Bell Park. There's more opportunity there. Whether it's outfield seating, whether it's more premium seating, whether it's more student seating, there's definitely demand. There's definitely a need. Aggie baseball fans are the best, and we need to provide those resources to them. It's something that it kind of gives you that glimpse…boy, right field, that's possible, right? Look at that section out there. And so, if anything, it kind of sets the stage hopefully for the future.