Ross Bjork's June Aggie Town Hall

Athletics Director Ross Bjork took questions from the 12th Man during his monthly Aggie Town Hall on Tuesday morning. 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.

Is there a timeline for the renderings that have been released for upgrades to the football complex and a new academic center, as well as other planned facilities? 

Yeah, I'm assuming he's referring to…so, there's different approval processes that we go through and one of them is called the Council for the Built Environment, which is a Texas A&M University committee. And so the thing that we're doing right now is we're getting all of the internal processes and procedures lined up so that we can essentially start fundraising. And so I think that's what he's referring to about the ones that have been released. We haven't released anything official. There's still processes to go through. There's still Board of Regents approval to go through. There are still initial fundraising phases that we have to go through. And so we want to get all of the processes and procedures lined up so that we can accelerate things on the back end. So we don't have an exact timeline on when things will be released or announced officially, but these processes and procedures allow us to keep things moving forward. We want to be as aggressive as possible, but we also have to follow standards and procedures and protocols along the way. 

And then you also have to have the money. The financing piece is very, very important. And we've got the best fundraising organization in college athletics in the 12th Man Foundation. We're working with them directly on what's our plan, what's our timing, and all of those things. So people really won't see anything public for quite some time because of all of these internal procedures and processes. And then the funding mechanisms have to come into place as well. We want to look at everything, we want to look at our entire master plan, our entire scope of all of our athletic facilities because we want to get it right and we really want to set the course for that 10-, 20-, 40-year period where, hey, let's do it all the right way. Let's have things in place that we can have some longevity with our facilities as well. Lots to do. And it's going to be a busy year in 2021 around athletic facilities. 

The next two questions come from the current student body and their two questions are becoming tradition on the Town Hall. First, any chance of adding a new team in the future, specifically women's and/or men's gymnastics?

There's no plans to add any new athletic teams at this point in time. A long analysis has to take place to get to a point where you're adding sports…the ability of the student body, what's your Title IX situation right now, are there any emerging sports within the NCAA, within the SEC…and so we don't have any plans to add gymnastics, men's or women's. That's probably the most popular sport that gets asked about. People see Friday nights in the SEC, they see those arenas that are packed. And then we also get men's soccer. Is men's soccer a possibility? Right now we are great with our 20 sports that we have. We want to make sure they're all performing at the highest level. We're in compliance with Title IX, and then we just went through a pandemic. So we're still sorting out our finances as we move ahead. We've been able to really do a great job of managing our finances and our revenues, but we also have to stabilize. So there's a lot that goes into it. But right now nothing is playing right now. 

Another one from the current student body: what is stopping us from scheduling Texas for 2034 and 2035 and beyond? Fans and students want the rivalry back, so please bring it back. Thanks and Gig ‘Em.

Boy, lots to unpack here actually. We are booked through the ‘29 season. So we actually have openings for our Power 5 games, if you will, starting in 2030. I don't know exactly what Texas is, but I think they're booked through that ‘30-‘34 timeframe. Honestly, right now, it's not a priority for us. So he says, what is stopping us from scheduling them right now? It doesn't fit our priorities for what we want to do in non-conference scheduling. We do have an obligation to play one Power 5 game a year, and we’re booked through ‘29. So we have obviously Colorado, we’ve got Miami coming up, we’ve got Notre Dame, Arizona State and Louisville. Those are our really our next five Power 5 agreements, home and home. And so right now it's not a priority. He says fans and students want the game to come back. I don't hear that. I hear that very, very small percentage. Mainly the people that I hear from are, don't play them unless it's a playoff, don't play them unless it's a Sugar Bowl game. And so right now it's not a priority. It's not on the radar. We haven't been approached to schedule a game with them and I just don't think it's going to come up. It's going to talk to be talked about in the social media world. The media world will get questions like this. But as far as anything formally, I don't think it's going to come up between us and the University of Texas. And they've moved on, we moved on and we're focused on building a championship team here and that's our priority. 

Honestly, and we'll probably talk about this I'm sure as we get into the fall, College Football Playoff expansion is now on the table. That wasn't a topic the last time we got together, it is a topic now. What is the scheduling philosophy going to be? What will it look like? Not only within the SEC, conference games, but then also nationally. What kind of emphasis will be placed on your non-conference scheduling moving forward right now? The model the SEC has works, and we were close to that last year. And so the model of scheduling in the SEC has worked because we've had an SEC team in the playoffs every single year. You expand to 12 teams, that looks like that's where it's headed, what will be the model that you have to adhere to? And we just don't know that. So we have these games scheduled out through ‘29. But what happens after that? What happens with strength of schedule? All those things. So to me, you've got to keep kind of your powder dry, if you will, that until we know is that for sure--12 teams--what will be emphasis on strength of schedule? I don't know if you'll see a lot of games being announced until people really figure out what the playoff format is going to look like. 

It's a good point because even once you get the format, there's different ways to play it. Once you get even a format that solidified and what your home schedule looks like plays into that as well.

Obviously we're moving the Arkansas game back on campus. So there's going to be actually some years where we're going to have eight home games because of the rotation of that Arkansas game and we've already got some non-conference games booked and the Power 5 non-conference game booked. So there's some years where we have eight (home games). Do we like that? Do we like 7? Do we like 8? So there's going to be some nuance to this thing that you have to sort out and there's time to sort these things out.

Why isn't the Colorado game on the CU campus? College football games should be played on college football campuses. College football is all about the traditions. We will all miss that by playing in Denver and not Boulder. 

I agree with her on playing (on campus). That's why we're shifting the Arkansas game back to campus. I think meaningful games should be played on our campuses. In this case, when the game got cancelled last year, we talked to Colorado about, do we try to get them back at Kyle Field down the road in 2030 and beyond? We said, look, let's just make this a one-game situation, they decided. So then it was kind of their home game. They decided that hey, we like to play in Denver, they’ve played games at Mile High pretty much on a consistent basis…not necessarily every year, but consistently. And they decided that they think they can get more fans. It actually benefits us, because more Aggies can actually have tickets. It's a bigger stadium. Our players, frankly, they like playing in NFL Stadiums. So it's a cool sort of one-off game. I agree with her. We need to play games on campus. Totally agree with that. This is a one-off situation. It does, I think, benefit us by playing the game at (Empower Field at) Mile High. That's how it came together. So it's a one-time situation. But I agree, all of these other games that we have, the Miami, the Notre Dame, the Arizona State, the Louisville. Those are all on campus, home and home. We get Arkansas back on campus after the ‘24 season.

How does that work? Does Colorado call you and say they want to move it? Do you have to agree to that? 

I mean, we did. Absolutely. It became, essentially, your other contract is null and void. Your two-game series contract is null and void. They approached us with an amendment to that contract and say we're going to play just one game. They actually increased the guarantee, they gave us more compensation to play a neutral-site game if you will. But yeah, we had to sign off on it. To me, it worked out this year. I think it will be a neat opportunity to play in Denver, play a big city. Our fans will love it…I just get the feeling that Aggies are excited about going to Denver. 

Are we still on track for a full Kyle Field this fall?

Absolutely. Full stadium, full experience, Yell Practice, tailgating, all the things that we were used to. Essentially think of everything pre-COVID, right? Think of everything in the 2019 season. 

I keep seeing all the stadium announcements. This stadium is 100 percent capacity. This program is 100 percent capacity. And I laugh at that, because we still have to sell the tickets. Which means people have to buy the tickets. So in case any Aggies were curious, the tickets are not free. We do have to sell them. We do have to pay the bills. Season ticket sales are really, I think, going great right now. Our students are back engaged and they're buying sports passes right now. So that's exciting to see. We're pretty much on pace with that 2019 pace of season tickets right now. So that's a good thing again, back to that anticipation, that excitement of the program. But also, we still have work to do. So we want to, we want to get back where, boy, we're trying to max out our season ticket number. 85,000 was about our number in 2019. And we hope we can eclipse that. We've got basically July and August to sell as many season tickets as we can. We have a Flex Pack, we have some other packages where we've been creative to try to again get more people involved. And so we're trying to accommodate as many as we can. But yes, full stadium, full capacity, full experience. But the tickets aren't free. So that means that we need to get to that 100 percent capacity. People need to help us out. We appreciate everything, no doubt. 

You mentioned the sports passes by the students. That was a concerted effort by you to make sure students last year could come to as many events as they could…that was important. 

It was, and obviously we couldn't accommodate everyone. But I do believe that we, again, based on the information we had based on the restrictions, 25 percent capacity, I think we accommodated as many students as we could and we did it safely. There's some people that thought we had more than 25 percent, and that's okay. That means Aggies are loud and proud. But know that that was exactly right. When we were going into this, obviously we wanted to make sure we got as many season ticket holders in there. But then the 12th Man is important and to be able to continue that. So back to the kind of pent-up (energy), what I've heard from a lot of whether it's parents or even students…hey, last year I couldn't go, I couldn't get a ticket. Boy, I'm not missing it now. And so we're actually ahead of pace with our student sales because I think people are like, I'm not missing it this year. There's no way I'm going to miss out on watching my Aggies play football. So it's exciting. 

The Aggies have an advantage of 500,000+ former students. Based on most lists of largest alumni networks we’re top five in the country. Name, image and likeness will allow alumni to hire players to promote their companies. With name, image and likeness only weeks away, how does the athletic department ‘weaponize’ the 12th Man with what business owners can do to beat the hell out of NIL and win the race for the best recruits in the nation?

So name, image, likeness is upon us. July 1st, the Texas law kicks in that allows student-athletes who enroll at our universities all over Texas to capitalize on what's called name, image, likeness. Their image, their brand, if you will. Their personal brand. And so here we are. It is a new day if you will in college athletics. 

You've got three layers of this. You have state laws. So I think as of this morning there are eight state laws that go into effect on July 1 and actually seven of those are in the SEC footprint. Imagine that, competitiveness at its finest. And then you actually may see some executive orders happen between now and Thursday July 1 around other states. There's a couple other states in the SEC footprint, I think Louisiana has the governor about ready to sign. I think Missouri's law starts the end of August. South Carolina and Tennessee I think are January 1 of ‘22. So every SEC state will have name, image, likeness. 

And then you have the NCAA layer, the second layer. They just came out yesterday, and the Board of Governors has to vote on it tomorrow, where states that do not have NIL basically will be open for business as well and that will not violate any bylaws or any rules. 

And then the third layer is going to be Congress. So at some point in time, probably will not happen until the fall, there's going to be a congressional approach, a national standard to all of this, a national law if you will. So we may live under the Texas law for a little bit and then we may have to flip to federal oversight in a federal law. So there's going to be a kind of an involvement to all of this over the next 3-6 months, the next year, as we adapt to it. 

The question is around really the power of the Aggie Network and really, what does that mean for our student-athletes? We could also add the fact that we have 25 million people within 250 miles. So not only do you have the Aggie Network, you add really the population of the state of Texas. There's a lot that we can offer as an athletic department. The trick in all of this, he says, is how does the athletic department weaponize the 12th Man? The only thing that we can do in name, image, likeness is we can educate our student-athletes. We can educate our boosters and our fans. But we cannot set up agreements between an athlete and a business, between an athlete and a booster, between an athlete and an entity who may not be a former student or a booster of A&M Athletics. We can’t arrange anything. We can't set fair market value. We can’t arrange. We can monitor, we can educate. There is a reporting mechanism that's part of the Texas law where student-athletes have to report their contracts to us. So there's a reporting process. And the only thing that we review in those contracts is does it conflict with any University policy? Does it conflict with the Texas state law? What they get, and how they operationalize that on their own time, we don't get involved in that piece of it. 

And so what I would say to the 12th Man to former students, to our boosters is you have the ability to reach an agreement with a student-athlete over name, image, likeness in whatever that business environment will look like. It might be an autograph session. It might be an appearance. It might be a billboard. It might be whatever. And as long as you follow the Texas state law, and as long as the athlete reports that through our compliance department, that I do believe that we can use this to our advantage. That Texas A&M Athletics, that our student-athletes, if you come to A&M, there's going to be opportunity. Whatever that looks like, however that works, is going to be between the athlete in that business entity. 

But our job will be to educate, to monitor, to follow the law, to make sure we're in compliance with the law. We also have the ability to, through the platform of athletics, to amplify. So we have a program called AMPLIFY. That program was announced on our website. We've got videos out there. Our student-athletes have apps that they can go in and file their agreements. We have an agreement with a company called Compass, and INFLCR, who's helping us really keep this organized and keep the educational pieces out there. And then also the reporting pieces. So there's so many layers to this. 

As we sit here on June 29, people keep asking what's going to be the impact? How will this work? No one has the answer to that because it's never happened before. Do I anticipate on July 1 that we'll have some contracts turned in from our students? Absolutely I do. How many? I don't know. I've seen some social media activity with some of our athletes who talk about being ready. They may have some things in place, but until July 1 rolls around, they can't sign anything. They'll have to report that to us. And so I can't really say how it's going to work and what it's going to mean yet, because we've never operated in this space before. But I do agree, we do have a platform. We do have the ability, our donors and boosters and former students, if they so choose, they will have the ability to work directly with student-athletes. Whatever that arrangement is, as long as people follow the state law--because now you're not just breaking the rules, you're actually, if you don't do this the right way, you're actually breaking the law. And so the consequences to that, who knows what that can mean? I could go on and on. 

This is the changing face. You could look at it one or two ways. You could say, boy, we're not going to do anything. We're not going to embrace this. This can be a disaster. This can be the wild wild West. And maybe it will be. Maybe we're not anticipating what might happen. You can also say we have 500,000+ former students. We do live in the state of Texas. We have 25 million people within 250 miles. The brand of A&M is valuable. Our athletes come here. They can utilize that brand to lift them up. So you can look at it as opportunity, and we've chosen to do that. We've embraced it. We’ve put the platforms together, we've invested, we're looking at doing a design studio and things like that, if student-athletes want to want to be creative at a certain level. It'll be fascinating to see what kind of arrangements come in on July 1. What kind of time is committed for our student-athletes? I've talked to some student-athletes and they're like, this is not even on my radar. And then I talked to some, hey, I'm trying to figure it out. I think I've got a few ideas. I've got some pieces here that I'm working on. And then, like I said, I know that there's some athletes that have some things in place and they'll be ready to report those on July 1 and they'll be ready. 

And I know you mentioned you could go all day with this, but if I could throw one more at you, because I think the Supreme Court ruling that we heard about last week, because NIL has been talked about so much and you hear about laws being created in conjunction with that, the initial reaction was the Supreme Court was ruling on NIL. But is it a little different what the Supreme Court ruled? 

So we have the Alston case, which was decided upon last week. We got that ruling from the Supreme Court last week. It was a 9-0 decision which doesn't really happen too often in the Supreme Court, based on when justices were appointed in the political environment and all those kind of things. And so 9-0 was a was a strong statement from the Supreme Court and basically the technicalities of the ruling itself are around academic benefits, cash awards for academic achievement. A lot of the academic benefits we’re already doing anyway. In many ways this allowed more things to happen, more interpretation. The cash award piece is something that’s new. So we're really working with the SEC to figure out, okay, what are the next steps there? What do the technicalities of that truly mean? How would it operationalize what would be permissible, because part of this is the NCAA can set some parameters around it. And so there's still a lot of work to be done on the technicalities of it. I think what we have to focus on also is what was written in the opinions, the concurring opinion in the opinion itself about the business model of college athletics. What does the future hold in terms of the value of the scholarship, the structure of the scholarship? How does name, image, likeness layer into that? So even though name, image, likeness was separate from the ruling, there was conversation in the opinion about really the model of college athletics and the rights of student-athletes. The compensation, that word was mentioned in there, what does all that mean? 

And so I think it just goes back to who are we as college athletics? We need to identify what our purpose is, what our mission is. What is the structure of the scholarship? How do we move forward? Because higher education is not going away. We are still here to get an education, to get degrees, go to class, do all the things academically, that's not going away. But what does have to change is the model of the scholarship and what are the benefits for the student-athletes? And that has to be determined. So we're fortunate to be in the SEC, we've got great leadership, we’re fortunate to be at A&M. We're fortunate to have the Aggie Network. Whatever that model is, we can adapt to it. A&M can be a leader in it. But it's a really a fascinating time, the most transformative time definitely in my career and probably in the history of college athletics. 

The NCAA was formed in 1906. Teddy Roosevelt said we have too many football players being honestly killed by playing college football. People were dying. Yes, we have to fix this. We need to reform. So that's how the NCAA was formed. Fast Forward to 2021. There's going to be a lot of changes. We can adapt. We know that there's so many benefits of athletics, the value of the scholarships, the things that we provide. I mean it's a $90,000 commitment per student-athlete, per year, that Texas A&M provides. And so you layer that across 600 athletes. I mean, we can change lives and we need to get back to, okay, do we need to adapt? Sure. Can we? Absolutely. But what's our mission and who are we? We need to identify that and that's where I'm at with this whole thing. It's complicated, there's a lot to it, but I still think that there's value in what we do, and there's value in people supporting our programs. We're going to invest in buildings and make sure we have all the right resources, and whatever the model is, let's adapt to it. And let's thrive in it. Because we're Texas A&M.