Ross Bjork's August Aggie Town Hall

Athletics Director Ross Bjork took questions from the 12th Man this week during the first of his monthly Aggie Town Halls of the 2021-22 academic year. You can watch the event below, and we've have select quotes from the session posted below.

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That July 21 date kind of took the collegiate athletics world by storm, when the news dropped that Texas and Oklahoma would join the SEC. Right now, that date is 2025 when they would arrive in the Southeastern Conference. That's going to lead us to our first question. Now that the Texas game will be in the SEC can we get back to Thanksgiving night?

Well, let's address July 21 real quick as quickly as I can. So I've been to SEC Media Day numerous times. I’ve been in the SEC 10 years and I always kind of use it as like a hey, if we're not ready by the middle of July, then you're not gonna be ready, because it's gonna come at you fast. And so I was going there to support our guys and be with our players and Coach Fisher and I was just gonna be a fly on the wall, kind of be in the back. That didn't quite go as planned. They found me. But no, I think if you really take a step back obviously, there's emotion around that whole decision-making process, but you really have to separate the how and the what and that's what I've had to step away from, is look, we don't necessarily like the ‘how’ part of it, right? And we've talked about that and we've addressed that piece of it. But you can't argue with the ‘what’ as college athletics and the landscape changes, it's the most transformative time. We keep saying that and we're going to keep saying it. It's the most transformative time in college athletics. So we're on the right side of the equation. As a member of the SEC, as a member of the best athletic conference, we’re in the state of Texas. Texas A&M and our program is so far along then where we were 10 years ago, 12 years ago, 15, 20, 30 years ago, that you have to embrace the ‘what’ part of it because the world is changing. And so if you really kind of look at it in that perspective, that's how I've separated the ‘how’ and the ‘what’. 

And then A&M, our leadership, we had a decision to make, the Board of Regents, Chancellor Sharp, President Banks, myself…do we want to be in a leadership position? And the answer is always yes. We always want to choose leadership. So over the course of those nine days…and you think about how fast that happened. Nine days, from a Wednesday to Friday. That doesn't happen. So you think about those nine days, it was about alignment and leadership. The ‘what’ part, embracing that, and so now we get to deal with scheduling. How do you map out 16 teams? Not every sport is uniform. Texas and Oklahoma don't have every sport that the SEC sponsors, and then there's a couple that they have that we don't have, let's say like gymnastics. They have men's gymnastics at Oklahoma, they have wrestling. The SEC doesn't sponsor those. So there's a lot of the jigsaw puzzle now to put together, we did have SEC athletic director meetings this past week. We just had the first conversation. So there's gonna be a lot that comes with this. If anyone says it's going to be pods, it's going to be divisions, no one has those answers. It is way too early to determine. We are all focused on 2025. 2025 is when Texas and Oklahoma will come into the conference. It's up to them if they can do anything sooner. But we're focused on 2025 as the SEC, that's what we have to focus on. 

And so as you look at this question, can we get the game against Texas back on Thanksgiving? I think you have to look at the whole weekend. I've been in programs that play on Thanksgiving night. You know what? Honestly, I hear mixed opinions. Some people love it and some people do not like it at all because it does interfere with their holidays, their travel, their family plans, whatever. So you know what, I don't have the right answer. Thanksgiving night should be it, or no, Thanksgiving night should not be it. I don't think we have that answer yet. I would prefer that game be different than a Thanksgiving night from a personal perspective, but let's see what happens. Let's see who's matched up against who. Let's see what happens to rivalry weekend games, let's see what happens to pods, or divisions, or permanent opponents, or more rotation. Let's see what happens with all of that. 

Sorry, this is a long answer. The ESPN/ABC agreement will have a lot more windows. Do we do we play a Friday afternoon game on ABC? Is that a window that's now available, right? There's gonna be a lot more opportunities now that we have that new agreement with ESPN and ABC to say, does it have to be on Thanksgiving night? Can it be on a Friday? Can it be Saturday? Is it prime time? Whatever it is, let's figure it out. But first we have to get to what are the permanent opponents? What's the rotation? When are games getting slotted? All those things have to be determined. We're playing LSU the last weekend right now in our current rotation. What happens to that game? We’ve played LSU a  long time here at A&M. That's a rivalry game. And so what happens to that game? A lot to be determined. So it's a great question. It's a little early to be kind of mapping all those things out. But over the next year or so, there's gonna be a lot of work that has to take place to get to the point where you can answer that in totality. 

We’ve heard of some improvements to Blue Bell Park. Would some of those improvements be adding a right field section like this past year? If so, why not make it like left field at the Dell Diamond where you have grassy berms with an upper deck above it or make it like The Ballpark in Arlington right field?

Well, I think the second word in his question is the most important that he's ‘heard’ of improvements to Olsen Field, meaning we haven't announced anything. So we sent a survey out to our donors, asking some questions about our different projects. There are some images that are floating around related to our master plan. But as far as the specifics, there's a lot of work that has to take place before we get to what goes in left field, what goes in right field, what happens to the grandstands, what happens to the concourses, what happens outside the field. 

To his point about left field, we are limited by the Student Recreation Center because of the fire lane. And that's left field. We have an existing scoreboard. So do you move the scoreboard somewhere to create more space while protecting the fire lane? And then we have our famous railroad (in right field), right? Which is great, it's great character, but it also creates a barrier for anything that can go right up to the fence that protects the rail line there. So we are somewhat limited in the outfield. We're looking at all of it, basically everything that he mentioned is being reviewed. We're looking at outfield seating or looking at grandstand seating or looking at premium spaces. We have a waiting list for season tickets, we have a waiting list for premium seating, so we need all of it. We need all of it. And so we're studying all of it. And as those plans get more developed and further along then hopefully we can be more public about it as those processes unfold. 

There is also capital that is needed for all of this, correct? 

And then, yeah, you have to be able to pay for it. Right. The good thing about baseball is because there is demand we do believe there's annual revenue that can offset funding and debt service and things like that. So there is a revenue opportunity with baseball, where right now we're just limited. We’re limited by around 7,000 seats. And so what does that number get up to? We don't have that final answer yet, but we know that there's potential and we know that with our new hire in Coach Schlossnagle, the energy for baseball is off the charts right now. So let's capitalize on that. 

What happened to the Fan Appreciation Day/autograph day that the football team usually holds? Was it affected by name, image and likeness or was it canceled due to COVID? 

Both, actually. So with the spike in the Delta variant, we wanted to make sure our team is protected so we can have a season, we can play that first game. And so COVID was an issue, but also as we learn more about name, image, likeness and how it works and how we operationalize it and how we educate our student-athletes, it was actually a discussion around both topics. But the safety piece of COVID was the first driver. And then it was like, okay, what do we know about NIL? What about autographs? Is there going to be an expectation of our student-athletes that if somebody walks up and says, hey, can you sign this helmet? Does an athlete say, well, if you pay me $100, I'll sign it. Those dynamics. We just didn't know how those dynamics would play out. But the first thing was really COVID and then because of the changing landscape around NIL. It was a combination of both. I know it wasn't a Fan Day, but the excitement around the open practice, it was great. I thought the turnout was, was terrific. It is hot, obviously, doing it later in the day. I think helped being in the shade there on the west side. So those kind of things, that was really kind of the makeup for, hey, we can't do the fan day, we're not gonna be able to do autographs, we want to keep our players protected. The open practice was sort of a make-up for that.

His question did mention NIL. You talked about July was a busy month, but July 1st was NIL. It's still early in this and we’ve still got a long way to go with NIL, but as we sit here about a month and a half later at this moment, is it about what you thought it would be? Have unexpected things popped up?

You know, honestly, we haven't had any surprises, nothing too complicated, that our compliance folks and our general counsel's office haven’t been able to answer. I think our student-athletes are taking a very methodical approach in how they're addressing this and they're being well-informed, whether it's through our staff, whether it's through representation, because student-athletes can have an agent or they can have an attorney represent them. So I think our athletes are doing a great job of staying on top of it, being cutting edge as they see fit. And then our education platforms, our monitoring, our reporting systems are all going well. So at this point in time, we haven't seen any anything out of the ordinary. But again, as we learn more, what happens with this landscape and how can we as an athletic department make sure our athletes are supported, because we do know that, look, the more Aggies want to do NIL the more advantageous that is, and we want to make sure that we're at the forefront of all that. 

You're trying to stay a step ahead with AMPLIFY, right? You knew going in, we don't have all the answers, but you wanted to stay ahead of everything. 

This has never happened in college athletic history. So what were going to be the issues, the pitfalls, the downside, where there are things that we didn't anticipate but having all the right kind of systems where they can report it. They have a point of contact in our compliance office with Brad Barnes. Then he has resources at his disposal to answer questions. Everything has gone I think according to our plan and now we just have to see where else does it go from here? What are the things that we don't anticipate? 

What percentage of all athletes are vaccinated? Is the athletics department encouraging vaccines? 

It's a great question, honestly. For our total student-athlete population, really, it's ongoing right now. We've had a lot of athletes not here this summer and so they're in their hometowns and we've got reports of them being vaccinated. So when they come back then they'll turn in their vaccination card and we'll be able to log that as part of their health records. So we don't really have a full percentage yet because athletes are going to be checking back in next week. Honestly that mid-80s number that Jimbo reported on, that continues to grow each and every day. I think we'll be in a great spot by the time we play our first game and get into the early part of the season. And actually we know SEC programs are putting out different numbers, but nationally that mid-80s is pretty good. 85 percent was a threshold that was set back in the Spring as, hey, if you can get to that point then your ‘immunity’ if you will with your team is pretty darn good. And so we're confident in our education. We can't mandate it. We can't do that. But yes, we can encourage and educate. And then a lot of things that are happening lately have been student-athletes are asking student-athletes that have been vaccinated, hey, is there any impact? And so actually the peer education has been as good as anything, because I can talk to them all day, you can talk to them, the trainers can talk to them, a coach can talk to them…but they're going to trust somebody who's in their peer group maybe more than they'll trust anybody else. And so that aspect has been really good. I think I've been impressed with the leadership of our athletes who are vaccinated saying, hey, you know what, here's what happened to me. Here's why I did it and other athletes are grasping onto that. So it's been good. 

I feel like your first couple of years in Aggieland have been both productive and trying. What's your most proud accomplishment thus far personally and what accomplishment thus far has had the biggest reaction from the A&M fan base?

Wow, it's a lot to unpack there. Yeah, I think it has been a little bit of both productive and challenging. And as we had our full staff meeting this morning, I kind of ticked off some of those things. I got here in July of 2019, things were going really well that first fall. I was meeting Aggies and really getting to know the place and finding my way around and trying to build all the relationships that you need to build as the Athletic Director, and just trying to figure out how we do things and why we do things and reorganize some things. And then bam. March 13th. Boy, we shut down college sports. And then we had all the social unrest and all those things that happened in the summer. And then we had a polar vortex. We had the like the worst cold snap in a long time here in Texas and we had all kinds of damage in our athletic facilities. And then we had, oh yeah, conference realignment. So I don't know…I guess I'm just bad luck or something. Yes, it has been challenging, but also look at it as the opportunities. The reason why you're at A&M is because you can get through whatever the challenges are, the mindset, the attitude, the resources, the people here at A&M. You can get through all of that. 

And so I would say so far, when I got here we did not have a 3.0 grade point average as an athletic department. We did not have that cumulative grade point average of our student-athletes. And it didn't just happen because I got here. That's not why it happened. It happened because student-athletes perform. Our coaches recruited them the right way and recruited the right ones, and then our academic support staff. But I came in and I said I want to have a goal to have a 3.0 as an athletic department and I didn't think it would happen this quick. But every semester since I've been here, we've been able to hit the 3.0 grade point average. That doesn't get a lot of attention. But if you say, why are we really here? We're here to educate. And so part of educating is being successful in the classroom. To me that's the most proud accomplishment thus far. 

And then what accomplishment has had the biggest reaction from the Texas A&M fan base? Besides putting in white lettering on the Home of the 12th Man sign…we did that in fall of 2019, because you really couldn't see it, right? So we needed some brighter lights. Um, probably the hiring of Jim Schlossnagle. I would say hiring Coach Schlossnagle has been the biggest fan reaction if you will. And then you just look at what he's done in the first, how long has he been here? Two and a half months? If you look at what he's done in terms of the roster and the assistant coaches and the staff, both that he retained and brought with him, I mean he's hit the ground running. The energy and the excitement and the confidence, and we haven't played a game yet. I told him the other day, I said, hey capitalize on being undefeated as long as you can. I think that's had probably the biggest reaction. Now we've had other reactions because of things that have happened, but not necessarily our sole decision making. And you know, like Jimbo said, we ain't done yet. There's a lot more. There's facilities, there's creative, there's growing our revenue base, there's engaging our fans, there's engaging our donors, there’s supporting our student-athletes. Those things are going to continue to evolve. And the fact that we've had to operate the way we've operated the last 18 months where we've been virtual, we've been kind of in our bunkers and now that we're able to get out of that a little bit, I think we'll see a lot more things be accomplished because we're able to provide the right kind of leadership. Because we're gonna be visible, we're going to be active and we're not going to be behind our our Zoom screens all the time.

You said something right after the news broke of Texas and Oklahoma, you said we're ready. Texas A&M is in a much better position now, correct, than when they joined the SEC?

Yeah. And I think that's part of that was part of the emotion, right? For years, that institution, they ran the Big 12, right? And they ran teams off. And so you come from just that position of the history of that, but then you have to remind yourself, oh yeah. We're not the same. Texas A&M is not the same. We're already competing in the best. They have to catch up to us. So that comment about we're ready? We've been ready. We've been ready. What Jimbo is building? What Coach Schlossnagle is gonna build? What Gary Blair said? Those things are in place where we’re already performing at a high level. And so that goes back to the ‘how’ and the ‘what’. Emotional about the how, but the what? Let's go. And so that piece of it has been exciting to really just talk about with our fans and our donors. Look what we've built already, look what's going to happen as things continue to progress. And so here we go.