Ross Bjork's October Aggie Town Hall

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

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We welcome you all into the south end zone of Kyle Field, Studio 12, where I'm Will Johnson with Andrew Monaco and our Director of Athletics, Mr. Ross Bjork. And that means it's time for another Town Hall in Aggieland. This the October edition. As we look forward to the football game here on Saturday night, Texas A&M and South Carolina. It's nice to have you on after two wins in a row and obviously one of them on the road, but one of them against number one, right here two weeks ago over Alabama. I think people are still talking about that and they may not stop talking about it.

So I spoke to a group of students last night and the first thing I walk in, and the host of the event was like, man, that Alabama game. Congratulations. And I said, you know what made the Alabama game great? And he was like what? And I said, we beat Missouri. Because the only way that the Alabama game was going to be great was if you win the next one. Because look, we can't get too high or too low. We talk about that all the time. And he looked at me like, you're right. And I said, and you know what’ll make the Alabama game great again? When we beat South Carolina. 

Now, we're going to celebrate. We’ve got those memories. Those videos are never going away. People are going to remember that game for a long, long time. All the content…I'm not sure how many pieces of content were created, not only by our 12th Man Productions, by our crew, but just think how many cell phone videos are out there. Think how many pictures are out there, think of how many selfies of them being on the field with one of our players or, you know, whatever. So yeah, we're going to celebrate that for a long time. It was an epic night. The script could not have been better in terms of how the game played out. But again, you’ve got to turn the page. if you walked in the building Sunday after Mississippi State or Sunday after Alabama, It's the same approach. Hey, we’ve got to get back to work. Hey, yeah, we lost. That's disappointing. Or, yeah, we won. But we’ve still got things to fix. You’ve got to be ready for the next week. You’ve got to scout the next opponent. That's life in college sports. And at the end of the season, when we see where we stand, then you go back and say, okay. Here's the step-by-step approach. But it was a great night.

AM: Our partner Dave Elmendorf said it was the best atmosphere at Kyle Field he's never experienced, and that's a very large segment that he's experienced.

Yeah, you know what's been fascinating, is the same thing, Andrew. I've talked to people that have been coming to games for 55 years. Another gentleman told me last week he came to his first game in 1968. People that have been coming to games for five years, 10 years, start of the SEC, or 30 years. Best atmosphere that they've ever seen. So I think what's really cool is we have tweaked a few things that hopefully aren't too noticeable but make an impact. And part of that, I think, is one of our first questions. So I won't ruin it. But you're exactly right. People have said that was so cool. I've got to be a part of that. 

Recruiting. Not only for football, but all of our sports had recruits there, and they capitalize on that. People think, oh, a golf student athlete, they're worried about golf. No. They want to be at a place that's big time. They want to be at a place where they see support and they're walking out of there going, hey, this makes an impact on me choosing Texas A&M. So tons of impact because of that atmosphere.

WJ: And as you said, great segue into our first question issued from the 12th Man. How do you continue to improve the atmosphere at Kyle Field, but guard going overboard like the Tennessee/Ole Miss game where things were thrown onto the field by fans?

I think a lot of people witnessed that last Saturday. We all saw that. And you know, that's a shame because if you looked at that atmosphere, it's really good. I mean, Tennessee had it going. They had the checkerboard, the fans. That's a long game. And then you have sort of a controversial spot or whatever and a review and it just really got out of hand. It's unfortunate. And obviously, we have protocols in the SEC that we have to follow. So there's been a lot of dialog within the conference to make sure that we're all doing as much as we can to control what we can control. 

And so how do we improve the atmosphere? If you actually think about the Mississippi State game the week before, think about the fourth quarter, we used a lot of the same elements, if not the exact same elements in terms of the music, and the crowd was still into it in the fourth quarter. It actually helped get the ball back. We still had a chance. Didn't obviously win the game, but we started those elements where we can kind of take over moments versus automatically saying, hey, we have to do this read on the PA system, or, we have to show this video. It's a much more nimble script because you want to be able to kind of dictate off the atmosphere. 

Look, we needed that crowd in the fourth quarter against Alabama. And I think if we would have had sort of the old type of script and not been able to be nimble, then what would have happened, right? And so I think flexibility, nimbleness, will continue to be part of how we do things. And then how do we improve it? I think that's just, one, it helps to win. It helps to have atmospheres like that where people say I had a blast. What an experience. I'm coming. Back. Doesn't matter who we're playing, so we need to continue to have those kinds of atmospheres. We need to have as much interactive things in technology. The other thing about is ticket pricing, right? We had the Gig ’Em pass, we had the Flex Pass this year. You've got to be able to provide it. A lot of we sold a ton of those basically using the Alabama game as an anchor. I think that helps atmosphere as well.

So all of those things tie in. Your videoboard, your ribbon boards, your music. The students are unbelievable here. So obviously you have to use them as the anchor for your atmosphere. So all of those things are continuing. 

The sportsmanship side, I hope that really starts well before the game, the culture of A&M, and the values that we have here at A&M. I mean, what's the reputation around the country? When people say Texas A&M? They say those people are so nice, they say ‘Howdy’ when you walk up. Those people at Texas A&M, that's our reputation. And so it's really up to everybody within the Aggie Network part of our family, to say, hey, we have to uphold that. I'm not going to let you throw that bottle. Hey, Andrew, when you get mad at that official, I'm not going to let you throw that. So we have to really do a great job of really kind of self-policing. I thought the students did a good job of that after the first game, right? We had some, we had some not so good things said, students stepped up. And you know, it's gotten better. So those are all the things that that we think about when we talk about atmosphere at Kyle Field and in our other sporting venues as well.

WJ: Our next question: Speculation is going around that Jimbo Fisher's contract extension before the season started was to head off LSU or any other program from luring him away from A&M. Can you confirm that this played a role in pushing for his extension this early?

So look, here's the here's the thing about all of this is the landscape is going to keep changing. The marketplace in coaching is going to keep changing. And what we did is, this summer, I always look at our coaches contracts and say, okayt, where are we? What's the marketplace? What can you project in the marketplace? Jimbo signed a 10-year deal here. That was intentional because Texas A&M, the leadership at that time, wanted to say, we’ve got to find the right person, and then you have to commit to that person. You can't have these roller coasters. 

And so as I was analyzing Coach's situation, I said at the end of this year he'll have six years left. Things are going great. Momentum in all kinds of phases. Wouldn't it be great to sort of reset a 10-year window? Let's reset back to a new 10-year window because we want to show commitment. We don't want to leave any doubt on anything. And then you say, okay, what is the market going to look like? I like to, in these kind of situations, do it before we ever play a game, which is what we did. And we were working on it, obviously, this summer. 

Sam Khan actually had a great article this week in The Athletic, where he did a summary and actually talked to me on Monday morning and I told him, we initiated it. A lot of times people think that we sit back and wait on a coach’s agent to call us. We were proactive. We initiated it. We said, How about this? Coach and I talked. Hey, coach, we want to show commitment. We want to reset you back to a 10-year period. We want to be proactive about that. Hey, what do you think? Should we do that before the season? Yeah, let's try to get it out of the way. Let's try to tuck that away so we can focus on what we're trying to accomplish in 2021. So that was really it. 

And I said to Sam Khan in the article, control the controllable. What can we control right now? I don't know what jobs are going to open. I don't know if LSU’s going to come open. I don't know if USC is going to come open. I don't know if Washington State's going to open. But I know what I can control, and that is our contractual situation. And so that's what we did. All the uncertainty in college athletics, all the transition that's happening. These things have to be a part of that, in terms of stability, and so we took the initiative and got it done. And we have a lot of support. President Banks, so supportive. Chancellor Sharp at the system level, so supportive. Our Board of Regents…I have talked about that. There's great alignment and you don't get these things done unless you have that kind of alignment and that's what happened as well.

WJ: And that support. If you didn't see Jimbo Fisher’s comments Monday at the press conference, just his thoughts on this place and that support. He made it very clear about how he feels about Texas A&M.

I think he left no doubt in his comments, right?

AM: Because he's always said Aggies are genuine, right? And I think Aggies know that Jimbo is genuine also, right?

Well, the fit is so perfect, right? I mean, the mentality of really kind of how Jimbo's build and how he sees things. That's an Aggie mentality, right? Just hard-nosed, blue-collar approach. We're going to outwork everybody. We're going to be very intentional. And then I think he said something about he likes to hunt and fish. So I think I think those things kind of kind of help in terms of our geography here in Texas. So no, it's great. It's exciting. We want to keep all this momentum going forward. And to me, continuity is a part of that. And my job as the athletic director, probably my most important job, is do we have the right people? Because they impact our student-athletes. Which is ultimately why we're here. And if we have the right people, then let's make sure we can keep that continuity.