Ross Bjork's February Aggie Town Hall
Feb 24, 2022 | General
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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February Aggie Town Hall - Selected Quotes
It is time for the February edition of the Aggie Town Hall. Will Johnson, Andrew Monaco with you, and as always our Director of Athletics, Mr. Ross Bjork. I would say that we could sit here and chat for a while. And we do have one topic that we need to hit, but we’ve kind of got to get in a hurry with the introductions here because this is the most questions I think we've ever had from the 12th Man.
And as always, you can go to 12thman.com/askross if you ever have a question for our Director of Athletics for a future Town Hall. We do have a matter at hand tonight that we do need to discuss before we get to the line of questioning. Gary Blair and the women are going to take on No. 1 South Carolina this evening on Gary Blair Court, and it is set to be the final time for the legendary coach here at Reed Arena. It's an understatement to say this is a special evening.
Yeah, it's really hard to put into words, honestly, what he's meant to the program, to the community, to the university, elevating not only just women's basketball, but women's sports here at Texas A&M and really setting a standard. So you take all those pieces and then you take the court naming…this is only the third women's basketball head coach who has a court named after them. I didn't realize that when we were putting all this together. And so it's really historic within college athletics that this is happening tonight, where we're naming the court. Thanks to Wayne Roberts and his gift and all the pieces coming together where the timing just fit for all of that.
So you think about that historic moment here at A&M, but also college athletics, women's basketball, the type of guy that Gary is. I was doing a video for some of the production stuff, but they said, what have you learned from Gary Blair? And I said, you know what? There's not one person that you could find anywhere on the planet that would say something bad about Gary Blair. Everybody says that he is a great human being, a great coach. That is rare. Right? Especially in a public setting as a coach. Look, I know there's lots of people that don't like decisions that I make. I get it. And not everyone's going to say, oh, yeah, 100 percent, we like Ross Bjork. But everybody loves Gary Blair. And so to have that sort of legacy persona where he's universally liked, I think is just a rare leader that we have in college athletics. So just a lot to celebrate. I know the season is not going like we wanted it to go, I hate that for Coach and the program that the season's not as great as what we would have hoped. But hey, you take on number one tonight, so let’s see what happens. Maybe there's magic there.
But what a special night for Coach Blair. But not just him, his program. He embraced the community here. I think that's what's been so special as well. I mean, The Bryan-College Station Eagle did the Gary Blair commemorative pull-out section. And the Bryan Rotary Club. Gary Blair has been a member of the Rotary Club since 2004. Who has time as a Division I college basketball coach to join the Rotary Club? But he did it. Yeah, he did it to promote the program. To meet people. I think Gary's one of those people where you can never have enough friends. He's in that in that mold. And that's why he did those type of things. And so, again, just a testament to his transformational leadership here at A&M and beyond. And it'll be it'll be a fun, emotional night tonight celebrating and honoring Coach Blair.
That's going to lead us to our slew of questions from the 12th man and we have plenty of them on this edition and it's good to lead with basketball. So two parts here, what is A&M’s level of commitment to championship basketball? And then, what is the commitment to get a proven coach for the women?
You know, I don't know if they're asking necessarily about the men's program or the women's program when they say championship commitment for basketball here. I would say that A&M, even before I got here, has done a phenomenal job around committing to basketball. Our Cox-McFerrin Center practice facility, you have two practice gyms, men and women. Two locker rooms. They share a weight room, training room, office complex. It's top five, top eight in the country. It's one of the nicest buildings. We just redid the lobby in there, thanks to adidas. And then not only was that built, but then in the last couple of years, we've invested about $6 million in total between the women's locker room, the men's locker room, the training room, the lobby. We've done a lot.
I would say that piece of it is at the highest level in the game of basketball. I believe that on the men's side, we fund our program at a championship level. For sure. On the women's side, we've had a long-term coach. And that kind of leads to the next question, what commitment is there to get a proven women's coach? When we replace Coach Blair, we know that that budget, that number, needs to go up for sure, as we look to our next leader in women's basketball. But I think operating budget, I think day-to-day facility for basketball, we are at the highest level. What needs to happen next is Reed Arena. And we know that. We know that's on the table.
And then, look, we have to do our part. We know that. But we also we asked the community to help create an atmosphere. I mean, that Kentucky atmosphere…can we have that at least 75 percent of the time? That would show a commitment, right? Or get it to 100 percent, where every game…look what Auburn has done. I remember going into that arena when it was first built at Auburn and there was nobody there. The students weren't coming. And now look what that gym has turned into. So we can have the same thing here at A&M. We have the scale, we have the resources, we have the people. So I think we have made a commitment.
And I think now it's about what are the missing pieces for Buzz? How do we be more consistent? We started off great this year. The season's not going as we had all hoped. But if you look at how hard we play, you look at the culture, you look at building a program versus just a one-hit wonder, that's what we're after. That's what Buzz, I know he's built that way. So he's definitely on the right track. It's just how do you get to that next level? But the building blocks are there, and Buzz is just a great fit for what we do. He's got a plan and we're building towards that. COVID was really bad for us. It impacted some programs not at all. It impacted our program pretty severely. And so we can't forget he was the SEC coach of the year just two years ago, right? When the season got shut down. And so we're on the right track. We’ve just got to get to that next level.
And then on the women's side, it's a great market for us right now. We are able to talk to and attract great candidates at the highest level. And we know that that commitment needs to be there on the women's side. I can't tell you exactly when we'll make a hire. It's all dictated based on postseason and who's playing and who's not. But we're going to make a big-time hire in that sport. And that's what A&M deserves…We started hearing from a lot of people right away, because it was before the season. And then when the season starts, people lock into their cycle. But now that the season's winding down, we're starting to engage with agents and search firms. And so we have a really good process to identify the right coach. But you're exactly right. Very similar to baseball. Oh, the A&M job is open? Oh, they've won a national championship. Oh, Gary Blair set an unbelievable standard. Hey, they play in the SEC. They're in Texas. Yes, I want to talk about that job. So the exact same scenario was in baseball last year.
A baseball question…are the changes to game to the game day experience at Olsen Field ongoing? The wholesale changing of the experience has robbed our venue of what made it special and not like and makes it just like every other venue out there.
Yeah, I think a couple of things, here. I think when you when you hire a new coach and have new leadership, it's a new era. And so it gives you a chance to really evaluate all aspects of the program (including) the in-game atmosphere. And Coach Schlossnagle, he was involved. I mean, give him credit. He wanted to be involved because his deal is, look, that atmosphere is going to affect the recruits. It's going to affect maybe the outcome of the game. Look what happened Sunday with the walk off, right? The crowd got into it and impacted the outcome of the game. And so he wanted to be involved in it. So I give him just a lot of credit for not necessarily saying, hey, we’ve got to change everything. That's not what he said. But also embracing, hey, have we tried this? Hey, what about that? Hey, I've seen this work. So I think the assessment about wholesale changing…I think that's a little far. I don't believe that's the case because you could probably rattle off all the list of things that are still in place. Ball Five. The Rifleman. They're still counting engines. Bubbles are still there. Section 203 is back. I mean, even got our Olsen Magic already this year. So there's a lot of things that have remained in place. And so, yeah, we've we've tweaked a few things. We've added a few things. There's some songs that maybe we used to play that we're not playing anymore. So we've tried some things out. We actually had a meeting last night with some folks from section 203. I was not there. And so there's a good dialog about, okay, hey, let's get some feedback from our fans and people that have been around a long time. Again, we're not saying everything is set in stone. We're going to constantly evaluate and evolve. And there might be some things that we say, hey, you know what? This is worth keeping because we changed it. And the other things, hey, you know what? You're right. Maybe we should revert back to the way this used to be. But the bottom line is we should have the best home field advantage in all of our venues. And if that means we need to tweak a few things, then we should be able to tweak a few things while making sure that we always honor and respect the traditions and the legacies of those who came before us. So I'll take a little bit of issue with the phrase ‘wholesale change’. I don't think that's accurate. But we have made some changes and we'll continue to evaluate. We sold out of season tickets. The atmosphere this weekend was unbelievable in all three games. Again, it’s one of those things that’s under advisement, under evaluation, not set in stone. If we need to tweak things back or forward, then we always have the ability to do that.
One of the enhancements and additions to Olsen Field at Blue Bell Park in the 2022 season is the appearance of the Dance Team, right around twice a game on the first and third base dugout during some between innings. Two questions regarding the dance team. First, how do you feel about their presence there? And second, can we see some athletic department support for our Aggie team?
Yeah, you know, I think the dance team enhances our atmosphere. Obviously, we want to make sure it all fits in and it's all linked up. Having them out in baseball is new. That's new. And we thought, can we enhance the energy? Can we enhance the atmosphere? That's one of those things that we're going to try it out. Unfortunately, they cannot be at every game. They have basketball conflicts, they have the national dance competition coming up in April that they can't be at some of the games. So if you can't do it every game, we need to keep that under evaluation. But I think it does. I think it enhances. I think there's a segment that enjoy seeing them. And there's probably some people that are like, why are they at a baseball game? We've never seen them before. But at basketball, it's natural. It's inside and they're on the court. They have their routines.
And then asking about support, I do know since I've been here, we've increased and enhanced our support. I do think it's something that…it's not a sport. I think part of her question was about scholarships and things like that. So it's not considered a varsity sport here at A&M. Some places have it as a ‘varsity sport’. I think we've done a lot to support them. And again, balancing between, you know, we obviously don't have cheerleaders here. We have Yell Leaders. Balancing that aspect and what they stand for versus here's the dance team. I had somebody tell me when they were talking about baseball that when the Dance Team was introduced 30-plus years ago, people said, why are we doing this? So this is not a new conversation. But I do think there's more we can do, whether it's scholarships, whether it's supporting them for nationals, whether it's competitions. Those are the kind of things that we’ll all definitely keep on the radar.
Please give us an update on the construction timeline related to the new facilities approved by the Board of Regents recently, as well as the new approved amount and how that will be used. Will football have access to an indoor this fall?
Yes. So I'll take him in reverse order. Football will have access to the current indoor football facility for this year. That building will remain open and useful for the fall of ‘22. We will have a new indoor football facility that will be open in the fall of ‘23 and so that's related to the indoor football facility, the new amount that was approved by the Board of Regents last week. How it will be used? Honestly, it's really the cost of doing business right now. Supply chain issues, cost of steel. We did make a few tweaks like we're moving our nutrition center from where it is now into the new academic center, so that it’s a kind of one-stop shopping facility. But that wasn't a huge cost increase, frankly. It's just sort of the market. It's the market of where we are. As far as overall timeline, we are going to announce our capital campaign and the timeline for all of these projects in April. We're going to do that in April. We'll have a public unveiling. Some of the timeline is still evolving. There will be work that will take place starting in the month of June this year. And again, those details are being put together, all the exact precise timeline on when are we breaking ground on the new indoor football, when are we breaking ground on academics. Because we actually have to remove the current indoor football and that's where the academic center is going to go. When do we build a new indoor track? Those things are all being developed in between now and April. Those timelines will be finished and we'll unveil everything in in a public setting sometime in April. But you will see things happen. You'll see things happen in June of this year. We'll start moving dirt. We'll start demolishing some things, some tear down of existing facilities and preparing sites and it'll be messy for a couple of years, but the progress will be worth it.
And the final question, any progress on indoor tennis courts?
We are actually working with the City of Bryan on potentially some indoor courts that would be a partnership. And so there is progress. We hope to have some more some more definition of that here in the coming months. But the City of Bryan has been great to work with. It'd be a location that's really, really close to campus. If you had a day like today, we could have planned for this yesterday, right? But let's just say a thunderstorm pops up. This location would be a couple of minute drive to get to the indoor tennis courts and you'll be able to have your indoor match take place there. So we're working on it. I think it's really close. Hopefully here in the next couple of months we can have some more news on that.
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