Yell & Review with Ross Bjork

On Monday, Director of Athletics Ross Bjork joined Will Johnson and Tyler Pigg, answering questions from the 12th Man on the latest edition of Yell & Review.

Watch (or listen to) the entire session below--or skim over some of the highlights listed underneath the video. Got questions for future episodes? Fill out the form at the bottom or visit 12thman.com/askross.

Yell & Review: Highlights

• The surface around Kyle Field is being replaced. That project will start somewhere in the in the middle of June. It's going to be a similar type surface to what's down there now. And the reason being is because we have a lot of carts and a lot of vehicle traffic that need access down there. We bring in the cannon. So that surface needs to be a multipurpose surface, if you will, a little bit more hardened maybe then obviously the grass itself. And so yes, that will be replaced this summer with something pretty similar to what's down there now.
• The indoor performance center, that'll be done by the 1st of August in time for training camp. The Slocum-Bright Football complex, this year we're only renovating the second floor. We moved out nutrition, we moved out academics. The second floor is going to be all of our individual breakout rooms for positions--quarterback, offensive line, all the different position rooms. We'll have an individual team meeting room for offense and another team meeting room for defense, and then we'll have a walk-through room for offense and defense that'll attach to all of those breakout rooms. That has to be done by the 1st of August. We report on August 1st and start practice on August 2nd. So the football pieces are coming together. The new Adam Sinn Academic and Wellness Center, we'll start seeing vertical construction on that probably August/September and that'll be open by the start of the academic year for 2024-25. That'll take about a year to to finish. And then what people will see as we get towards the end of fall and into early 2024 is the KAMU building, the current campus TV station building, will come down in to make room for the plaza that ties in to the Academic and Wellness center. That ties into Aggie Park and kind of brings everything together.
• (The back of the Kyle Field video board) is a high profile, visible piece of our athletic complex. And the problem with that piece of material, if you will, is it has to be breathable because of the video board. So it has a mesh screen. Mesh screens collect a lot of dust…and here we are approaching nine years. A lot of dust, a lot of construction, a lot of sun…This has been on the schedule for a long time. We looked at different materials, but again, the breathability piece of it protects the video boards. So it's being replaced with a brand new maroon and white Texas A&M logo. That should be done by the end of June. The fascinating thing about that is the cost to have the scaffolding and the equipment to get to it is about 10 times the cost of the fabric. So it is a massive scaling project. And then we're also replacing the lighting. So we'll actually be able to turn off and on lights. Before we had lights that were positioned up there that were on all the time. So now we'll have lights that we can actually turn off and on and it'll be 10 times better and 10 times brighter and it'll be brand new and it'll just look 10 times better.
• We have our annual SEC meetings starting the the Tuesday after after Memorial Day. So that's presidents and chancellors, that's faculty reps, athletic directors, head football coaches, head basketball coaches, men and women, senior women's administrators, TV executives, all the conference staff, of course. So a lot of heavy, tough topics right now. All the changes going on with NIL, the legal landscape, state laws, congressional approaches, the transition of Oklahoma and Texas coming in a year earlier than anticipated. And what does all that look like from a scheduling standpoint? Just before anybody asks, we have not made a decision on whether we are staying at eight games or nine games. That will be a discussion topic next week and hopefully we can move the needle. I mean, we've been saying that we support nine, but now that it's 2024, a year earlier than planned, that does come with a few more complications. And so we'll have a healthy conversation on it. Hopefully we'll get in a good spot and if not, then we'll have a plan. And that plan will obviously showcase the SEC. No matter what model we go with, whether we stay at eight or go to nine, we're going to see more rotation. Both models have more rotation among SEC members. We haven't played Georgia here at Kyle Field, and we haven't been to Kentucky. So either way, we're going to have more variety in whatever model we look at.