We welcome you all to the south end zone of Kyle Field on this January afternoon, I’m Will Johnson with our Director of Athletics Ross Bjork. It is yet again another Town Hall, our first one of 2022. We took the holidays off, so it’s good to see you again. First of all, I trust Christmas went well for the family and everybody was nice?
Obviously, we wish we were in Jacksonville for the for the bowl game. But things happen, unfortunately for our young men, but no. It was great to sort of decompress and kind of get re-energized and get your spirit sort of re-galvanized into the new year. I’m still getting used to saying 2022. It’s January 25th and you’re still writing 2021 on it. I mean, it’s been 25 days. You’d think I’d learn by now. But I still when I sign something, I’m like, oh yeah, it’s 2022. So yeah, I’m a bit excited and ready to go.
Absolutely. A good line of questioning from the 12th Man, as always. And remember, if you have a question for Ross in the future, you can go to 12thman.com/AskRoss. We had plenty come in through that platform for this show.
Before we get to the line of questioning, though, Ross, you just spent some time at the NCAA annual convention. First and foremost, on the docket there was a vote essentially on the NCAA constitution and for those out there, can you kind of tell us what last week meant?
It was big time stuff. You know, we’ve got a couple of questions about basketball in here. And unfortunately, because I was at the NCAA convention, I was not here at the Kentucky game, so I didn’t see Reed Arena in action like that. I watched on TV, of course, and paid attention to every single play. But I missed all the atmosphere and the in the energy that was here.
So yeah, we were in Indianapolis. There’s an annual convention every year, but not every year do athletic directors have to go. I remember going in 2014 when we voted on changing legislation to have the autonomy schools, the power five schools, have more voting power. I remember that convention. I went like in 2016 or 17. And then I went in 2022. So we don’t have to go every year.
This year was pivotal. And really, what it does, the new constitution, it went from like 43 pages down to 18, which still sounds like a lot. But you’re talking about governing college sports, so it needs to be accurate and it needs to be all-encompassing, as much as it can. But we wanted as a membership to shorten the Constitution, to really get at the heart of what should college sports be all about? And then, what should be the role of the NCAA? So what the constitution did was it left Division III and Division II primarily the same. Gave them a little more autonomy, but primarily the same. But it really carved out Division I, where we can create a new governing body, a new governing board within Division I, we can have more autonomy to then go pursue Division I ideals and not get hung up by things that don’t apply to Division II or Division III. So it allowed Division I to have even more autonomy.
Now, the real work begins. So the vote essentially was kind of perfunctory. It was sort of routine. There was a little bit of debate. There were some folks that stood up and made some points here and there, but it was 80% in favor of changing the constitution. 20% were not in favor. Now the work begins to redefine what Division I should be all about. Do we need to deregulate recruiting rules and other rules around the NCAA rulebook? How do we change enforcement? What does the scholarship model look like? Should there be more things allowed if you can afford to do it? Things like that are all going to now come on the table, so between now and August, there’s going to be a lot of work and a lot of people are going to hear things about, Oh, Division I is now changing this. Division I is now adding this. Division I is deregulating this. So you’re going to hear more about it. But last week set the stage for even more change that will benefit college athletics.
Even in Division I, the largest division, maybe some schools don’t exactly think alike in what they can do with resources and things like that…so this allows Division I to have even more (autonomy). And then within Division I, there’s 351 members. So there’s a big difference between Quinnipiac, let’s say, and I’m not picking on them, but Quinnipiac andTexas A&M, right? Or Florida Gulf Coast and Alabama? There’s a big difference there. And so how do you coalesce around, hey, look, if Alabama and Texas A&M can do this, we shouldn’t necessarily be held back by votes of 100 other members. Allow us to do those things, allow it to be permissible. Maybe there’s a flaw, if you will, that allows certain things to happen. And if you want to go above that, then you’re allowed to do it. So that’s really what’s on the table for this Division I process from here.
We’ll start here with this question, because some of this was in the news recently as you were out in Indianapolis. The ACC and others blew up the playoff expansion, essentially, (the question) says, until at least this TV contract ends. Do you think there will be a new set of pressure on non-SEC schools to join the SEC? And if so, is there a ‘tipping point’ in additional schools joining the SEC that domino into a super conference?
Yeah, there’s been a lot that’s happened around the College Football Playoff expansion, and really all of this started back in June of 2021, when there was a group that studied expansion and they came up with a model where it was going to be 12 teams and there were some parameters. And then the other commissioners were supposed to review that and essentially were going to approve it, maybe sometime in like July or August of last year. Well, then you had expansion. You had conference realignment that happened. Everybody hit the pause button. There’s people that are now in commissioner’s roles that were not in the room, if you will, when all of this discussion started a couple of years ago. So they had to get caught up to speed, and now we’ve essentially hit the pause button on any sort of CFP expansion before the end of the current contract, which goes through the 2025 season.
To get specific on his question, do you think there will be new pressure for non-SEC schools to join the SEC because of all of this? I don’t think so. I think 16 is where we need to sit, until we get through some of this NCAA transformation process. To me, we need to be comfortable with with where we are. One, we don’t even know when Texas and Oklahoma will come in for sure. 2025 is what we’re modeling and planning for. But does that happen sooner? So I don’t think there’s going to be any new pressures for programs to want to look at the SEC. There’s contracts in place in other leagues. So who’s even available? I think the SEC should sit tight. I don’t see a lot of people reaching out to us and saying, ‘Hey, we’d like to join’, because of their contractual relationships. And then, is there a tipping point for additional schools joining the SEC that might domino into a super conference? I don’t know. If it’d be College Football Playoff related, that would be a tipping point, I think, as we go through this Division I transformational process. You’re going to have more tipping points in those categories where maybe there needs to be more alignment with more like-minded schools, if you will. I think you would see something like that come out of any sort of Division I transformation. Maybe the decision is only expand to eight. Maybe that becomes the new proposal. I don’t think that would be a tipping point. I think it’s going to be more around what is our NCAA? What’s our identity as college athletics? What’s kind of our business model around the student-athlete? What’s their scholarship model look like? I think you would see that as a tipping point versus the playoff, if you will.
So I think my guess and, again, it’s a guess, because things can happen rapidly. I think realignment is stable for now. But as we go through this transformation, that’s where you could see people say, ‘Hey, wait a second, this isn’t the model that we desire because we want this’. And are there enough schools that are like-minded in this category that would want to change that model? So I think we’re still several steps away from any sort of tipping point, but he brings up a great point related to the CFP, but also interrelated to what we just did last week with the NCAA constitution and now this review and Division I. And in some way, shape or form, people always want to talk about who’s going to join what conferences, right? It’s because it’s fascinating. It is. I mean, people track it. It’s fascinating when it happens…people love to follow it.
And now we move to a trio of basketball questions. As we mentioned, Buzz Williams and the men headed for Baton Rouge. They’ll play LSU at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center. Good luck to coach and the guys, and that’s where Andrew Monaco, our friend, is heading out there with him. Basketball’s off to an excellent start. We got this question a little while back, dealing with a curtain of distraction within our crowd and the student section. It’s something they do at Arizona State. If you’ve seen it, they kind of open a curtain when the opponent shoots free throws.
When I saw this question here, the first thing that came to mind is we need to remodel Reed Arena. We need seats that are closer behind the basket. I’ve seen our students be really creative. They sometimes stand one way and then as the person is getting ready to shoot, they shift over to the left or right, so I’ve seen us do some creative things like that. But the challenge that we have is there’s a gap of 12 to 15 feet between the back side of the basket and the front row. And I wish we had students closer. So as we look at remodeling Reed Arena, I think those are the things that have to come into play. How do we get our students more engaged in the atmosphere for basketball? Look, we changed a lot of things this year. I don’t know if a lot of people have noticed, but I think there’s more interactive music, there’s more hype music. We’re using the DJ more, if you will, inside Reed Arena to keep the crowd pumped up. Our Yell leaders, obviously are traditional and they do a great job. But even they realize that, hey, we need to make basketball a better environment. So I think we’ve done some things to be more creative.
Sticking with basketball, and you mentioned you would like to see those students closer to that court over at Reed Arena. This question asks, simply, when is Reed getting re-done?
You know, it’s funny. During the Kentucky game, we had some challenges on game day with seating and things like that. And that’s what I kept getting, is when will Reed be re-done? When can we renovate Reed? When can we refurbish? And you know, I always say in facilities, facilities are about time and money. It takes time and obviously you have to have the money to do it. And so because we’ve been in this pause, because we’ve had COVID, it’s hard to believe it’s been almost two years. We’ve had to hit the pause button on several things around the athletic facility world. And one of those is really doing a comprehensive study and review of Reed Arena. So it’s on the list. I don’t have an exact timeframe.
We have talked to the University about, is this a University/Athletic Department partnership? Because that building is used by graduation, by Breakaway. There’s a lot of events in there outside of Athletics. And so what kind of funding model could you come up with? What kind of design elements? What’s appropriate to maintain graduation? So I believe Reed will be answered soon, but there’s a lot of pieces that take place. And again, I still haven’t been able to answer the question, is it a renovation or do you actually look at possibly a new building? So I think you still have to be able to answer that question as well. Is it a renovation which would be, I think, a great facility? Or hey, is it time that you look at a new venue? You keep every option on the table as you study these things. Time and money is what goes into facilities, but it’s definitely something that we’re focused on. And once we get to it, we’ll have a great plan one way or another.
The next question asks how do you make sure Reed Arena is prepared for a big game? It references the long line of students outside before the game.
Yeah, I think outside there’s a couple of things. One, you love the enthusiasm that our students were there, they were standing in line. So I don’t think that’s a bad look by any means because I think it shows excitement. I had video sent to me of people pulling up and students are wrapped for blocks and blocks. So I think that does create excitement, urgency. Now what happened with that record crowd is it exposed some things operationally that we need to get better on, that we need to tighten up on. We need to communicate better. We had a deep-dive debrief after that game to say, okay, we need to make sure that our expectations for basketball game performance are at the highest level and we don’t want to take any shortcuts. How do we make sure we have the best experience possible? It did expose a few things moving forward, but we can clean those things up and they’re fixable. And I love the fact that we had 6,000 students that we allowed in the building and that’s the most ever. Yeah, we had to turn some people away. Yeah, we had some confusion when people got inside. But again, we can fix those things. And the key takeaway is people want to watch this team, right? This is a fun team. You were entertained when you came to that game. You’ll be entertained when we play South Carolina on Saturday. Get to Reed. I wasn’t here. You (Will) were here when Reed was going early in the Gillispie era. It was the place to be. Let’s get it back to that, and we know Aggies can do it. It feels like it’s trending that direction. It’s good to have these problems when people say, hey, I want it to be better because it was packed.
