Athletic facilities ready for extreme makeover
Bjork says A&M has raised nearly $100M for overhaul of football and track complexes
COLLEGE STATION — The shoddiest facade of the Texas A&M horizon is about to change looks for good — and for the better.
“At the start of school we'll start to see major progress, where the skyline changes,” A&M athletic director Ross Bjork said of the demolition of the Aggies' old indoor track and field complex along Wellborn Road. “The building should come down toward the middle to end of August. Things are on track; things are moving.”
The adjoining indoor football complex is scheduled to be torn down after bowl practice in December, so the A&M football team still will have it for the 2022 season. The new indoor football complex and its much more architecturally appetizing design — which takes the footprint of the old indoor track building — is scheduled to open in August 2023, Bjork said.
The two cheap-looking buildings that appear to need an air pump (they don't) have been in place for about the past 15 years and have served their purposes, but they will be casualties of
A&M's aim to raise $120 million through its fundraising arm, the 12th Man Foundation.
Bjork said A&M has raised just shy of $100 million for the massive overhaul of the football and track areas of campus (visit thecentennialcampaign.com for more information).
With SEC media days on tap starting Monday in Atlanta — A&M coach Jimbo Fisher takes the stage Thursday as the final of 14 coaches to speak — Bjork touched on a handful of topics with Hearst Newspapers, including the latest in conference realignment.
“We're really in a position of strength as things continue to cycle,” Bjork said of the Southeastern Conference's alignment as UCLA and Southern Cal prepare to exit the Pac-12 for the Big Ten in 2024. “From a personal perspective, I hope that the waters remain calm (overall), because where all of this is headed, I don't know if it's good for college athletics in general.”
Texas and Oklahoma are scheduled to join the SEC no later than the summer of 2025 and likely sooner, giving the nation's most powerful conference 16 teams. Bjork's hope is that the realignment waters do indeed settle in coming months and years.
“We need all kinds of programs and all kinds of leagues to be successful,” Bjork said of conferences like the Big 12 not only surviving but thriving moving forward. “We need competition and we need College Football Playoff expansion. (But) the great thing about being in the SEC is that we're in a position of strength.
“… There are a lot of things that need to be sorted out, but we've got to all stay together for the health of college sports.”
Bjork realizes right now that's easier said than done with multiple hot topics sizzling on the pit, among them the future of college sports one year into athletes being able to benefit financially from their name, image and likeness (NIL). He added that A&M and its student-athletes and donors have handled the logistics and newness “really well” one year in.
“The flip side is where is the market headed, and that's the part you can't control,” Bjork said. “You don't know where it's headed. … (and) the university and the athletic department can't be involved in arranging or facilitating (NIL) agreements.”
That's led to more of a free-for-all with different states having different laws regarding NIL — creating an imbalance that Bjork said the federal government will need to address at some point.
“Should there be or could there be more involvement from the university?” Bjork asked of schools trying to get a better grasp of the goings-on of NIL. “… Overall (at A&M) it's gone really well, and our student-athletes are handling things very maturely and communicating (contracts and agreements) with us. They're following state law.”
Fisher, who's entering his fifth year at A&M, said in part earlier this summer: “The answer is there is no answer (right now), but we have to have uniformity. Players do deserve (money) — they've earned the right to have those things. How you get to it or things that go on — that's where the debates go on . ...
“When you combine (the transfer portal) with NIL, (people) use them for inducements and enticements, and that's wrong. … Boosters cannot have a factor in any of those things, and they shouldn't. (But) they do, and we've got to have some uniformity across the board.”
Bjork, too, is having a hard time figuring out future travel arrangements for sports like tennis, soccer golf or track, among others, in a geographic backdrop like the future Big Ten. The SEC, for instance, has only added programs in the past decade requiring the crossing of rivers or state lines.
UCLA and USC will have to cross mountains and a desert and in some cases the entire country to compete in their new league. Bjork, who's in his fourth year at A&M, was a senior associate athletic director at UCLA from 2005 to 2010, and he understands the many challenges facing the once-prominent West Coast program in a league that has fallen far behind on the football front.
It's been nearly two decades since a Pac-12 program won a national title in football (USC in 2004), while the SEC has won 12 of the past 16 championships.
“I totally understand (moving to the Big Ten) from a financial and branding standpoint, on the Big Ten side and on the UCLA side, but the question now is logistics,” Bjork said. “How do you (manage) travel across the country? Those are the questions that come to my mind as a practitioner — I get the business side of it — but now how does all that work?
“It matters and it should matter, in terms of the student-athletes' well-being … the time commitment is a big deal and (travel) can take its toll. … The wear and tear of that — it will be interesting to track how they map all that out.”