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Texas A&M AD Ross Bjork explains his mindset toward proceeding in the new reality of college athletics

It’s been a little more than a week since the coronavirus pandemic transformed the sports landscape.

Not for the first time in the last week, Ross Bjork found himself surprised.

Working in his campus office, the Texas A&M athletic director saw a group of Aggies athletes jogging on campus — because they had nothing else to do.

“I almost had to do a double-take, like ‘Wow!’” Bjork said in a phone interview. “It was kind of just a sad moment, because they should be doing other stuff, not just jogging on the sidewalk. We want them competing and practicing and being together in other ways.”

Actually, it was one of many such interludes since COVID-19 transformed college sports as well as the fabric of the country last week. The odyssey for Bjork, A&M and the SEC began at the men’s conference basketball tournament with the decision to limit fan access and quickly ended up in a new reality without March Madness nor any spring sports.

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Bjork admitted his thinking is twofold. One part of him is concerned with what he calls “triage,” based on his current assessment of where everything stands and how to get organized. Athletes had to return to campus from places such as Nashville and Albuquerque. Baseball was about to board a bus for a trip. Even without classes and without sports, 265 of A&M’s 500 or so athletes are still on campus. All training facilities outside of the athletic training room are closed, and the nutrition center is strictly grab-and-go meals.

And the NCAA has yet to signal about another year of eligibility to spring-sport athletes.

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“My belief is we should be as liberal as possible, we should give student-athletes as many options as possible,” Bjork said.

But athletes on partial scholarships who have already graduated may opt not to return for an extra year. Bjork said clarity is needed as soon as possible.

“Then I’m shifting my focus to the longer term,” Bjork said. “Obviously, this semester we’ve canceled everything we can cancel. But what happens to prepare our athletes for football training camp and soccer training camp and volleyball training camp? We have to be ready for the fall. And that includes spectators in the stands.”

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In many ways, what Bjork is doing locally is what the SEC is doing as a conference.

Commissioner Greg Sankey touched on the big picture issues in a teleconference this week, including when things may return to normal, kind of.

“Our focus is on preparing for the 2021 academic year, the fall season as currently scheduled. There’s a period on the end of that sentence,” Sankey said. “We’ll obviously think about everything going forward because we’re being guided by public health information and decision-making, but my hope is that we can return to our normal organized activities, our normal experiences, and be part of that celebration around soccer, volleyball, cross country, and football in the fall. But we’ll have to see.”

The cancellations brought a financial impact as well, although Bjork said the SEC had insurance that will cover some of the lost revenue from its basketball tournament.

The NCAA, which gets a lion’s share of its revenue from the NCAA Tournament TV deal, is reportedly looking at a major shortfall. Even in the flush SEC, that represents a hit to the bottom line. Arkansas AD Hunter Yurachek told the university’s trustees he expects $2 million to $3 million less from the SEC this year, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Despite a career as a college athlete and athletic administrator, Bjork admits the current events have added to his learning curve.

“But there’s nothing you can go through to prepare you for this,” he said. “You just have to deal with it. You have to go one by one and deal with it.”

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