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Bjork on more COVID-19 cancellations: The detachment is the hardest part

March 18, 2020
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Due to a power outage in the TexAgs Studio, the above media is audio, not video.

Key notes from Ross Bjork interview

  • I appreciate Gabe and Olin having me on this morning. It's great to talk through these things. We all need human interaction during this tumultuous time, even if in this virtual setting.
     
  • These cancellations have been progressive. We went from canceling a tournament to being on hold until March 30th to being on hold until April 15th, to canceling altogether. This was the next step. As a conference, we talked about this as early as Saturday to be prepared for this. When our campuses saw the aggressive nature of this thing, we made the call. It's sad.
     
  • I'm actually on campus and in the office right now. I saw some of our student-athletes going for a jog around campus. It is sad to shut down what is their livelihood. That's why they came here. We have to engage them in unique ways now. There are a lot of emotions around all of this, but we have to be mindful of their health and safety.
     
  • My mind is focused on what happens to football. We canceled everything for the spring semester. This is about preparing for the future, the fall sports, and the next academic year. That's where my mind has gone. It's not about protecting football; it's about returning to normalcy. How do we prepare for football, soccer, volleyball, and cross country? How do they operate? How do we take care of our fans, donors, and season ticket holders? I want to get through this week because we're in that triage mode of things continually evolving. Once we get through that, we will look ahead to the future. You never thought you'd have to look this far ahead, but unfortunately, we have to.
     
  • The hardest part is the detachment. There is a lot of medical data that would say our facilities are as safe and as clean as anything out there, more so than what's available to the public. We sent out a memo to all of our student-athletes on how to stay safe, and we also sent out workout plans. We've been in communication with them, and our strength coaches have been good at that. So we can send out these plans, but they cannot report back on those workouts.
     
  • Athletic facility use is on hold until April 15th. We hope that at that point, we can come back and train and have a mini-camp of things. We have about 265 student-athletes in town right now, but that may change next week with class starting back up (online). That's where we're at right now. We're in constant communication with them.
     
  • I have a running list of aftermath items. Handing out bonuses to coaches like Gary Blair is on that list, but it's not of significant concern right now.
     
  • I saw a proposal that saw college basketball coaches taking bonuses and pooling it together to pay employees that would've worked the NCAA tournament. Proposals like that are really interesting and a great idea. We will look at that here in the coming weeks.
     
  • We had a national-wide athletic director conference call with all of the FBS athletic directors. Mark Emmert was on that call. My deal is, let's do what's best for the student-athletes, and let's be as liberal as possible.
     
  • Some coaches have had conversations with seniors who have already graduated, were on a partial scholarship, and didn't want to pay out of their own pocket, so the players have said they're moving on. We need to be liberal with eligibility relief. Giving players right is where we are headed, but we don't have the answers for what it looks like just yet. I want to do what's best for all of our athletes.
     
  • The President's number was for 15 days under the current guidelines, and the CDC said no groups of more than 50 until mid-May. I hope we can open our weight rooms at that time. We would screen all of our athletes for symptoms before that would happen. I'm hopeful, but we have to follow this path to find out what that looks like.
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Bjork on more COVID-19 cancellations: The detachment is the hardest part

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