Texas A&M has settled on an athletic director in Ole Miss’ Ross Bjork, who will take over for Scott Woodward. Did the Aggies get the right man for the job?
When Texas A&M lost its athletic director Scott Woodward to LSU, one couldn’t blame a section of the fan base for getting a little uneasy. Woodward had made two of the most impactful hires in the university’s history.
Even if cynics would try to say these hires meant nothing, and that A&M is still in the same place it was before, it still does not take away from the fact Woodward took two established coaches from established programs in the ACC to coach the men’s basketball and football teams at Texas A&M. Both programs are undeniably ascending.
However, that didn’t mean it was not imperative for the Aggies to make a hire who could continue that momentum. It therefore made sense when the first candidate Texas A&M was targeting was Oregon’s Rob Mullens. Mullens had taken Oregon athletics to never before seen heights and increased their budget by millions upon millions. Unfortunately he took his name out of the running.
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Not other names went public until it was announced Ole Miss Athletic Director Ross Bjork was taking the same position at Texas A&M. With the help of R.C. Slocum, the Aggies had found their guy, but is he the right man for the job?
Bjork had a few achievements while at Ole Miss, such as finishing 39th in the Director’s Cup which was the highest finish in school history, the football team made a New Year’s Six bowl in the first two years of the College Football Playoff, the basketball team made the tournament twice after 10 straight years of missing, and the baseball team made the College World Series for the first time in 42 years under his watch.
However, the football program is currently in a rebuild due to several NCAA violations under Hugh Freeze’s watch. Bjork didn’t hire Freeze, but he defended him up until information become public that forced the football program to distance itself from Freeze.
As much as those accomplishments are nice for Ole Miss, he will have to raise his own expectations at Texas A&M. The University has finished in the Top 25 of the Director’s Cup for 13 consecutive years and is currently No. 22 in the standings for this season. We finished No. 10 in the standings last season.
Despite not having a major national championship in men’s programs, the athletic program as a whole has thrived for years and Bjork has some major shoes to fill. It would see there were better candidates out there, but at least point we have to trust the A&M brass it knows what its doing. They did hire Woodward in the first place, after all.