Former Texas A&M AD Ross Bjork Explains Mark Stoops Debacle

“Here’s what people, they don’t really realize about the process,” Bjork said. “The athletic director and the team — whatever that may look like — we run a search process. We make recommendations to the president. ‘I would like to hire this person,’ or ‘I think this is the No. 1 candidate.’"

"That’s how it works in every institution. No athletic director has the full autonomy to say, ‘I’m absolutely going to hire this person and no one else is involved.’ That’s where it goes back to alignment, that’s where it goes back to process and communication."

Communication is certainly of paramount importance in this type of situation. 

In fact, it appears that, in some form or fashion, it had been communicated to Stoops that he was getting the job with Texas A&M, with the coach even reportedly going so far as to tell some staff and boosters that he planned to leave for College Station. 

Then, the A&M board of regents reportedly stepped in, Elko was hired, and the rest is history.

“So how (Stoops’) name got out there, of course, he was a candidate," Bjork said. But we didn’t hire him. We hired Mike Elko, Mike Elko is a great coach and we’re gonna meet them in the playoffs because he’s going to build it."

"So at the end of the day, who did you hire and how did you get there? That’s what matters the most. So searches in today’s world are really, really probably unrealistic because of social media, plane tracking, or whatever. And so that’s what you have to do is just go through a process and pick the right person, and that’s what we did.”