The landscape of collegiate athletics continues to change, and Trev Alberts is the man tasked with guiding Texas A&M into this new and uncertain era. The Aggie Director of Athletics joined TexAgs Live on Thursday to discuss a number of topics as A&M begins a new athletic year.

Key notes from Trev Alberts interview

• It’s great to have Billy Liucci here on a Thursday. It’s a big deal when he’s here on a Thursday.
   
• You can spend two weeks away, get back together and then talk about all the changes. That’s the world we live in now. You have to embrace it. I’m proud of our coaches, staff and our entire University. We’ve attacked this change in the appropriate way from our donors to you guys. I’m proud of where we are right now.
   
• There continue to be changes. We’ve tried to talk about this nationally with the implementation committee, and it has been fascinating to watch it all play out. First, you have to think about the “board of directors” of the College Sports Commission is four commissioners. Part of the challenges in college athletics is that there isn’t centralized decision-making. Greg Sankey is doing exactly what he should be doing, and he’s working as hard as he can every day for the membership of the SEC. But so is Brett Yormark of the Big 12, Tony Pettitti of the Big Ten and Jim Phillips of the ACC. With all of this that feels unsettled, those people have to agree.
   
• Specific to the College Sports Commission, the implementation committee worked really hard on recommendations about rules. At the end of the day, if you don’t have rules, you don’t have enforcement, and then you don’t have much. They have to hold. Part of the settlement is that plaintiffs’ attorneys and others get to weigh in on the implementation of rules. We don’t get to create rules and enforce them. They have to be agreed on. This is new, and there will be bumps to this. Brian Seeley has three people total in the CSC right now, so he’s staffing up. We’re making the right progress and steps. It’s just going to take some time. We’re making progress.
   
• I’ve never been afraid of change. In fact, I kind of enjoy it. I view these opportunities as a chance to make a difference. We work as hard as we can every day to position Texas A&M. I never lose my focus advocating and advancing A&M, but being in those rooms gives you access to information that can help you locally. These are real challenges.
   
• I’m the product of the blessed privilege of getting to be a college football player in the 1990s. I would not be sitting here today if I hadn’t had the privilege to play for Tom Osborne. We have a duty and responsibility to fight for college football and college athletics as a way to positively impact young people. I view this position as a privilege.
   
• We’re not there yet because we haven’t had the ability to proactively lay out what the rules are. You have disagreements over what is an associated entity, vs. what can we do, vs. what can’t we do. We will get more communication from the CSC as they totally fill out their staff. It will happen. It will come. We will be successful with it. We’re in a period of unknowns right now. I hear all of the number of deals that have gone into NIL Go, how many of them have been approved, how many dollars have been and what has not been approved. The system is working. However, the culture of college athletics is to tell me the rules, and I’ll find a way to circumvent them. We have to change that mindset. The structure that has been put in place is a good one and will help do that, but we’ll have some growing pains because of our history.
   
• Part of the challenge in my seat is that my first and foremost responsibility is to protect the integrity of the Texas A&M brand. But at the same time, our executive team can’t create barriers for our coaches to where they’re unsuccessful. There is a balance there, and we try to be as aggressive as we can while fighting hard to make sure we’re operating within the rules. We’re always looking for clarity.
   
• We have a really smart football coach in Mike Elko, who knows what he’s doing, has a great plan and has surrounded himself with great people. The rest of our coaches are the same way. I’m confident with our ability to create the right strategies within the rules and within legal.
   
• First and foremost, Jonathan Wallace has been in our department before. He’s focused on the NIL space and working through the education. We have a partnership with the Mays School of Business when it comes to making sure our student-athletes are educated on financial literacy. We offer a lot of services. To be transparent, some of the athletes do not take advantage of them, but it’s our responsibility to make them available.
   
• We just hired a young man named Zach Phillips, who was senior counsel at Playfly. He was on the ground to help create Playfly Max. As part of our relationship that’s going to begin next year, a significant component of competitive success will be how good you are at getting fair-market value NIL deals. Playfly Max will provide a GM for you, but we chose to hire the GM anyway. He has some industry expertise. We will have four full-time people at Texas A&M who are not selling corporate sponsorships. They will be working with the Association of Former Students and the network of people who run those companies in order to grow fair-market NIL opportunities for our student-athletes. That organically grows your cap. That’s a piece we need to leverage and be good at. Phillips has been here for two weeks now, and we’ve added to the firepower in that spot. We first have to get the deals, and then we need to have the support on the backend. I feel good about the support we have there.
   
• Playfly did not underestimate the A&M brand. We’re still in our last year of Learfield, and I’m very grateful to Learfield and the years we’ve been partners with them. We still have people on the ground in sales for Learfield, and I want to acknowledge them. A couple of weeks ago, I spent a couple of days up in New York. I was re-energized after that trip because Playfly has 1,400 employees. They spend a lot of time in the pro space.
   
• To those who watch this show, I want to say thank you to them. The reality is that brand growth is a result of a bunch of people who have invested in care. That is real.
   
• At Playfly, there are data scientists. There is a lot of scientific stuff. Companies aren’t investing willy-nilly. As we professionalize, we have to start thinking of ourselves as a media company. Texas A&M Athletics is its own media company, and it’s about the brand value. Everything we do will be about how strong our brand is. We know where we are. We know where others are around us. We have to create strategies to accelerate the brand growth and not let it slide. Winning is a big part of that. We’ve done great things here, but it would be another thing if our brand value was high because we just got done winning eight national championships. Look at the upside and opportunity for Texas A&M. That’s what’s exciting to be a part of.
   
• First, you have to be happy that the President of the United States cares enough and thinks there is value in college athletics to even talk about it. I think college athletics and college football are critically important to being an American. The SCORE Act, which is working its way through the House with bipartisan support, is really, really important, and it helps to codify some of these things. The Office of the President says this is important, and he can effect change. We have more work to do, and it’s not imminent that we’ll have Congressional support. What’s encouraging is that we’re as far as we’ve ever been in a divided Congress. It still faces an uphill battle, but if the President gets behind it and we can get something out of the House that makes sense, we may get the support for the protections of the student-athletes that they actually need. As the CSC professionalizes and gets rules in place, we could have a durable, sustainable and fair system that we can believe in going forward.
   
• The pace of modernization is what’s going to be important. The football will remain the football, but all the things outside of it will be professionalized. You’re seeing more corporate sponsors. There are opportunities for us there. We’ve talked about outside events, and those opportunities are real. Look at where the NFL and pro sports have gone, and I don’t think we’ll go that far. They’re sharing 50 percent of revenue with players, and we’re sharing 22 percent. It’s not illogical for me to think that the feel and approach of some of our games will transition more to the professional experience. That’s where we have to be careful and thoughtful of how that modernization does not take away from Texas A&M’s culture as a football program, athletic program and entire institution.
   
• College athletics are very much undervalued. Looking at corporate sponsorships between the Houston Texans and Texas A&M, the numbers are extraordinarily different. It’s much more for them. But look at the number of people who call themselves a fan. We have to accelerate that kind of growth. It’s the monetization of the brand that we’ve never had to think through.
   
• There is so much fragmentation in the negotiations surrounding college athletics. In the NFL, you have one entity negotiating TV contracts and sponsorship deals. In college athletics, we’re now down to a Power 4, but every conference is negotiating a TV deal. They’re all undervalued because there is fragmentation in negotiation. Can we find a way to eliminate that fragmentation? Texas A&M can do great deals for itself, but it will be limited without the whole collection of brands.
   
• One of the things that Playfly has experience in is holding events like the George Strait concert at Kyle Field in 2024 and potentially tying them back into NIL. That is part of the strategy, but absolutely, adding outside events as a way to bring in additional revenue to the entire department is something that we need to be focused on. Jerry Jones has looked at ways to use AT&T Stadium other than Cowboys game. We need to do that, and we will. Here’s the difference: Texas A&M University is a non-profit entity. We have to think through things like UBIT. There are legal things we have to work through, but that is not an excuse for why we did not have an event this summer. If we’re going to open our facilities up to our community, there might be some legal structural thinking in how we get there, and we are engaged with that. We see the opportunity.
   
• I’m excited about the LED lights, and we had a meeting about them yesterday. We are asking people to spend significant dollars to buy suites, buy seats and buy seat licensing fees. If the experience of Kyle Field is something you can get by sitting at home and watching Hulu, we’re making mistakes. We might be behind in that area, and we’re working hard to make sure our fans, suite holders and others see value. We have to protect the success of Kyle Field, not only in football but that facility in general.
   
• We’re blessed here to have sports fully funded. Everybody who loves A&M came together to figure out how we use this opportunity to not fall behind and to actually accelerate our ability. There might be fewer than 10 schools with that many fully-funded sports that decided to go all-in like us. Everybody is different because we have different Title IX numbers and DSAs. Every possible roster spot that is allowed to have a scholarship has one today. We’re not building up to it over four years. We worked hard in the business office and with revenue sharing. Very few places have this kind of support like the 12th Man gives to our University. It has allowed us to do this. We don’t have any excuses. The 12th Man has given us everything we need, and it’s our time to put our heads down, execute and get it done.
   
• I don’t want to do anything to put added pressure on a coach. These jobs, more than ever before, require the athletic director and head football coach to have a partnership and trust. You won’t be successful when you’re fighting each other. From day one, when Mike Elko and I sat down, there had to be humility to both pieces. I am here to support him. I want to block and tackle for him. I want to clear the path because I trust Mike Elko and that he knows how to build the right culture, right roster and right staff around him to win at the highest level. We have an understanding, and I admire him and his work ethic. He’s a very genuine and authentic human being, and we have the right football coach for Texas A&M. He has a very good football team this year, but what I’ve seen differently is that he has created the culture that’s necessary to create the mindset that’s necessary to do the work that’s necessary to win. It’s about the team. It’s about Texas A&M. That’s the culture Mike Elko has built. I’m grateful for him, and I think he’s grateful for the opportunity at Texas A&M. It’s fun to work with a coach that you have mutual respect for. He trusts me on the business side, and I trust him on the football side. I do the best I can to help him.