Yesterday Husker Nation was hit with an atomic bomb of news that our AD was leaving to take the same position at Texas A&M. With things going so well within the athletic department, it seemed like such an odd move to many. Let’s take a look at some of the things that have happened and try to make sense of this. Please forgive any spelling, grammatical, and forgetfulness as I typed this before my 11AM obligation.
Let’s start with this tweet I sent out, you could sense the frustration from Trev during this interview with Sean Callahan and Steve Sipple with HuskerOnline:
In August of 2023, Ted Carter informed the University of Nebraska that he would be stepping down to take the same role at Ohio State University starting January 1st. A gut punch for Alberts and even Rhule, as they both had stated just how important Admiral Carter was to the hierarchy and direction of not only the University but the athletic program and football team. Fast forward to March, and we still seem nowhere close to hiring a President, and that could be an indicator on why Alberts felt the need to move on.
For reference, Kristina Johnson who was Ohio State’s President before Ted Carter, stepped down referencing differences between her and the board of trustees. Sound familiar to what we’ve been hearing around here this week? More on that later. Another reference point, Johnson announced her resignation in late 2022, Carter did not take the job until August and has only been full-time there since January 1st, 2024. So while we get upset about our BoR knowing since August he was gone and not having a President yet, Ohio State wasn’t much quicker.
With that said, it seems Governor Pillen is agitated by the time it has taken to fill the President role and helping lead to Alberts’ decision to move to College Station:
But Why Does Who Is President Matter To Alberts?
I have been receiving this question a lot, and i’ve seen it a ton on social media. The President of the University is who our AD reports to (as it was changed to that instead of the chancellor under Carter/Alberts). Who your boss is is extremely important, especially when the AD is working on things that are 5 or even 10 year plans such as the stadium project that Alberts was orchestrating.
A President of the University helps decide where funds get allocated, but also helps speak with donors about where they can best help contribute to the overall well-being of the University, and that of course includes athletics and more specifically the flagship program trying to renovate 10th and Vine.
We talked about this in an earlier article, but donors were confused, and no one was really leading them:
So with no one helping guide the donors, it turned into everyone who was jockeying for donations fighting for themselves and in some instances shitting on other things that were important for the University. Trev had to talk about how much the funding was needed for him and maybe not so much NIL or the med center. NIL would talk about how a new stadium doesn’t win us any games (verbatim talk track to boosters) and that dollars need to be given to 1890 to get players in. With no President, there was no leadership. It almost turned into the Wild West.
Forward Think On The “Why”
So with no leadership, Trev had a hard time getting funds. We were light on donations for the stadium project and he was seemingly getting no help other than his direct employees. They outsourced to a 3rd party to help with donations, and that money is still owed for that help. A tough spot.
But let’s take a look deeper. At A&M there is a President in place who has shared his vision and what he wants from the athletic department when it comes to helping the University thrive. So he knows who/what he is getting into there (though i’d argue A&M has a multitude of its own issues he wouldn’t have to deal with in Lincoln). And on top of that, he has to sit here and cross his fingers that who he decides to stick around for aligns with what his vision is.
Take what you know about A&M, or sit around for the unknown?
Is He Running From Something?
There has been a ton made about a couple things that happened under Alberts’ watch, just going to give my two cents on those.
The first is with the lawsuit that was filed in regards to the women’s basketball program:
In my opinion not much about this move from Alberts has anything to do with this. He is named in the lawsuit, so wherever he goes he is responsible for his actions (positive or negative). Leaving Lincoln doesn’t change that, so i’d rule that out.
But this next thing is where I get interested in how much it had to do with things. Now UNO Athletic Director found some issues with finances under Alberts:
But 2 weeks later we then got this headline, as President Carter on his way out throws Alberts a lifeline:
Alberts receives an extension from a President that is leaving out the door while the person he gave an extension to is under scrutiny for something he did within the University system at his previous stop.
It has been rumored that these issues stemming from UNO would hamper his ability to get the funds he wanted for his stadium project. Boosters scared that their dollars may not go to what they say they are going to. Keep in mind, this is an AD that already had some issues with donors after cancelling football and wrestling in Omaha, wrestling I have been told was completely funded by individual donations. So the financial aspect thing was always weird there.
While we can complain about the lack of a President hurting his funding efforts, in some parts this was brought on by himself as well.
Butting Heads With NIL
Alberts has been very upfront about wanting to bring NIL in-house for college athletics. I understand that and it makes sense. But I think it ran deeper than that, meaning that we have to remind you again that major donors are getting hit up by Matt Davison and Trev Alberts now for money.
Let’s not forget that Trev Alberts fired Scott Frost, who Matt Davison was in his wedding. There’s at least a little bit of issue still there whether people want to believe that or not.
This All Moved So Quickly
I was somewhere where Frazier was on Thursday, and he was texting with Alberts in regards to a logistical situation for a game in the fall. Alberts got right back to him acknowledging/authorizing something. Just crazy to me how quickly this fell apart.
The Med Center
AAU status is a real thing that concerns SOME people within the athletic department for B1G status. While the Med Center gets a ton of funding, if we could get a location down in Lincoln to have it help us with AAU status, that would not only help us with B1G conference affiliation as well as funding coming down to Lincoln as opposed to staying up in Omaha.
These are the types of things we mentioned earlier about needing someone with a multi-year vision to help with these things. An interim President can make a move like this.
The Board of Regents
A ton of people pissed off at these 8 individuals. I think they definitely deserve some of the blame. Governor Pillens tweet and the screen grab I had from Alberts about both of their frustrations with the process for President is concerning. The reality of the situation is while trying to find ideas that align with what the BoR want, we are missing out on people that may bring fresh ideas. “Like thinking” isn’t always the best policy.
I’ll leave this alone now since i’m not completely sure where to go from here as I wasn’t intimately in those conversations.
These Are Promotions
In the hysteria, Husker fans need to take off their rose colored glasses a bit and understand President Carter and AD Alberts both left for better positions. As much as it is tough to type, the Ohio State President job and the A&M AD job are better positions than the same role at Nebraska. A&M has nearly a billion dollars donated to their athletics while Nebraska struggles to get the money for NIL and their stadium project at the same time.
While Texas is the alpha program down there, A&M is widely regarded as a top 10 athletic department by national analysts and pundits. Their alumni base is stronger than Nebraska, they have more sports, bring in more revenue, and a multitude of other things they have over being AD in Lincoln.
While I type that, there’s things that I struggle with in regards to him choosing College Station over Lincoln. They are a better athletic department, but Trev had things clicking here. The basketball teams, HIS football coach, the baseball team, soccer, tons of momentum. And the expectations are reasonable here compared to Texas A&M. And that place is just weird all-around in my opinion, almost cult-like. If he was having trouble with high-ego boosters and BoRs and trustees here, it will be ten times worse down there. So while the job is a promotion, there’s something to be said for being at a very stable department in Lincoln where he had things going well.
Summary
What frustrates me is based on Governor Pillen and Interim President’s remarks, we tried everything we could to keep Alberts here.
We either took too long to get someone in place, which is a process issue. He saw something better elsewhere that we couldn’t replicate, which is an issue. Or we had so much infighting on who to hire between Pillen, Alberts, and the BoR that we couldn’t make a hire, which is an issue.
Hopefully we come out better for this. Alberts had his issues. I understand UNO alum being mad, I understand Davison being mad, but things seemed to be trending in the right direction under him in Lincoln. That’s why this hurts. We can only hope now that people act swiftly, because if there was no direction before, where are we now?
While 99% of America will tell you the Texas A&M AD job is a promotion compared to Nebraska, I really agree with this sentiment in the audio of this tweet. While he may think it’s great now, in a couple years I believe he will be wishing he didn’t make this move since things are looking up here and just knowing how crazy A&M can be.
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Some of this is where we really, really need the press to do its job here. There really needs to be some exposure of what’s going on here so that the stakeholders in the University and its athletic department (i.e. the people of Nebraska) can have some understanding of what’s going on. I think it’s the only chance that this gets sorted out. Unlike TA said in his exit email to his coaches and staff, I don’t think there’s good reason for confidence that the university leaders will get things straightened out. Clearly he doesn’t actually have that confidence, or he wouldn’t have sent the email in the first place.
I’d agree. I made a comment that Alberts probably won’t say the exact reasons as he doesn’t want to shed negative light on the University he graduated from, but that may be exactly what we need.
With both of the leadership positions gone that enticed Matt R to come here, how long before he bails is a question i keep hearing/seeing… What will the negative affects will this have down the road that we will be looking at stemmed from this exact time period..
He has to get us good again before that’s an issue. That’s really not a concern of mine at this point.
Somebody is controlling what the university does or how they act. Its not Pillen since he seems in line with Alberts. Carter leaving was the start of everything. He didn’t leave for less headaches. He left because he didn’t like working with someone or someone was controlling him, So what there is not president yet, there will be at some point. That can happen anywhere at anytime. Follow the money and that is probably the answer. Rhule is gone after this year or next.
This sucks
Part of me thinks there’s a few people controlling things that aren’t even close to on the same page so nothing gets done, and the trickle down is guys like Alberts leaving.
Barbara Weitz is on the BoR.
‘Barbara and Wally Weitz Pledge $25 Million to Only in Nebraska Campaign
Omaha philanthropists commit $19 million to UNO and $6 million to Nebraska College of Technical Agriculture.
published: 2023/06/07’
Not sure if they are pulling the strings or not?
It probably has a little bit to do with it. He’s not getting as much money as he would like.
SV, so much for my grand plans of Rhule coaching for 15-20 then rolling into the AD position… 🙁
Pillen has a history of political meddling with the university as a regent. Now I “hear” he may have done this with potential NU President candidates the BoR were considering. He was pretty quick to blame the BoR when this all went down with Trev and the BoR was quick to push back. It’s pretty clear there’s some fighting going on here and we really need a good journalist to investigate and report on all this. Since when does the governor have any say on who NU’s President is? Isn’t that why we have elected regents? In any case there appears to be bad leadership from the top down.
Lots going on. Very frustrating.
In a vacuum not surprised at all someone left Nebraska for A&M for all the reasons aforementioned.
Was a surprise because he was here for so relatively short, and whether right to assume or not I think there’s some of the sense that being a former Nebraska football player we would be that end job for a guy like him out of loyalty.
Too bad bc I feel like he brought some good leadership and stability and overall made some good choices to get our football back on track.
That’s a good way to put it. In a vacuum makes all the sense in the world to head to A&M. But when you look at where we are trending, expectations, boosters, it is way less of a shit show here. But what do I know?
What was the biggest hurdle and hardest part of Trev’s job? Stadium project. Combine that with how NIL has changed the dynamic of fielding competitive teams and NU having to chose which area to place the limited resources and you have a lot of stress here that isn’t at A&M. Why did Bill leave for A&M when NU ruled colleges athletics?
Now completely remove all that stress and balancing act off the table at A&M. Most of NU AD stress is keeping a few people happy that don’t like each other or want their will imposed. No other choices but to put up with them at NU; however, he can tell those fools to take a hike and not to trip over the next billionaire in line at A&M.
No president is a great excuse and definitely has an impact, especially here but money is the reason. So much easier to get things done. Why make great plans if you have to scratch and claw for years to implement it when you can just make the plan and say go somewhere else?
The idiots making this political are so tiring and disgusting and have no clue of what is actually going on.
Good post. He wants to put his mark on a University and that’s with a brick and mortar situation (like our stadium project), and he couldn’t get that moving. He won’t have those issues at A&M. I do still believe this may come to bite him in the tail later. There are different obstacles there that he didn’t have to deal with up here.