Pitchin with Pritch: Good week for Husker fans

Last week I touched on Nebraska Athletic Director Bill Moos retiring without much notice, at least to the public. 

Then, after seeing what he was going to take with him in dollars and cents, it seemed that he wasn’t getting hurt too badly financially,

But there just seemed to be something strange about the entire situation. 

Nebraska wasn’t making retirement look that bad with the two million plus that Moos would be receiving. 

But as more information was put out this past week, it appears that Nebraska leads all D1 schools in salary that is paid to coaches and administrators who no longer are employed by the university.

Since 2005, Nebraska leads the nation in payouts to people who have had some problems. 

Most of them are coaches that couldn’t win and never met expectations. 

It also included a couple of ADs that made poor choices in hiring. Some will say those ADs made bad choices by firing good coaches and replacing them with questionable choices. 

Now I know that in many cases the public doesn’t know each and every detail in the hiring of someone or in letting someone go.

Athletic Director Steve Pederson made a few of those questionable decisions and that started the downhill run of the Husker football program. 

Nebraska has spent more money on firing football and men’s basketball coaches in the last 15 years than any other school. 

Again, there is no way all the reasons why someone is let go become public, but usually wins and losses are the main culprit. 

Tom Osborne was named AD and hired Pelini. Shawn Eichorst replaced Osborne as AD and ended up firing Pelini who had a 67-27 W-L record.  

It is easy to go on and on about this but Nebraska has paid out a ton of money that I would like to think could have gone for better things for the athletic program. 

Nebraska currently has the highest-paid football coach in school history in Scott Frost and the highest paid ever men’s basketball coach in school history in Fred Hoiberg. 

Frost’s record at Nebraska is not great and his payout would be around $30 million and Hoiberg who hasn’t been real successful yet has a $22 million payout.

I would like to be able to write about the Big 10 champion Nebraska football or basketball teams but it hasn’t happened and I don’t know when it will come. 

The men’s baseball team won the Big 10 championship this year.

 I don’t care how much a person likes baseball or if Nebraska can continue to improve into a power, football and men’s basketball puts a lot of people in the seats. 

The most consistent sport is probably volleyball and John Cook gets the seats filled and his teams are a power every year.

I hope the athletic department can get their act together and have some of those payout dollars saved for better things.