Pitchin with Pritch: Moos out as NU athletic director

Some surprising news out of the University of Nebraska this past week with the announcement that Bill Moos is retiring as the athletic director of the Huskers. 

Moos has a contract that runs to 2022 and his salary would have bumped from $1.15 million to 1.2 million in 2022. Moos’ last day was June 30th. 

It was reported that the designation of Moos’ departure as a retirement by NU is interesting because Moos’ was due a deferred compensation payment of $1.25 million if he remained the AD through the end of his contract.

 It was also reported that the provision only calls for prorated payouts in the event he is fired or otherwise disabled. One source thought Moos and the university would come to some kind of agreement on essentially the same type of severance package.

Moos has been in charge of the athletic program at the University since October 2017. 

He has made some high-profile hires in his term at Nebraska—hiring Scott Frost as the head football coach, Fred Hoiberg to head the men’s basketball program and Will Bolt as the head baseball coach. 

It was pointed out that only Coach Bolt’s teams have gained the most momentum as they picked up a first place finish in the Big 10 this spring. Hopefully the other two programs will follow suit soon.

The university has had a real turnover in athletic directors. 

Sometimes that can be a problem in a program just having different philosophies trying to be followed. 

When I look at the former ADs and their times spent at NU, I am pretty sure that some of them had maybe what you would or could say was a negative effect on the programs that were changed by hires made. 

Bob Devaney spent 25 years as AD before retiring. In the next 30 years, NU has had five ADs. 

Not saying that was the reason the football program started struggling but some of the head coaches picked for that job left a lot of questions unanswered. 

Moos probably has done more to make some progress in making some programs more successful. If Frost and Hoiberg can get their programs going, Moos’ tenure here will look pretty good.