LINCOLN — Bill Moos, who hired Scott Frost and Fred Hoiberg as Nebraska’s football and men’s basketball coaches, appears to be out as the school’s athletic director three and a half years into his contract.
The man with a big smile, loud voice, blunt comments and fondness for football stories will likely fall 18 months short of completing a five-year deal at NU he told The World-Herald he intended to finish. He’ll become the shortest-tenured Husker A.D. in at least 60 years. He led Nebraska athletics for fewer months than even Steve Pederson and Shawn Eichorst, both abruptly fired in the middle of football seasons.
A source said Moos could be out as soon as Friday. “There was a odd feeling around the athletic department in recent days,” according to a person with knowledge of the situation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The highest-paid A.D. in school history with a $1.15 million salary, Moos could be leaving just before the end of NU’s fiscal year on June 30 and less than a month after one of his high-profile hires baseball coach Will Bolt won a Big Ten title and then pushed No. 1 Arkansas to the limit in the NCAA tournament. Bolt was the last of the big-ticket hires following Frost (December 2017) and Hoiberg (April 2019), both of whom have struggled since their arrival at NU.
If those two get it going in 2021, Moos — previously the athletic director at Washington State, Oregon and Montana — likely won’t be around to see it.
Athletic department sources say Moos wasn’t around the office as much as predecessors Eichorst or Tom Osborne. Moos rarely, if ever went to practices — he said he preferred to stay away — and outside of football, he did not have a reputation for attending many Husker sporting events either. His suite at NU basketball games was not often illuminated. He did not attend the Husker baseball team’s run in Arkansas recently.
“Only in spirit,” Moos said by text. He also sent one of his lieutenants, Garrett Klassy, to the season-finale football game at Rutgers.
Especially during the start of the COVID pandemic, Moos spent large stretches of the summer at his cattle ranch in eastern Washington — Moos would readily admit in interviews where he was or if he was driving through Montana back to Nebraska — instead of North Stadium, where the bulk of the athletic department works. He hired two Senior Deputy A.D.s — John Johnson and Klassy — to handle internal and external departmental work while Moos handled media interviews and made numerous appearances for fans. The department is full of competent employees, one source said, who made things run smoothly on a day-to-day basis. But a $150 million operation with hundreds of employees needed final input from a leader.
Moos stayed in the job for 30 more months after that, but he was not the lead fundraiser on Nebraska’s “Go Big” football facility project, a role that went to University of Nebraska President Hank Bounds, now a professor with a consultant business, and associate athletic director for football Matt Davison, and not as connected to some boosters as he might have been.
The 70-year-old Moos was hired in October 2017, a month after Bounds and University of Nebraska-Lincoln Chancellor Ronnie Green fired Eichorst. Moos left the A.D. job at his alma mater, Washington State, with an $8.5 million budget deficit. Before he went to NU, Moos expected to end his career at WSU, where he had been a college football player.
“Believe me, I have nothing to run away from but wholeheartedly wanted to run to this job,” Moos said upon being hired at Nebraska.
“We got the pick of the litter,” Moos said.
Said Frost: “I believe a lot in Bill, I believe in Hank and Ronnie, and I think this state is ready to see this place return to what it was.”
Frost is 12-20 since taking the Husker job. In 2019, when Moos said he wanted most to win six games, Frost won five. In 2020, COVID hit, and Moos, through a series of layoffs, furloughs and departmental cost-cutting, helped NU navigate the massive financial hit taken by the athletic department while fighting for — and ultimately losing — the battle with the Big Ten conference to play non-conference games and fill the stands with some fans during the pandemic. Moos was a chief critic of the Big Ten’s approach to first deciding to postpone, and later restart, a fall football season that left NU playing Ohio State in the opening week.
“I wasn’t toasting champagne,” Moos said.
It was a signature Moos one-liner, for which he became known. His legacy will be an overhaul of coaches at NU — besides the big three, Moos hired head coaches in men’s tennis, women’s golf, bowling, women’s gymnastics and two each in women’s rifle and men’s golf — those quips and, now the shortness of his tenure.
In contrast to his predecessor, who preferred the lowest-possible profile, Moos’ three and a half years were anything but quiet.
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