LINCOLN — After an hour of chatting that swerved on and off the record — veterans of an interview with Trev Alberts know that will be the case — the call ended with outgoing NU athletic director offering a lament: “I will always be a Husker, so my heart is hurting” and one more hopeful musing.
Maybe, he suggested, Nebraska will be better off.
Now that could be play for praise — though a reporter would have been the only one giving it — or it could be viewed as the wake-up call NU’s system needs.
Alberts thinks NU Athletics is in “great shape,” better than ever with a streamlined operation, a stronger multimedia deal, a master plan for facility renovation and growth. There is also a football coach in Matt Rhule, who is neither learning on the job — as Scott Frost clearly was — nor like Mike Riley in breezin’ on through.
People are also reading…
In other words, the next A.D. inherits what Alberts thinks is a great football and great situation without having to be a guy who spent a decade plus in the University of Nebraska system.
What Husker fans think was 2½ years in North Stadium was actually 15 if you include his time at UNO. When you think about Alberts’ departure to Texas A&M, remember that latter number.
If Alberts was ever going to leave the whole enterprise for something else, now is the time to do it. Bill Moos left Oregon in 2007 after 13 seasons in his mid-50s. Riley left Oregon State at 61 after 12 seasons in his second stint and 14 overall.
“At the stage of my career,” Riley said when he took the Nebraska job, “it was an opportunity to try something one more time.”
Alberts is 53. His kids have graduated high school. He’s in that window of deciding between being a lifer at one place or exploring something else.
He did not, according various sources, lack for choices.
He might have had the College Football Playoff executive director job if he wanted it. His business acumen and communication skills might have made him a candidate for the Packers CEO job that just opened in February.
Texas A&M is the job that snagged him.
The uncertainty in NU’s presidential search played a role. Alberts wasn’t going to critique Nebraska in his interview. His departure is the critique. He used the phrase “fairly obvious” because it is.
He doesn’t have a boss. If the Board of Regents found a slam dunk option, they would have presented that person by now.
There’s an irony, of course, in a stalled presidential search affecting Husker athletics.
For years, the NU Board of Regents has been working to shift the authority of overseeing athletics from the chancellor’s office — located on city campus — to Varner Hall, the stately East Campus home of the president’s office.
In Dec. 2015, the regents used Executive Memorandum No. 13 to amend a contract approval process that required the president’s OK for decisions over $500,000. In 2017, then-President Hank Bounds effectively vetoed additional one-year contract extensions for Shawn Eichorst and Riley, requested by then-Chancellor Ronnie Green.
“Let’s visit that in December,” Bounds told The World-Herald about his message to Green.
Eichorst was fired in mid-September of that year while Riley, a lame duck, was fired in late November.
Green and Bounds effectively conducted the search to replace Eichorst. When that guy — Moos — was paid nearly $3 million to go away in June 2021, Green reasserted control of the A.D. search.
But as Alberts said yes three weeks later, it was clear: Then-President Ted Carter was the deciding factor.
By summer 2023, Alberts no longer answered to any chancellor. NU Athletics was under Carter’s purview. Like it was its own university campus.
But if the goal was to create a wall between athletics and any UNL chancellor’s office — in part so athletics could guarantee the money in its coffers stayed there, in part to avoid the conflicts that arose between former Chancellor Harvey Perlman and former coach Bo Pelini — Carter’s sudden departure for Ohio State created a leadership vacuum.
Alberts effectively became his own boss, and the athletic department was pitted against the status of the other four campuses. NU Athletics generated more than $200 million in revenue — a school record — while those campuses stared at hard budget cuts.
Try being the fortunate son in that scenario. Try being the fortunate son asking for hundreds of millions to redo a football stadium that already sells out every Saturday.
If being in the middle of everything weighed on Alberts, he also kind of asked for that.
One of his first jobs at NU was, as best he could, streamline the athletics complaint line to run through his office.
Frost’s frustrations landed on Alberts’ desk. A power broker wanted Fred Hoiberg fired?
Talk to Trev, who was going to give Hoiberg the same chance he did Frost. And wasn’t going to blow a massive buyout on basketball — $18.5 million — with NIL and the massive Memorial Stadium overhaul around the corner.
Alberts was right to give Frost the extra season — the onside kick in Ireland cliched the fan base’s opinion — and right on Hoiberg, who got two new assistants, embraced landing tough, older transfers from mid-major programs and put NU in the NCAA tournament.
Being point man — and a seasoned veteran of the NU system — inevitably put Alberts in the middle. Which he courted, and wanted. Until he didn’t.
Now, administrators and coaches wait for another leader.
They already have one — Rhule, who speaks Monday to the media and will invariably be appointment listening for the entire department. Under Alberts, they tightened ships and emphasized winning, so a boss in that vein would help.
Positive, sure — Rhule needs more of a clapper than a micromanager — but very present. And strategic.
And if NU Interim President Chris Kabourek wanted the permanent job — technically, he’s not a candidate — hiring an athletic director at warp speed qualifies as an audition.
A young A.D. could work if they hew close to Leblanc, a modest high achiever who has little interest in being on the D1 Ticker.
The next leader doesn’t have to be a visionary or try to do more than the job requires. Alberts perhaps had to be that guy, and his departure — which no one wanted — might wake up power brokers a little bit.
For two decades, Nebraska’s fired a lot of people. They weren’t good enough for NU, even the ones who won nine games per year.
Alberts walked away from an eight-year contract worth millions. That might say something about him.
Says something about the conditions that created halkout, too.
Hoiberg's hot ticket
The next A.D. probably won’t be in place by the time Nebraska ends its basketball season — unless Hoiberg gets this group to the Final Four.
But Hoiberg could be headed for a contract extension soon. A lucrative one.
Consider what the basketball community thinks of Hoiberg and what it knows about Nebraska basketball’s history. You’ll see, pretty quickly, that Hoiberg would be a candidate for good jobs this offseason. If he entertained them.
“I’m all in on this place,” Hoiberg said at the Big Ten tournament. “I love it. I want to be here.”
He wasn’t going to say anything else, mind you. And he’s likely to want to coach his son Sam through the 2025-26 season. But if Nebraska wins an NCAA tournament game this week, Hoiberg just might be a $4 million man — with two extra years.
The transfer portal will be busy and the Huskers will hold more cards than they did last spring.
Oh yeah, football
Hoop dreams put spring camp on the back burner of interest, though it’s possible that by the time NU kicks off its camp next weekend, the Husker men’s and women’s basketball teams are eliminated from the NCAA tournament.
The immediate intrigue of Rhule’s second camp centers on the quarterback, a position that we’ll know quite little about before the spring game, when we see what Dylan Raiola can do in a controlled environment.
Few players in Husker history arrived with greater expectations, for many other things — the run game, the pass rush, the team culture — seem to be in place for 2024.
For once, Nebraska football seems more stable than many of its Big Ten peers; Washington played for the national title two months ago and nobody knows what the Huskies will be in 2024.
We’ll cover the next 45 days with vigor, especially digging into the newcomers on offense. But in a lot of ways, this Nebraska team knows who it can be at every position except the one that matters most. In that way, this spring feels a lot like 2010, when Taylor Martinez won the job, and 2018, when Adrian Martinez did the same. Both were freshmen.