Tad Stryker: Trev, We Thought We Knew Ya

Narratives about Alberts and his move from Nebraska to Texas A&M are everywhere — and they don’t seem to add up

The more I find out about Trev Alberts and his unexpected abdication as Nebraska’s athletics director, the less sense it seems to make, especially when I examine the most prevalent narratives tossed out to explain his departure.

One of the narratives, which claims he fled Lincoln for Texas A&M to escape the spotlight from the sexual harassment lawsuit filed recently by former NU women’s basketball player Ashley Scoggin, has never made sense to me, because Alberts will continue to be named as one of the defendants in the suit, even though he has moved to College Station. We’ll lay that one aside, as well as the one that claims Texas A&M will greatly increase his salary and benefits. I don’t think either of those is worth spending time on.

Some of the others, dealing with the so-called weakness and ineffectiveness of upper-level administrators and the University of Nebraska Board of Regents, deserve an examination. They’re pretty much a twisted mess of allegations (some contradictory, some half-baked, some seemingly solid) involving political intrigue and lack of leadership.

Nebraska Athletic Director Trev Alberts at the 2022 Nebraska-Wisconsin football game at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln / Kenny Larabee photo, KLIN

There’s still very little clarity. Even after Alberts explained himself to Sam McKewon of the Omaha World-Herald a day later, it left the waters almost as murky as they were before. It partially confirmed the generalities of much of the speculation, but left the specifics enshrouded in fog, which no doubt was Alberts’ intention.

Probably no one but Alberts himself can understand his personal reasons for making the lateral move to Texas A&M less than four months after publicly saying he loved his job and signing a contract extension that would have kept him among the top-paid athletic directors in the nation, but we have to deal with the stench it left behind, so here goes. I cannot find anyone who deserves more blame for Alberts’ dereliction of duty than the man himself.

Over his short 32-month tenure at Nebraska, the former Husker All-American linebacker talked a lot about earning trust. He made it one of the centerpieces of his time at Nebraska. And it was working. He was doing a great job, building up men’s sports like football and basketball. He came up with a bold master stroke called “Volleyball Day in Nebraska” last August, an event that filled Memorial Stadium with Nebraska volleyball fans and was praised nationwide. It gave women’s sports a shot of adrenaline. He seemingly had unified the athletic department and the fan base, both which had fragmented under Scott Frost’s time as football coach. He created a ton of goodwill and momentum.

Then suddenly, inexplicably to most of Husker Nation, it took him less than 24 hours to place all those gains at incredible risk — trust, fan confidence and quite likely, a good deal of momentum. It’s not surprising that several narratives trying to explain it have emerged.

Possibly the simplest explanation says that A&M just caught Alberts by surprise, swooping in out of left field and giving him a “take-it-or-leave-it” offer that for some reason had to be decided within a few hours, or the job would be offered to someone else. Indeed, Alberts claimed to McKewon that he had not been looking for another job. So this one may be at least partially true, but if so, Alberts’ response was stunning. If he really wasn’t out job searching, why did he, a polished professional with a top-notch, analytical mind, do what so many unsuspecting people do when they get a scam phone call or email? He allowed the other guy to pressure him into making a decision “that day.” Alberts admitted it turned into a battle between his “head and his heart” which he felt he had to make quickly.

Trev, you’re saying A&M University President Mark Welsh didn’t want you bad enough that he’d give you a few days to think it over? Really? It’s almost unthinkable that the buttoned-down, well-prepared Alberts, someone who was widely regarded as a big step up from the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants Bill Moos, and known as a respected negotiator in the Big Ten boardroom, would fall for the old urgency ploy.

A more widespread narrative is that Alberts was tired of working with a Board of Regents that, in his opinion, moved too slowly to replace Ted Carter as president of the University of Nebraska system. It’s well-documented that Alberts greatly respected Carter and was troubled when Carter left for Ohio State University at the end of 2023. In fact, Gov. Jim Pillen, a Republican and himself a former regent, vilified the current board for exactly that. In a sweeping statement, he threw the Board of Regents under the bus. A few days later, given a second chance to soften the statement, he instead doubled down, even though he had been quickly reminded by the current chairman of the board, Robert Schafer of Beatrice, that the regents (which included Pillen) took even longer to decide on Hank Bounds in 2015 and Carter in 2019.

It seems a bit sudden to adopt this posture. Doesn’t it seem a little too soon for Alberts, who started as Nebraska’s AD on July 14, 2021, to be so beaten down by the job that he lost hope without a strong president to fortify him?

Alberts fooled me. I thought he was the epitome of a strong leader. But strong leaders typically thrive in a vacuum, moving ahead and making decisions without possession of all the information they would prefer to have, doing what they think should be done without clear guidance and concrete direction. In other words, if someone doesn’t slam the door in your face, you move ahead, over and over again. Apparently Alberts is not wired that way. Perhaps he’s someone who requires a lot of affirmation before and after the fact. The old cliche, “It’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission,” should have applied here. But apparently Alberts thought he needed someone’s permission. This surprised me.

Alberts was loud and clear in proclaiming that “leadership matters.” Obviously he considers Interim President Chris Kabourek and the current board to be insufficient — to the degree that it creates a vacuum so profound that he decided to leave his post and walk away. I wonder how that resonates with the athletes and coaches he left behind? I wonder if leadership also matters to Matt Rhule, Will Bolt, Fred Hoiberg, Mark Manning, Rhonda Revelle, Amy Williams, John Cook and Justin St. Clair? Couldn’t Alberts have waited it out awhile while offering support to his coaches?

Yet another narrative goes a bit farther, accusing Nebraska’s upper-level leadership of not just foot-dragging, or a vacuum of leadership, but out-and-out dysfunction, probably caused by political division (as if no other state or university has to deal with that topic).

If Alberts left because of dysfunction, it’s strange he decided to go to Texas A&M, which is known for classic symptoms of dysfunction at the upper levels of its administration, compounded by its powerful boosters and their expectations of Aggie athletics. Alberts is leaving the frying pan for the fire. However, he may have an end game that convinced him it’s worth signing up for Texas-style torment. I’ll get to that in a few minutes.

Could it be the delays keeping a president from emerging thus far are because Nebraska’s Board of Regents is fairly well-balanced politically and philosophically? And is that a bad thing? Apparently it is, at least when it comes to getting something done and choosing a president. So Alberts has gone to Texas, where all university Boards of Regents are appointed by the governor. I can see how that could shorten the search-and-selection process for a university president. I can also see how those boards could eventually become “good-ol’-boy” networks, and so the Texas A&M Board of Regents has been labeled by its critics in the Lone Star State. That’s the direction Alberts opted to go, but it doesn’t necessarily mean the Nebraska board is failing at its job.

Nobody besides Tim Clare of Omaha on the current Nebraska Board of Regents has served for 10 years. Collectively, the eight current regents have served for an average of less than six years, or a single term. Yet, as I scan the HuskerMax forums, we have a lot of Husker Nation yelling, “Drain the swamp!” This reveals a mistaken belief that the regents are an entrenched, unaccountable bureaucracy. What’s more, I cannot find any evidence that they’re out to ruin the Husker sports program. When it comes to damaging Big Red sports, what the Board of Regents has done over the past few years is a drop in the bucket compared to what Alberts just did.

Some narratives allege something more sinister than a simple vacuum of leadership. There are claims that four liberal regents support one presidential candidate and four conservative regents want another, and neither side will budge. Some folks, including legendary former NU volleyball coach Terry Pettit, see incompetence or deliberate damage caused mainly by a toxic political environment. Pettit went out of his way to insert himself into the Alberts saga by releasing multiple statements, indicting the regents for essentially running off Carter, former Chancellor Ronnie Green and Alberts because they were “losing sight of the team’s purpose,” and blaming “political dogma” for “undermining the team’s purpose.” It seemed pretty clear that Pettit only blames the more conservative side of the board for the alleged undermining. Pettit made much of Alberts’ November statement upon signing his contract extension, “I’m grateful and honored that at least one person wants me to stay.” That person apparently was Carter, who made Alberts’ contract extension one of his final acts as outgoing NU president. That cryptic comment also seems to indicate that none of the eight regents, regardless of political affiliation, wanted Alberts to stay, which is hard to believe.

A Nebraska Democratic Party fundraising email sent about 24 hours after Alberts left town took this narrative and gave it wings. It was a bit more explicit in laying blame on Nebraska’s former GOP governor. It says, “the (Pete) Ricketts cabal has driven Husker Athletic Director Trev Alberts from town.” It also alludes to Mitch Sherman of The Atlantic and his reference to “a divisive political landscape marked by breadcrumbs that lead to the doorstep of the governor’s mansion.” The email goes on to say that the “Ricketts cabal” has “ruined Husker Athletics.”

Maybe the Democrats decided to target Ricketts because Alberts said that he has “a tremendous amount of respect” for Pillen. “He’s working really hard, and trying to do the right things for Nebraska.”

Alberts may be doing a bit of politicking himself, which I alluded to earlier. It may be that his long game acknowledges the likelihood of the creation of a “Power 2,” with its own rules on NIL, transfer portal regulations and revenue sharing for athletes, who may end up being declared employees instead of student-athletes. What if Alberts has his eye on the commissionership of this new organization? What if he wants to be the Roger Goodell of the NFL Lite? What better résumé builder could he have than to be able to say he was an AD in both the Big Ten and the SEC?

That makes about as much sense as any of the other narratives floating around. Clarity is hard to find these days, but it’s clear that the reputation of Trev Alberts has taken a colossal downturn and deservedly so.