Amie Just: Trev Alberts’ blindside departure from Nebraska raises many questions
How does this happen?
On Nov. 14, 2023, Nebraska’s Trev Alberts received a massive, eight-year contract extension. His salary doubled. Hefty retention bonuses. With his base salary of $1.7 million, Alberts was among the highest-paid athletic directors in the country. At his alma mater where his name is one of only a handful embossed on Memorial Stadium’s North Stadium wall.
On March 13, 2024, Alberts is out. Gone. Left for the oilier pastures of College Station, Texas, to be Texas A&M’s athletic director.
Nebraska Athletics, under his direction, was getting ready to embark on one of the most seismic construction projects in recent decades with the Memorial Stadium renovations on the horizon. Nebraska needs to fundraise hundreds of millions of dollars for this — a project he once told me “energized” him — and he’s hitting the door?
This is a place he loved wholeheartedly. He often said as much. And he’s leaving?
This is college athletics. Loyalty is a farce. And legacy? Well, there’s a subsection of Nebraska fans that are already clamoring for NU to chisel Alberts’ name off the stadium. So much for being a First-Team All-American and the Butkus Award winner. When you leave under a shroud of secrecy — not even informing your right-hand folks before the news leaked — people are bound to pick up pitchforks.
That’s not hyperbole. Senior administrators in both Varner Hall and Memorial Stadium were completely blindsided by the news on Wednesday. The same goes for Nebraska’s coaches, many of whom are scattered across the country — or in Matt Rhule’s case, across the globe — right now coaching their teams.
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