His answer was firm and fiery, the passion in Bill Moos\u2019 voice evident in the immediate aftermath of a huge chunk of his existence, the Pac-12 conference, being blown to smithereens.<\/p>\n
Yes, the Pac-12 is in ruins<\/a>.<\/p>\n Is that good for college football?<\/p>\n Is the apparent movement toward super conferences good for the college game?<\/p>\n \u201cNo, it isn\u2019t,\u201d said Moos, who was Nebraska\u2019s athletic director from 2017 to 2021 and now enjoys life on his 160-acre ranch in eastern Washington state.<\/p>\n \u201cWhere are the rivalries?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n \u201cWhere\u2019s the sense of regional camaraderie?\u201d<\/p>\n He\u2019s right, you know. For instance, what becomes of the Apple Cup? Of the Civil War (Oregon-Oregon State is no longer nicknamed the Civil War, but you get the idea)? <\/p>\n On and on.<\/p>\n Moos has an acute understanding of this world. Before becoming Nebraska\u2019s athletic director, he served in the same capacity for both Oregon (1995 to 2007) and Washington State (2010 to 2017).<\/p>\n \u201cThere was no Oregon-Washington rivalry until I made it one,\u201d Moos said proudly. \u201cThen we (Oregon) beat Washington 12 straight years. I can tell you there\u2019s a rivalry now.\u201d<\/p>\n Twenty years ago, when Autzen Stadium in Eugene, Oregon, expanded, the first event in the newly configured stadium was a reception in a club room for Moos\u2019 oldest daughter, who married a Washington Husky. Mike Bellotti, the former Oregon football coach, delighted attendees with a sparkling rendition of Van Morrison\u2019s \u201cBrown Eyed Girl.\u201d Bellotti is a hell of a good singer, Moos said.<\/p>\n \u201cMy daughter was a Husky, too, when I was in Oregon as A.D. and we were beating the hell out of them,\u201d Moos recalled with a booming laugh. \u201cThat was the toughest check I wrote every three months, was her tuition check.\u201d<\/p>\n Yes, his Pac-12 roots run deep. Extremely deep. The 72-year-old Moos witnessed firsthand the rise of the conference, and closely monitored last week\u2019s fall from his ranch. Saturday, he hauled hay all day before taking time for a media interview. He\u2019s in the process of writing a book about his life.<\/p>\n Much of it will be about his life in the Pac-12.<\/p>\n He witnessed the first game of the old Pac-8 (Washington State beat Stanford) as a 13-year-old farm kid. He watched the first Pac-10 game (Washington State over Arizona State) as a 27-year-old fan. He was in the room as a 60-year-old A.D. for Washington State when the conference expanded to 12 in 2010-11 with the inclusion of Colorado and Utah. What\u2019s more, he participated in the conference with distinction as a student-athlete for Washington State.<\/p>\n All told, he served 32 years in the conference.<\/p>\n Plus, \u201cBoth of my sons were scholarship student-athletes for conference schools (Ben for Cal and Bo for Arizona State),\u201d Moos noted. \u201cIn my time as a Pac-12 A.D., I served on every committee, led the effort to achieve equal revenue distribution and preserve the partnership with the iconic Rose Bowl.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was literally a lifetime of passion and hard work for something that unfortunately is no more.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a fascinating juxtaposition. Moos is full of life on his ranch as he ponders the end of a conference \u2014 only four teams remain \u2014 that literally meant the world to him.<\/p>\n Moos notes that a little more than a decade ago, the Pac-12 was riding high. Larry Scott, the former commissioner, was hailed as a visionary after landing a 12-year, $2.7 billion media deal following the additions of Colorado and Utah. The deal more than tripled the conference\u2019s rights fees.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t long before Moos and the late Mike Leach were riding high for Washington State. \u00a0<\/p>\n There was a problem, though. According to The New York Times, Scott\u2019s insistence on launching the Pac-12 Network without ESPN or Fox as a partner turned into a colossal failure because the conference had no leverage with cable distributors. Thus, many of them refused to meet the Pac-12\u2019s asking price, which left the network with far fewer viewers, and far less revenue, than other conference networks.<\/p>\n In a sense, the Pac-12 never fully recovered.<\/p>\n And now \u2014 thanks in large part to awful leadership by current commissioner George Kliavkoff \u2014 it\u2019s in ruins.<\/p>\n Moos, though, looks beyond Kliavkoff\u2019s inability to land a sufficient media rights deal. He looks to a bigger-picture issue. The former Nebraska A.D. points to a malady that has taken down an assortment of entities over the course of time \u2014 pure greed.<\/p>\n \u201cAll of it is gone (for the Pac-12) in the pursuit of a financial windfall that will never be enough no matter how large it grows,\u201d said Moos, his voice rising in anger.<\/p>\n He clearly doesn\u2019t like what\u2019s happening in college football.<\/p>\n Most would agree that sound leadership is lacking.<\/p>\n It seems TV executives \u2014 nameless and faceless beings to most fans \u2014 essentially are calling the shots.<\/p>\n Some would say TV money is destroying college football. How well can it possibly work when Mountain West teams\u2019 media-rights deals are a fraction of those in the power conferences? <\/p>\n Greed is certainly changing a collegiate sport that many of us came to love in the 1970s and 1980s, when TV networks weren\u2019t in almost complete control. <\/p>\n \u201cThese people don\u2019t give two craps about the fans,\u201d Moos said. \u201cThey don\u2019t care about the student-athletes who have to fly all over the country. Wait until Oregon has to go play Rutgers in New Jersey in a volleyball match.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s all about the almighty dollar, and greed in the end \u2014 well, my friend, it\u2019s the ruin of everything.\u201d<\/p>\n With the way things are going in college athletics \u2014 including NIL and transfer portal \u2014 Moos is happy to be on the ranch at this point of his life.<\/p>\n He remembers when winning a conference crown meant the world to people.<\/p>\n College football may be heading toward two or three super conferences. Will we even call them \u201cconferences\u201d?<\/p>\n \u201cWhen the BCS came into being (in 1998), I thought, \u2018Look out, boys, this ain\u2019t smelling right,\u2019\u201d Moos said. \u201cThen we get to the College Football Playoff (in 2014) and, honestly, that\u2019s what it\u2019s all about now. The Big Ten is fine with all this expansion. It\u2019s about getting another couple schools in the 12-team playoff format.\u201d<\/p>\n Moos strikes a wistful tone as he recalls a time when winning a conference championship felt bigger than it does nowadays.<\/p>\n In fact, Moos recalls a \u201cknock-down, drag-out\u201d discussion he had once upon a time with Lute Olson, the former Arizona men\u2019s basketball coach. Olson expressed concern about playing too many conference games that negatively impacted the Wildcats\u2019 RPI.<\/p>\n \u201cI said, \u2018Hey, Lute, are you just about done talking?\u2019\u201d Moos said. \u201cI told him that at my place (Oregon at the time), our number one goal is to win the Pac-10 championship. Every sport, that\u2019s our goal. If we go into the (NCAA) postseason, that\u2019s frosting on the cake.<\/p>\n \u201cI told him that if you win the Pac-10 championship in basketball, you\u2019re going to get a good national seed.\u201d<\/p>\n Moos paused and thought back to the state of college football.<\/p>\n \u201cNow, it\u2019s like the NFL,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople will say, \u2018It\u2019s OK if we\u2019re a wild card; we\u2019ve just got to get our foot in the door (of the CFP) at the end of the year.\u201d<\/p>\n At any rate, Moos doesn\u2019t have to worry about it any longer. Also, let\u2019s be clear: College sports will retain a level of excitement that\u2019ll keep the masses coming back, even without the 108-year-old Pac-12.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m sick about the Pac-12 news, but at least I got to have so many wonderful experiences,\u201d Moos said.<\/p>\n He\u2019ll hold tight to those memories as the collegiate sports landscape continues to shift.<\/p>\n He\u2019s far away from it all, working on the big family ranch \u2014 where life is comparatively simple and pure.<\/p>\n Never miss breaking news or another HuskerOnline article again. Click HERE to sign up for HuskerOnline\u2019s Daily and Breaking News Newsletters.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n The post Steven Sipple: With deep ties in Pac-12, former Nebraska A.D. Bill Moos mulls end of conference and cites greed as main culprit<\/a> appeared first on On3<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" His answer was firm and fiery, the passion in Bill Moos\u2019 voice evident in the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13005\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Bill Moos ties to Pac-12 run extremely deep<\/h2>\n
Moos full of life on his ranch as he mulls end of league<\/h2>\n
That big ranch is feeling awfully good right now <\/h2>\n