This article, from The Athletic, Feb. 2, 2024 puts some flesh on the skeletal remarks of Omaha World Herald NU football beat writer Sam McKewon. To summarize, I excerpt below, it's all about that corporate buzzword, "alignment", and the University of Nebraska System is misaligned.
- The positions of chancellor and president were recently combined. Heretofore a chancellor oversaw a campus, Nebraska has at least two, Nebraska-Lincoln and Nebraska-Omaha. A chancellor for each. The president oversaw both campuses and the entire university System. Ted Carter had been System president until leaving in August, 2023 to become president of Ohio. The position of Nebraska System president has not been filled. Chris Kabourek is the interim prez.
- The academic and athletic components of the Nebraska-Lincoln campus are misaligned. Cuts are required in the budget of the former while the budget of the latter, under Trev Alberts' rainmaking, ran a surplus last year. Alberts had been the main proponent of a nearly half-billion dollar renovation of the "Cornhuskers" home field, Memorial Stadium. You can see the misalignment. That expensive stadium project has stalled.
- The position of football coach is now misaligned with the the new university academic and athletic leadership. Matt Rhule was hired by Carter, the last full-time president, and Alberts, the last full-time Athletic Director. You would forgive Matt if he feels a little "vulnerable", a word that the interim president, Kabourek, used to apply to himself. Because,
- The Nebraska "Cornhuskers" are misaligned in the B1G Conference. An important reason for the misalignment is Nebraska's lonesomeness as the only school of 18 not a member of the prestigious American Association of Universities (AAU). Nebraska was kicked out of the AAU in 2011.
- The most important reason the AAU booted Nebraska was the university System's misaligned research funding reporting, which separated that at Nebraska-Lincoln from its medical school in Omaha. Kabourek is aligning these into one report, which probably will help with the AAU.
The unanimous reporting on Trev Alberts' decision to leave Nebraska for Texas DE&I is that it had nothing to do with money; it had to do with this uncertainty.
In the academic and research world, Kabourek faces a budget shortfall and the reality of administering cuts.
Nebraska
athletics, under the direction of Alberts, generated $204.8 million in
revenue in the 2023 fiscal year, a record for the state’s flagship
institution, and a $13.9 million surplus. Both financial figures place
Nebraska into an elite category nationally.
And still, Kabourek is concerned.
...
This week [Feb. 2, 2024], the university system announced that University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha plan this year to report federally funded research expenditures as a combined figure to the National Science Foundation’s Higher Education Research and Development Survey.
It matters because Nebraska had been the only Big Ten institution to separate research dollars tied to its main campus and the medical school. The distinction contributed to the 2011 removal of Nebraska from the prestigious American Association of Universities, of which it had been a member since 1909.
Every other Big Ten member, including the four schools set to join from the Pac-12 in August, belongs to the AAU.
The reclassification of research expenditures gets Nebraska “in the ballpark,” Kabourek said, with other Big Ten universities. But the process to regain AAU membership requires a “broader strategy to align” the Lincoln campus with the rest of the university system, Kabourek said.
The decision last year to shift oversight of Nebraska athletics from the UNL chancellor to the system president illustrates an additional effort to align campuses.
Kabourek participated this week in his first gathering of the Big Ten Council of Presidents and Chancellors.
“It’s a little vulnerable to walk into that meeting and know that you’re representing the only school that doesn’t look like the other 17,” he said. “Those are our peers, and we’ve got to make sure we’re competing with those peers.”
University leaders must do more, according to Kabourek, or they could risk Nebraska’s solid footing in the Big Ten. Ultimately, they could jeopardize the school’s membership.
...
No scenario is entirely farfetched. ...
Could the Big Ten expel Nebraska over its missing AAU label? Yes, if the other league members were looking for a reason to share multimedia rights revenue with fewer schools.
Kabourek surely won’t encounter such a plot in 2024. But Alberts could face anything imaginable before his time in Lincoln is done. ...
Now he won't have to.
..."With Trev, we have the right leader at the right time."...
Now you don't.
If these are the reasons, and they seem to be, Alberts gestured toward them in his remarks upon introduction at DE&I, then it's hard for me not to feel that Alberts did a shitty thing here, that he doesn't really love Nebraskans, the university, the football program's supporters, or the state. I don't blame university leadership. To leave because leadership is unsettled at the present time is shitty. University presidents, chancellors, whatever the term for university leadership, change all the time. Why did Alberts sign that contract extension in November, 2023? If Nebraska had named a permanent replacement for president in October, do you mean to tell me he would have stayed? I don't believe that. If he had left for more money than Nebraska could afford, to me, that would be more understandable. DE&I has been throwing money at sports people for ever; they made Jackie Sherrill an offer he couldn't refuse to get him to jump from Pitt. Mercenary is a better word than others in very few contexts, but here, to me, it would be better for Alberts to have been a mercenary than...what? What is the label you put on what he did? Stability wanter? President fetishist? Disloyal, that's the only word I can think that applies to Alberts. He professed his LOVE for Nebraska and all things Nebraska. If he hadn't done that, it's like renewing your vows to your spouse three years after getting married and then ditching them eight months later. It's a shitty thing to do to a nice person who you say you love and he did it to Nebraska Nice.
