Nebraska responded to a shock — shedding athletic director Trev Alberts to Texas A&M — by delivering a fair greater one to a brand new Massive Ten member.
In any case of six months at Washington, Husky A.D. Troy Dannen is leaving Seattle for the job at NU, ESPN reported Wednesday morning. Dannen took the UW job in October when the Huskies’ outgoing A.D., Jennifer Cohen, left for USC.
Beforehand, Dannen had been the athletic director at Tulane (2015-2023) and Northern Iowa (2008-2015). He additionally graduated from UNI, the place he labored as a scholar within the sports activities info division. A transfer to Nebraska could be a transfer nearer to house for him and his household.
Washington begins competitors within the Massive Ten subsequent season. The Huskies shall be trying to a exchange an A.D. that they had simply begun to know, one who simply employed Jeff Fisch to teach UW’s soccer staff after the earlier coach, Kalen DeBoer, departed for Alabama.
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Nebraska’s transfer for a brand new athletic director comes someday after asserting a five-year, assured contract extension for males’s basketball coach Fred Hoiberg, who will make greater than $26 million over the lifetime of his new deal.
And Dannen’s arrival proves correct a vow from College of Nebraska interim president Chris Kabourek that NU would transfer rapidly to exchange Alberts, who surprised the state, his employees and Husker coaches by leaving his alma mater simply two-and-a-half years on the job — simply 4 months after a profitable, eight-year contract extension.
Dannen’s transfer is its personal shock. He simply employed Fisch and was within the means of hiring a brand new males’s basketball coach. Such selections have a tendency to purchase an A.D. some safety as key hires get an opportunity to implement their system and try for fulfillment.
However Washington’s incapacity to retain DeBoer — who led UW to the Faculty Soccer Playoff nationwide title recreation — might have supplied some pause for the job. In keeping with Dannen, the Huskies tried — and failed — to stitch up DeBoer within the months earlier than Nick Saban retired at Alabama and DeBoer rapidly took the job there.
Dannen began at Washington Oct. 9. The subsequent day, based on a Seattle Occasions story, Dannen started engaged on an extension for DeBoer, who gained 11 video games in 2022 at UW.
“We put numbers in entrance of him that had been, fairly frankly, unprecedented for this college,” Dannen stated in a January speech, based on the Occasions. “We put a Massive Ten package deal in entrance of Kalen.”
The preliminary supply, Dannen stated in his speech, was $8.7 million per yr for DeBoer. After a Sugar Bowl win over Texas within the CFP semifinal, it was $9.4 million — a extra profitable contract than Nebraska has for coach Matt Rhule.
DeBoer went to Alabama. Dannen employed Fisch. Now, Dannen is headed to Nebraska.
He’s a soccer man — Dannen has been chair of the NCAA soccer competitors committee for the final 4 years and at the moment serves on the chief committee of the NCAA Soccer Oversight Committee. At Tulane, he employed Willie Fritz, who throughout eight years gained 54 video games for the Inexperienced Wave. Fritz’s final two groups, in 2022 and 2023, completed 12-2 and 11-2. Fritz parlayed that success into the Houston job.
Dannen began his A.D. profession at Northern Iowa in 2008; his time overseeing UNI coincided with former Nebraska coach Scott Frost’s final yr as an UNI assistant. Like Alberts, who reduce two sports activities at UNO, Dannen reduce baseball at UNI in 2009.
Previous to Northern Iowa, Dannen labored 19 years for the Iowa Women Excessive College Athletic Union in Des Moines. Throughout Dannen’s tenure in that function, Iowa highschool women basketball switched from 6-player, 3-on-3 basketball performed in half-court settings to a five-player, full-court recreation — a historic change within the historical past of the game in Iowa.