The CYA interviews continue.... Major article on 247 national page regarding the ADs and University presidents and Warren
"Every Big Ten athletic director wanted a fall 2020 college football season, Nebraska's Bill Moos told Sam McKewon of the Omaha World Herald. In
a column published Saturday by McKewon, Moos said that he and several of his fellow athletic directors — Ohio State's Gene Smith, Penn State's Sandy Barbour and Michigan's Warde Manuel — pushed hardest for the fall while Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren reportedly preferred this spring.
"(Warren) knew where we were coming from, and he was the messenger to the presidents and chancellors,"
Moos said, according to McKewon, who wrote that Moos noted there "was unanimous agreement" among all conference athletics directors for keeping a season in the fall.
Moos added that a Zoom meeting between all the parties did not happen. In addition, Smith and Wisconsin's Barry Alvarez were not involved with "key discussions that shaped the league's decisions," Moos said, per McKewon. Warren instead was in the meeting with Big Ten presidents and chancellors on behalf of the athletic directors.
"I knew where our people stood, but I would have liked to have been in the room when they expressed it to the commissioner and our presidents and chancellors,"
Moos said. "The commissioner was operating in silos, and the silos weren't connected. And, in the end, that created varying degrees of communication not being delivered."
Ohio State and Nebraska made headlined as head football coaches Ryan Day and Scott Frost publicly pushed for a fall season, even after the Big Ten's postponement. Parents of players from both programs appeared late this week at Big Ten headquarters in Rosemont, Illinois, protesting the conference's decision.
"Our goal is to get something back by Monday at noon, but as of now we haven't heard anything,"
said Glen Snodgrass, the father of Nebraska freshman linebacker Garrett Snodgrass, Saturday. "I know us as a parent group from the university feel like the football team here at the University of Nebraska is a very safe place for us to be. We feel like the measures that they have in place, the experts that they have, the testing that they have, goes above and beyond even what's been handed down to them from higher up. We feel like being on that football team, and actively a member of that team, is more safe than them not being a part of it. I know this week a lot of the kids are not involved in the football program, and I just get a little bit concerned what's going on without that structure of what they have being part of the football team."
The Big Ten hopes to play a spring season, but details have not been disclosed by the conference, leaving all parties — coaches, parents and players — with lingering questions. Sources told 247Sports'
Jeff Rabjohns and
Brian Snow that the Big Ten is eyeing a possible January start with games in domes.
The Nebraska AD - Bill Moos - was interviewed in the local Lincoln Nebraska paper.
Nebraska Athletic Director Bill Moos considered it a win on Aug. 5 when, after delays, the Big Ten finally announced its 2020 football schedule with a televised special on its own network. At long last, a 10-game schedule — starting just before Labor Day — with built-in flexibility to move games around as needed in the middle of a coronavirus pandemic.
But, as the days marched on, Moos understood the league’s interest — as determined by the Big Ten presidents and chancellors — had quickly waned in even attempting that schedule.
“As we got closer to the decision, I got less and less confident we were going to be playing,” Moos said.
There was a reason for that: Moos remained in consistent communication with his boss, UNL Chancellor Ronnie Green, who was in full support of the Big Ten playing a fall season but, more importantly, kept Moos informed of the opposite sentiment growing among other Big Ten leaders. Green did that because the presidents and chancellors weren’t in the same Zoom meetings as athletic directors. Athletic directors weren’t in the same Zoom meetings as medical personnel, either. Seasoned athletic veterans like Moos, Wisconsin’s Barry Alvarez, Penn State’s Sandy Barbour and Ohio State’s Gene Smith were left out of key discussions that shaped the league’s decisions.
Instead, first-year Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren was in those meetings as the athletic directors’ voice.