Sports pioneer Moos fears for future of programs:
‘It’s against everything I believe college athletics should be about’
By Thomas Clouse, Spokane S-R.
Photo by Jesse Tinsley of S-R
4/7/2024
Bill
Moos spent 35 years helping lead athletic programs to some of their greatest
heights. He led a facilities upgrade at Montana, which won a Division 1-AA
national championship in football in his final year of 1995. Moos then helped
guide Oregon from a Northwest also-ran into national prominence.
Moos
returned to Pullman in 2010, hired the late Mike Leach as football coach and
guided WSU’s largest sports facilities-building project before ending his
career in 2021 after a four-year run at Nebraska.
“What
a fabulous journey we were able to take in this profession. Lots of great
memories,” said Moos, who is compiling a memoir he hopes to have published this
year.
Now
back at his small ranch in Valleyford, Moos recently watched much of what he
built crumble.
The
Pac -12 Conference disintegrated when Oregon and Washington bolted last
August for the Big Ten Conference. Abandoned by the rest of the
former schools, WSU and Oregon State were left to fend for themselves.
College
players now can transfer to any school without penalty. Those same players can
now sign name, image and likeness (NIL) contracts for financial gain, and the
largest conferences are shepherding the vast resources to mostly benefit
themselves.
“I
wouldn’t have gotten into it,” Moos said, referring to his entrance to the
profession at age 30 in 1982. Conference breakups, paying players and rule by
television contracts are “against everything I believe college athletics should
be about.”
Poster boy
Moos
grew up in Edwall, Washington, before attending high school in Olympia. After
graduation, he joined WSU to play football. The offensive lineman was named
All-Pac-8 his senior year in 1972.
After
owning and managing his own businesses for a few years, Moos returned to
Pullman in 1982 to work as associate athletic director.
Moos
landed his first athletic director job in Missoula. But some of his biggest
moves came in Eugene after he was hired as the athletic director at Oregon in
1995.
“We
were aggressive,” Moos said. “When I went there in 1995, it was a doormat. The
facilities were run down. There was apathy. I spearheaded a blueprint we put
together that gave us a chance.”
He
convinced the school and donors to build the first indoor practice facility
west of the Rocky Mountains and other facilities that attracted the athletes
that won 13 Pac-10 championships across six sports.
“Why?
It’s all about recruiting,” Moos said. “We are going after the same talent that
USC and UCLA are telling to stay home.”
All
of a sudden, schools like Michigan State and Wisconsin began agreeing to
home-and-away series in Eugene.
“You
can have the best coaches in the world, but if you don’t have the arms and legs
to carry out the X’s and O’s, you are not going to be successful,” he said.
After
a falling out with Oregon megasponsor Phil Knight, the co-founder of Nike, Moos
left Oregon in 2007. He ranched in Valleyford until the late WSU President
Elson S. Floyd invited him back into the Cougar fold in 2010.
“I
loved Elson Floyd because he was a big thinker. If you wanted to get on his bad
side, say you can’t do something,” Moos said. “He never made me feel like I
worked for him.”
But
Moos also told Floyd: “We have some challenges – big, costly challenges. And,
you have to have my back. We have to do it now.”
By
2012, WSU moved forward on $165 million worth of upgrades to football-only
facilities. More spending upgraded the baseball clubhouse, training facilities,
practice facilities for men’s and women’s basketball, and a new soccer complex.
That
same model, upgrading facilities to attract recruits, had worked everywhere
Moos had been.
“That
arms race of it, I was in the middle of it,” Moos said. “I’m probably the
poster boy.”
But
as a result, current WSU President Kirk Schulz now faces an uncertain revenue
situation after the breakup of the Pac-12, and $100 million in debt from Moos
and Floyd’s spending.
“There
was debt service that I will take full responsibility there,” Moos said. “But,
it was money well spent. To get our facilities up to par and to hire a coach
like Mike Leach. Look what came of it.”
Aside
from playing 1998 and 2003 Rose Bowls, which were both losses, WSU’s most
recent pinnacle came when ESPN’s College GameDay arrived in
Pullman in 2018 to watch the mustachioed Gardner Minshew and
the No. 10 Cougars defeat Oregon 34-20.
“That
exposure, you can’t pay for it. You have to earn it,” said Moos, who was at
Nebraska at the time. “College GameDay showing up there, that was cultivated
from the first day I got there.”
Roots of discord
The
single-most erosive force in amateur athletics today is money, Moos said.
When
he played in the early 1970s, the Cougars were lucky to have a couple of games
on television. Now, nearly every Division I game is televised somewhere, which
is great for fans, but he believes it also planted the seeds of the sport’s
possible undoing.
As
the national appetite for college football grew and television ratings
generated more money, it created a new kind of arms race, Moos said.
“In
1998, there were three football coaches who were making $1 million year. They
had all won national championships,” Moos said of Bobby Bowden, Steve Spurrier
and Phil Fulmer.
In
1999, Washington hired Rick Neuheisel, who hadn’t won a conference
championship, for the same kind of money.
“Guess
who was in athletic directors’ offices the next day? Football coaches. Mine
was,” Moos said. “Before you knew it, coordinators were making more than a
million. Basically, there was no way to put the brakes on it.”
Soon,
coaches who found success were being lured away by larger schools that could
pay the best salaries, as part of the age-old problem of “haves and have-nots,”
Moos said.
That
was the story of WSU and OSU when Moos arrived in Pullman in 2010, he said.
At
the time, WSU was averaging about $3.5 million of revenue a year from the
Pac-10. Those schools with the largest TV markets – Washington, USC and UCLA –
got more.
Moos
said conference bylaws required eight of the 10 schools to approve revenue
disbursement changes.
Finally,
in 2011, the conference expanded by bringing in Utah and Colorado, which gave
the smaller schools a voting bloc to change the system, Moos said.
“I’m
proud of the fact that I led the charge to be able to realize equal
distribution,” he said.
At
the same time, the Pac-12 approved a $3 billion television rights deal.
Overnight, WSU’s annual take went from about $3.5 million to $25 million.
That’s what prompted Moos and Floyd to start the facilities upgrades, he said.
“Of
all the things I may have done in my career, that’s one I’m most proud of,”
Moos said. “Not just for my alma mater, but it benefited Stanford and Cal. They
had a level playing field. But the programs that were dominating were no longer
dominating to the degree they once were.”
Image is everything
As
the Pac-12 finally achieved financial parity, another fight was brewing.
Ed
O’Bannon, a former UCLA basketball player, in 2009 sued the NCAA over its use
of players’ image and likeness for commercial purposes. In a trial in 2014,
O’Bannon won.
That
case led to the NCAA allowing players in 2021 to start earning money on their name,
image and likeness, or NIL.
Moos
is not a fan.
The
days of playing for school and an education are probably gone, he said.
“They
aren’t factoring in the value of that education,” Moos said.
He
explained how he sat down 15 years ago with fellow athletic directors and
assigned values for the benefits athletes receive. That included room and
board, out-of-state scholarships, three meals a day, personal trainers and
access to facilities.
“In
the Pac-12 that year, it was about $200,000 a year,” Moos said. “That’s pretty
good for a 19-year-old.”
But
the new rules of NIL will likely erase the parity reached from the
revenue-sharing he fought so hard to achieve.
“Let
me put it this way, you’ve got a player who developed at Washington State. But
his best NIL opportunity may be doing an advertisement for Cougar Country
Drive-In,” Moos said. “Maybe he gets $10,000 to eat a hamburger on TV. But that
same kid … can now go to UCLA and make $250,000 as a spokesman for Orange
County Chevrolet.
“We
are back to the major market having the upper hand.”
After
the O’Bannon loss, the NCAA continues to face myriad anti-trust lawsuits,
including one in which former players are
seeking monetary damages for back pay for the time frame before
the NIL rules took effect.
“I
think personally, the NCAA went to sleep at the wheel and the train left the
station,” Moos said. “Now they are standing there asking, ‘What happened here?’
What the NCAA looks like in the next three, five to 10 years is not what it
looked like three, five and 10 years ago.”
Picking up the pieces
Moos
recently watched as his friend, Pat Chun, left WSU to become athletic
director at Washington. WSU men’s basketball coach Kyle Smith recently departed for Stanford.
In
the meantime, Schulz, OSU and the Pac-12 are trying to figure out whether
to invite other schools to join what’s
left of its conference or to join another.
Moos
applauded the legal efforts, which secured about $222 million for both schools
over the next two years.
“They’ve
done a really nice job … trying to salvage the monetary piece,” Moos said.
“You’ve got to have a plan and a contingency plan. That’s 24 months.
“If
that money is spent and you are looking at a potential of a Mountain West
payday, you aren’t going to be able to operate the program in a manner in which
it has become accustomed.”
The
breakup was particularly hard on Moos, who said he spent a decade building up
the rivalry between Oregon and Washington.
“What’s
sad is the true college towns in the old Pac 12 are being left in the dust,” he
said. “It’s kind of blatant deception. I don’t know if WSU or OSU could have
done anything. Why would someone want to come to Pullman to play now? That’s
sad, because it took decades to get there.”
The
best possible path forward for WSU probably lies with joining a
new conference, Moos said.
“The
one that makes the most sense from the beginning is the Big 12. There are a lot
of like institutions,” he said. “I was kind of hoping that was the direction it
would go, and maybe it could still. This realignment isn’t over yet.”
With
the chaos of transferring players, NIL payouts and administrators all chasing
security with the “haves” of the sport, Moos said he’s glad to have his farm at
Valleyford.
“There’s
just too much uncertainty right now,” he said.
As
he ponders the future, Moos said his Montana days stand out.
“I
often think back on just how pure and clean and wonderful that was,” Moos said.
“To get on a bus with 65 football players and drive 9½ hours to Ogden, Utah,
and nobody is complaining about how many Nike jumpsuits they had.”
The
players struggled for each other, and for the pride of the school they
represented, he said.
“I
don’t know where it’s going, but I don’t like the direction,” Moos said. “I’m
kind of glad I’m now a rancher.”
