BOWLING GREEN — When it came out last week the University of Washington is reportedly targeting Bowling Green athletic director Bob Moosbrugger for a deputy position, the news might have come as a surprise.
After all, it’s not every day a sitting Division I AD leaves his alma mater for a second-in-command post.
What gives?
But maybe we’re asking the wrong question.
A better one: What’s about to give?
One way or another, Moosbrugger appears on the way out.
Bowling Green president Rodney Rogers has informed the seventh-year AD the university is moving on, according to three sources briefed on the situation.
It’s just a matter of how the exit will be handled.
BG has given Moosbrugger a grace period to find another job, per the sources, and, naturally, would prefer he do so, for the sake of appearances and to mitigate its losses.
Moosbrugger, 49, is signed through June 2024 at a rate of $275,000 per year. If he’s fired without cause — and without another job lined up — he’ll be owed a buyout equivalent to six months of his base salary ($137,500).
Could Washington offer the soft landing both sides seem to covet?
CollegeAD, an industry insider news service, reported that UW AD Jennifer Cohen has her sights on Moosbrugger to fill the Huskies’ vacant deputy AD/chief operating officer role.
Moosbrugger — who serves with Cohen on the NCAA Division I baseball committee and spent 20 years on the West Coast before returning to BG in 2016, including 14 years as an administrator at San Diego State — reportedly met with the Washington AD two weekends ago and was set to meet more UW staffers shortly thereafter.
“Barring a last-minute breakdown,” CollegeAD reported, “sources say a hire would be expected after the upcoming NACDA Convention.”
The annual National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics Convention ends Wednesday in Las Vegas.
Stay tuned.
Moosbrugger declined comment. Rogers was said to be unavailable.
Informed of our reporting and asked what led the president to decide on a new direction, university spokesman Alex Solis said in a statement: “Pursuant to his contract with BGSU, AD Bob Moosbrugger informed President Rogers that there was outreach to him about potential athletic leadership positions and of his interest in these searches for personal and family reasons. Bob is still the AD of BGSU, and we appreciate his continued leadership of his alma mater. The University has no further comment at this time.”
Read into that what you will.
My read: It’s probably a good time for both sides to see other people.
While there’s no smoking gun that has nudged Bowling Green to this crossroads, there is the general sense of an athletic department operating beneath its potential.
Is that all on Moosbrugger? Of course not. Some of the discontent is even rooted in circumstances that preceded his arrival.
I’ve long held that as long as an athletic director is a good guy and their football program is humming, they can survive almost anything.
Moosbrugger has the first part down. Football is another story.
In some ways, Moosbrugger was up against it from the start.
Former AD Chris Kingston’s hire-and-run appointment of Mike Jinks in December 2015 — just before Kingston got out of Dodge — put the football program in a sinkhole from which it’s still emerging. The Falcons are 16-49 overall and 11-34 in the MAC since 2016.
Moosbrugger was shackled with a disaster in the sport that fuels fundraising and is most responsible for campus and community morale, and, fair or not, he could not establish the equity elsewhere to withstand it.
His tenure has featured its moments. He’s made some strong hires, too, including women’s basketball coach Robyn Fralick and women’s soccer coach Matt Fannon, who was the MAC coach of the year in each of his three seasons at BG before leaving for Iowa State in 2019. (Ask me in a few months if football coach Scot Loeffler will join the list. Year 4 will tell us everything.)
But business is business.
And ultimately, while Moosbrugger is a sharp administrator, it’s fair to wonder: Is he the kind of transformative leader and relentlessly energetic fundraiser you need at the top of a resource-starved athletic department?
“He wasn’t the worst AD,” one major booster said, “and he wasn’t the best.”
A disappointing 2021-22 season perhaps proved the final straw.
While circumstances varied, consider the Falcons’ four needle-moving sports: football (4-8), men’s basketball (13-18), women’s basketball (17-16), and hockey (15-19-3). None finished in the top half of their league. Then toss in another PR fiasco with the back-from-the-dead baseball program — see: the Gary Haas drama — and here we are.
“It’s time for a change,” another top donor said. “The results have not improved, fiscally or athletically. Bob is a good guy, but the department needs new energy and new leadership.”
And, sure, a new set of eyes.
They just better be wide open.
Let’s not pretend anyone will be better. While Bowling Green has a rich athletic tradition, there’s no spinning it. The Falcons’ AD post isn’t just a hard job in the big-spending modern landscape. It’s one of the hardest jobs in the country.
BG ran the leanest operation in the MAC before the pandemic and it has since gotten leaner. The university spent $20.2 million on its 18 varsity teams last year, per the Knight Commission database, or more than $16 million less than Buffalo poured into its 16 teams. (Toledo spent $29.4 million on its 16 teams.) Only two of the 130 schools that have FBS football programs invested less on athletics last season: Northern Illinois ($17.7 million) and Louisiana-Monroe ($18.1 million).
You can talk about doing more with less — and Bowling Green has a lot to sell, no question — but, in the long run, that only goes so far.
If the university is serious about consistently competing in the MAC, let alone at the top level of Division I (FBS), it needs to invest, and it will need to find a force-of-nature AD who can help make it happen.
Is that white knight out there?
One way or another, it appears Bowling Green wants to go looking.
First Published June 29, 2022, 12:42 p.m.
