Before taking over as president at WSU in 2007, Floyd spent four years as president at the University of Missouri, a school that competed against Texas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Kansas in the Big 12 Conference. When Floyd got to Washington State, he immediately noticed that the Pac-10 was way behind the Big 12 and other conferences like the SEC and the Big Ten in terms of how much money is invested in athletics. It was a point he stressed when he and Moos met face-to-face to discuss the vacant AD position.
Seated in a high-back leather chair in the wood-paneled living room of the president’s home on WSU’s campus, Floyd made no bones about his desire to see the resurgence of the football program become a top priority.
“Football is an area where WSU has to make a much more strategic and important investment,” Floyd explained. “Our performance has not been what we would like. The only way to change that is to make investments in the physical facilities and the personnel.”
Moos could not have agreed more. To attract the best athletes, WSU needed great facilities and a great coach. That was the philosophy that Oregon had adopted before turning its fortunes around.
The other point Floyd stressed was that he had no plans to look over Moos’s shoulder. He had neither the time nor the interest in micromanaging the athletic department, particularly with respect to personnel decisions. Moos would be free to hire and fire coaches. Floyd’s only input was that he wanted to start attracting the best in the business to Pullman, even if that meant spending more money than in the past.
It all sounded perfect to Moos. There was just one hitch—the non-compete contract he had signed when he left Oregon. His generous severance package—$3.5 million—was spread out over ten years. Moos received annual $350,000 payouts. But they were contingent on his not taking a job with a BCS program west of the Mississippi. Accepting the WSU job was a definite breach. He’d have to forfeit the remaining seven years of severance money. That amounted to $2.45 million.
It was a potential deal killer. But Floyd didn’t want to dwell on it. He reiterated his hope that Moos would be the new AD. Then he sent him on his way for a full day of meetings and interviews on campus with other WSU officials and administrators.
Days later Bill Moos delivered some steers to Sandpoint, Idaho. He was headed back to Spokane, pulling an empty trailer behind his pickup truck, when Floyd called him. “Bill, you did an excellent job down here,” he said. “People were very impressed. I want to make you an offer to be the athletic director.”
Cell reception was spotty. But before dropping the call, Moos heard the annual base salary: $350,000.
Moos had already made up his mind that he was going to take the job, regardless of the money. He called Floyd back and told him he would accept.
“I wish something could have worked out with Oregon on your severance,” Floyd said.
“Well …”
“How many years did you have left?” Floyd asked.
“Seven. So I lose some security.”
“No,” Floyd said. “I am going to give you a seven-year contract.”
Under Floyd’s offer, Moos would end up making exactly what he would have received from Oregon. When he got back to the ranch, he told his wife it was time to dig his suits out of storage.
Bill Moos’s first official day on the job as AD at WSU was April 10, 2010. After hiring a ranch hand to help his wife run their ranch, Moos moved into a town house in Pullman and started working days, nights and weekends. There was a lot to do and little to work with. WSU had the smallest budget in the Pac-10, and the football team had become a serial loser. The Cougars had gone 2-11 in 2008 and 1-11 in 2009. Attendance was down. Fan apathy was up. Giving had come to a standstill. Meanwhile, the stadium was in dire need of improvements and expansion.
Moos made a list of top priorities:
1. Branding
2. Facilities
3. Better infrastructure
4. Better salaries
5. Better recruiting budgets
Then he made a list of obstacles:
1. We have no money.
2. Nobody is giving money.
3. We are not on TV.
The question was, where to begin? Then he got an unexpected call.
“Moos?”
“Yes.”
“Philip Knight.”
“Hey, how are you?”
“I’m good. I just want to congratulate you.”
“Thanks.”
“College athletics needs you. The Pac-10 needs you. I think it’s super that you are back in it.”
“I really appreciate that, Phil.”
The conversation went on for fifteen minutes. Moos told Knight that one of his first orders of business was to work with Nike to rebrand WSU. The Cougars desperately needed an identity. Knight understood. He had a favorite saying he had shared with Moos many times back at Oregon: “You don’t need a sign on the Eiffel Tower. When you see the Eiffel Tower, you know that it is the Eiffel Tower. Now when you see the O, you know it is Oregon.”
By the time the two men hung up, Moos knew the hatchet had been buried. Knight had pledged to send his best design team at Nike up to Pullman.
One thing Moos had going for him was experience. The minute he took over as AD at WSU, he became the senior AD in the Pac-10 Conference. This immediately thrust him into a leadership role right as the conference was undergoing seismic changes. For starters, the Pac-10 was about to become the Pac-12.
By 2010, conference realignment was sweeping college football, and the Pac-10 was no exception. It had invited Utah and Colorado to join. The decision to expand was a financial one that made fiscal sense for everybody, but especially for schools with smaller athletic budgets like WSU. Under NCAA rules, only conferences with twelve schools can hold a conference championship game. There were obvious benefits for the two teams that play in a championship game. But even the conference’s other schools stood to receive roughly $500,000 each from the game.
But expansion also created some challenges, like figuring out how to split the conference into two divisions. There was a lot to consider, such as geography, long-standing traditional rivalries and competition of schedules. All of that had to be sorted out fast. The Pac-10 television contracts with ESPN and Fox were about to expire in 2011. Commissioner Larry Scott was gearing up to negotiate new deals with both networks. But he also planned to launch a Pac-12 network. “We had a lot of inventory that wasn’t making its way to TV,” said the conference’s chief operating officer, Kevin Weiberg. “Under the old deal with ESPN and Fox many of our basketball games and football games were not on TV.”
The same month that Moos took the helm at WSU, Weiberg joined the Pac-10 to help oversee the launch of the conference network and serve as Scott’s top deputy as he prepared for negotiations with ESPN and Fox. Previously, Weiberg had been VP of planning and development for the Big Ten Network. With the addition of Utah and Colorado, the Pac-12 would feature a conference network that included six regional networks. Pac-12 Washington, for example, would feature Washington and Washington State games, while Pac-12 Arizona would feature Arizona and Arizona State games, and so forth. That way, the Pac-12 Network in the appropriate regional markets would televise every football game that wasn’t picked up by ESPN or Fox.
To fill additional programming space, the conference planned to tap its rich history with Olympic sports. In the 2008 Summer Olympics alone, the Pac-10 had 256 athletes compete, and they brought home eighty-nine medals. Yet for years, world-famous Olympic athletes from the Pac-10 such as Jackie Joyner-Kersee and Matt Biondi had gone virtually unnoticed until they left college. Scott wanted to change that.
“Our plan was to take inventory that wasn’t generating net revenue for institutions and turn it into an additional revenue stream,” Weiberg explained. “Plus, the conference network gives you a chance to expand exposure and brand reach for the conference generally. You’ve got a promotional vehicle out there 24/7, year-round.”
Bill Moo
s was sure of one thing: conference expansion, new television deals with ESPN and Fox and the creation of a new conference network promised a flood of new revenue into the Pac-12. The question was how it would be distributed. Under the Pac-10’s existing television contracts with ESPN and Fox, teams that participated in televised games shared 55 percent of the revenue. The remaining 45 percent was divided up equally among the other schools. Since USC or UCLA was on television virtually every week, the two of them were taking in the lion’s share of the money. They resided in the second-largest television market in the United States, and both schools had rich football traditions and were a bigger draw for the national networks. WSU was in one of the smallest markets and seldom appeared on TV. The year Moos arrived, WSU received less than $2.5 million in TV money. USC and UCLA both received roughly eight times that much.
When he was at Oregon, Moos chaired the Pac-10’s television committee and tried repeatedly to get the conference to switch to an equal revenue-sharing plan. But conference bylaws required eight votes to change any revenue policies. Naturally, USC and UCLA always voted no. University of Washington routinely joined them because the Huskies were on television a fair amount in the 1980s and 1990s and consistently had one of the strongest programs in the conference. But for WSU to turn its football fortunes around, Moos had to find a way to get eight votes before the new television contracts with ESPN and Fox were negotiated.
One weekend Moos left Pullman and went back to his ranch. He tended to get his best inspiration behind the wheel of a tractor. So he spent a day on his John Deere. At one point he turned off the engine and called the Pac-10 offices to inquire about voting rules. With Utah and Colorado joining, he wondered how many votes it would take to change revenue policy.
The answer was nine votes. If he could get Utah and Colorado on his side, it wouldn’t matter how UW voted. He also learned that he had an ally in Commissioner Larry Scott. “Larry was a proponent for equal revenue sharing, and we put that on the table early on, based on experiences I had at the Big Ten Network,” Weiberg explained. “If you are going to do complicated things in TV, you have to have all members participating as equal partners, and you need a grant of rights across the board. So senior and junior partners doesn’t work.”
Moos had a plan. He started laying the groundwork for it in July 2010 when the conference ADs met at the Peninsula hotel in Beverly Hills. UCLA’s AD, Dan Guerrero, chaired the meeting. After a full agenda that included discussions on conference realignment, scheduling, bowl games and future media rights, the final agenda item of the day was a discussion on the composition of new conference divisions. That’s when Moos raised an objection. He argued that it was ridiculous to discuss how to divide the conference until they determined how to divide the money from the new television contract. “The money,” he said, “will dictate how we divide the conference.”
Other ADs agreed. The matter was tabled, and the meeting was adjourned.
Over the remainder of the summer, Moos called every AD in the Pac-12, except for Pat Haden at USC and Guerrero at UCLA. His message to the other ADs was simple and direct: This is our chance to get an equal share of the pie. He already had the nine necessary votes to get equal revenue sharing passed when he called Washington AD Scott Woodward and secured an insurance vote. For years Washington had sided with USC and UCLA. But Moos had a hunch. Washington had reached an all-time low in its program’s history in 2008, finishing 0-12—the only team in the country to go without a victory. It had another losing season in 2009. The Huskies were seldom on TV, and they had to pay for a huge stadium renovation. Equal revenue sharing suddenly sounded very appealing.
“I’d like to propose we carry the hammer,” Moos told Woodward and the other ADs. “Let them [USC and UCLA] talk first. And we’ll have a plan to slam them right in the face.”
After a series of conference calls and additional meetings, the Pac-12 ADs reconvened on October 6, 2010, in San Francisco to vote on proposals to divide the conference and embrace equal revenue sharing. With Larry Scott about to begin negotiations with ESPN and Fox, it was imperative to settle these issues. A motion on conference divisions suggested the following plan:
SOUTH NORTH
USC Oregon
UCLA Oregon State
Cal Washington
Stanford Washington State
Arizona Utah
Arizona State Colorado
On paper the South conference looked much stronger. When the ADs voted, they deadlocked 6–6 along division lines. Every school in the South Division supported the measure; every school in the North Division opposed it. Oregon, Oregon State, Washington and Washington State felt like second cousins under the proposed alignment. Those four schools wanted Stanford and Cal in the North Division, while placing Utah and Colorado in the South Division.
But during a brief recess, Moos had second thoughts. When the ADs reconvened, he invoked Robert’s Rules and changed his vote, giving the South Division ADs a 7–5 margin. The motion passed.
“My northwest peers looked at me like I lost my mind,” Moos said. “Washington, Oregon and Oregon State each questioned me. But I got to thinking about the ultimate objective at WSU, which is to win the northern division, putting us in the championship game with a chance to go to the Rose Bowl. It is my belief that we have a better chance of achieving this objective if we’ve got Stanford and Cal playing USC and UCLA every year and we don’t have to.”
Once the divisions were established, the ADs turned their attention to revenue sharing. Things got much more testy. Right off the bat, USC and UCLA made it clear that they fully expected to have a higher share of the television revenue, based on precedent and the fact that they were in the most lucrative television market. “The L.A. schools were saying we’re the ones driving it, so you are damn right we should get more,” Moos explained. “My argument was that the New York Giants don’t get more than the Green Bay Packers and they’ve got a pretty good league.”
Everyone except USC and UCLA was with Moos. “USC and UCLA had received a larger share in the past,” said Weiberg, “and were very cautious about schemes and plans that might change that dynamic unless they were going to be in a better position than they were before.”
Haden and Guerrero held their ground. But Moos informed them that he had ten votes. That didn’t go over well.
Haden hinted that USC might explore leaving the conference.
Stanford’s AD, Bob Bowlsby, had no patience for Haden’s bluster and called his bluff, saying everyone knew that wasn’t going to happen.
Moos and his colleagues could have rammed the revenue-sharing plan through with a 10–2 vote. But that would have been a costly mistake. “If our television partners sensed a fracture, we would never be able to command the big money,” Moos explained. “We had to come through with everybody happy.”
USC and UCLA came around when they were each promised a $2 million premium in 2012–13. A sunset provision was also included, which stipulated that UCLA and USC would not receive the premium if the conference’s yearly television revenue reached $170 million. With these two caveats, the ADs voted 12–0, endorsing equal revenue sharing.
Todd Van Horne is Nike’s global creative director. He is to Nike what Jonathan Ive is to Apple. A constant innovator, Van Horne has been the genius behind Nike’s ever-evolving development of the most advanced football uniform system ever assembled. And his flair for marketing helped him come up with names like Nike Pro Combat, a system of dress—from state-of-the-art helmets to lightweight, ultra-breathable jerseys that provide enhanced thermoregulation—that is revolutionizing the look and style of college football uniforms. Van Horne is also transforming the look of NFL uniforms. When Nike took over as the supplier to the NFL, Van Horne completely redesigned the entire uniform for teams like the Seattle Seahawks, overhauling everything from the color of the top of their helmets to the tips of their cleats. He even designed colorful gloves that formed the Seahawks logo when a receiver brings hi
s hands together to catch a pass.
At Knight’s request, Van Horne met with Bill Moos to figure out what could be done to reinvent the image at WSU. “We needed an identity,” Moos explained. “A lot of people—young and old—want to wear the gear that their Saturday idols wear. Plus, partnering with Nike helps us immensely with recruiting. When football recruits visit our campus, I wanted to be in a position to talk up our partnership with Nike because today’s recruits have grown up with Nike.”
In their first meeting, Van Horne stressed the importance of uniforms and apparel that comport with modern fashion trends. “Today’s fashion is dictated by youth,” Van Horne told Moos. “You want something that is going to appeal to kids, something that makes them feel good, makes them want to come to your school. It needs to show well and show consistently.”
The one thing Moos didn’t want to do was fool with WSU’s logo. “Our logo is seventy-five years old,” Moos explained. “It has stood the test of time. It is recognizable.”
WSU also has had the same colors—crimson and gray—for the same length of time. Van Horne opted to start there, maintaining a true crimson while developing fifteen shades of gray to reinvent WSU’s athletic uniforms.
The practice of creating uniforms that change from week to week is a pattern that Nike started at Oregon when Moos was the AD there. It took merchandising to a new level, enabling Nike to design a vast array of slightly varied jerseys, sweatshirts, hats, T-shirts, gloves and other sportswear for Oregon. Overnight, Oregon’s apparel became a top seller at Foot Lockers and other retail outlets throughout the Pacific Northwest. Oregon’s visibility soared, helped along by radically flashy uniforms that changed colors from week to week. Apparel sales became a lucrative revenue stream for the athletic department. And consumers became walking billboards for the university, which coincided with a rise in enrollment.
The System: The Glory and Scandal of Big-Time College Football Page 24