Ex-Nebraska AD Bill Moos writes in memoir Kelly, not Frost, was his first choice for football coach

Photo: Nebraska Athletic Director Bill Moos, left, sits with football coach Scott Frost during an NCAA college football news conference Sept. 27, 2019, in Lincoln, Neb. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik, File)

By ERIC OLSON AP College Football Writer

Former Nebraska athletic director Bill Moos wrote in a book released this week that Scott Frost was not his first choice to be the Cornhuskers' coach in 2017, that he was ordered to undergo an evaluation for alcoholism and that he looked into the possibility of Nebraska leaving the Big Ten and returning to the Big 12.

Moos was at Nebraska from October 2017 until June 2021, when he announced his retirement. In his memoir, “Crab Creek Chronicles: From the Wheat Fields to the Ball Fields and Beyond,” Moos wrote that he sensed top administrators wanted him out long before he left.

Moos was widely hailed for hiring Frost and men's basketball coach Fred Hoiberg, but he acknowledged his initial focuses in his searches were on Chip Kelly and Dana Altman.

Late in the 2017 season, Moos flew to New Hampshire to meet with Kelly, whom he had known since Kelly was offensive coordinator at Oregon. Kelly went on to go 46-7 in four years as head coach and then spent four years in the NFL. He was out of coaching in 2017, and Moos left their four-hour meeting excited about the prospect of hiring Kelly.

“I was met with blank stares and a total lack of excitement when I expressed that to my superiors,” Moos wrote. "I later learned that a veteran regent and a generous donor to the university voiced a strong objection to the idea. I was not told I couldn't pursue him, but I certainly felt negative vibes. Within a week, Chip Kelly was named the head coach at UCLA.”

Moos noted fans and media overwhelmingly wanted Frost, a Nebraska native and quarterback of the Huskers' 1997 national championship team. Moos scheduled a meeting with Frost at a Philadelphia hotel the day before Frost's unbeaten UCF team visited Temple.

Moos described Frost as “in sweats and unshaven” when he entered the room. Moos planned for a one-on-one meeting but invited his wife, Kendra, to stay when it became apparent Frost's close friend, Matt Davison, and his UCF chief of staff and high school teammate Gerrod Lambrecht would sit in.

Kendra's assessment, Moos wrote, was that Frost was “too immature.”

Moos agreed, but wrote, "If I don't pursue him with everything I've got and he ends up at Tennessee or Florida, I'm screwed.”

To which Kendra said, “Yeah, but if you bring Nebraska's golden boy home and he falls flat on his face, you are really screwed. Remember, people have short memories.”

Frost was 16-31 at Nebraska and was fired by Moos' successor, Trev Alberts, early in the 2022 season. Frost returned to UCF last year as head coach. Frost, through a UCF spokesman, declined to comment about Moos' book.

Two games into Frost's first season at Nebraska, Moos was called into a meeting with chancellor Ronnie Green and university president Hank Bounds. Moos wrote he thought the discussion would be about football. Instead, he was handed a letter that said Green had received reports of inappropriate and unprofessional behavior by Moos in public settings.

Moos was told to quit drinking alcohol and to undergo an evaluation for alcohol addiction. Moos wrote that he spent four days at the Betty Ford Center in California for an evaluation and that he was found to not have an addiction.

In 2019, as Nebraska's basketball team struggled under Tim Miles, Moos looked into hiring Altman. Moos thought it was a natural fit with Altman a Nebraska native and a success at Oregon and his previous stop, Creighton in Omaha.

In a meeting with Green and university regent Jim Pillen, now the Nebraska governor, Pillen dismissed the idea out of hand.

“Nebraskan's won't accept him,” Pillen said, according to Moos.

The Associated Press sent requests for comment from Green and Pillen through email and social media channels.

Moos wrote that in 2020 he briefly explored a Nebraska return to the Big 12, which it left in 2011 to join the Big Ten. The Huskers generally have not been successful in football and men's basketball, and Moos was frustrated with the Big Ten's response to the pandemic. The Big Ten had canceled the 2020 football season before Nebraska and Ohio State led a movement to play a shortened schedule.

“Nebraska being in the Big Ten never felt quite right to me, nor, for that matter, did it for most of the Husker fans,” Moos wrote. “A big reason for this is the school's location. Deeply rooted in America's heartland, the land-grant institution just fits better with the schools of the Big 8” and most of the ones that were added when the Southwest Conference disbanded in 1995.

Moos wrote then-Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby and new university president Ted Carter were interested, but Green and most of the regents were vehemently against it.