Wisconsin has hired former Miami and Nebraska AD Shawn Eichorst as their new AD. A Wisconsin native, he should be familiar with the Big Ten as he was also an assistant at Wisconsin.
Personally, I thought he was the 2nd worst AD Nebraska’s had since the 1950’s His coaching hires weren’t exactly big winners.
Begs the question who was the worst?
In my “short” time at Northwestern Rick Taylor was the best. Dr. Jim did a lot of damage with the Wrigley games. Gragg was way out of his league so I think the Fitz stuff is Jim’s doing.
Mark Murphy was okay but everybody knew he was a NFL person so a temporary hire. I thought Polisky was a good choice, but he was sabotaged by the same people who pushed the anti-Fitz narrative.
I think most Nebraska fans would agree that Steve Pederson was the worst AD at Nebraska. He fired Tom Osborne’s chosen successor, Frank Solich, saying he didn’t want to see Nebraska slide into mediocrity.
They didn’t. The leaped into it like a deer running in front of a speeding semi at 10PM, and are still mostly an also-ran when it comes to national attention to football.
Of the Nebraska coaches in the 21st century, only Bo Pelini seemed to be able to win games consistently, with multiple 9 win seasons before Eichorn fired him and replaced with with a coach from Oregon State who wasn’t even in the job market at the time and wasn’t a consistent winner there. The jury is still out on Matt Rhule, though I think he’ll be on the hot seat in 2026 if the Huskers can’t win more than 7 games.