Texas A&M went and found an athletic director from the Big Ten after its previous AD went to the Big Ten.
A&M announced Wednesday afternoon that it had hired Nebraska athletic director Trev Alberts to replace Ross Bjork. Bjork left A&M earlier in 2024 to replace the retiring Gene Smith at Ohio State.
Alberts has been Nebraska’s athletic director since 2021. The former Nebraska linebacker took over for Bill Moos after Moos retired.
“I want to welcome Trev and his family to Aggieland,” former Texas A&M coach and interim athletic director R.C. Slocum said in a statement. “I want to thank President [Mark] Welsh, and also the committee led by Dave Dunlap for their thorough and tremendous efforts in selecting Trev Alberts to lead our student-athletes, coaches and staff.”
Alberts’ main priority at Nebraska was to rebuild the football program. Alberts played at Nebraska in the early 1990s when the Huskers were one of the dominant programs in the country. Nebraska has taken a significant step back over the past two decades. The Cornhuskers have just three 10-win seasons since 2003 and haven’t reached double-digits since 2012.
A winning season would be nice for Nebraska at this point. Nebraska hasn’t gotten to .500 since a 9-4 season in 2016. After four underwhelming seasons with Scott Frost at the helm, Alberts moved quickly in 2022 and fired Frost after a Week 3 loss to Georgia Southern. He then lined up former Baylor and Carolina Panthers coach Matt Rhule to take over the program in 2023. The Huskers went 5-7 in Rhule’s first season and secured a commitment from class of 2024 five-star quarterback Dominic Raiola.
At A&M, Alberts has a similar football task. The Aggies have been one of the most underwhelming teams in college football over the last few seasons — especially in relation to the amount of money A&M and its boosters have spent on the football program. After a 9-1 season in 2020, A&M has won 20 games combined over the past three seasons.
That lack of success led to the surprising firing of Jimbo Fisher with two regular season games to go in the 2023 season. Thanks to the massive contract extension Fisher got after that 9-1 season, A&M paid the biggest buyout in college football history to fire Fisher. Getting rid of Fisher cost over $75 million and he’ll get annual payments of over $7 million through 2031.
A&M’s new coach is former Aggies defensive coordinator Mike Elko. He comes back to A&M after a successful stint at Duke. The Blue Devils improved by six games in Elko’s first season to finish 9-4 in 2022 and went 7-5 in 2023 despite multiple injuries to starting quarterback Riley Leonard.
