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Wisconsin reportedly set to hire Shawn Eichorst as AD
- Thread starter gazelle
- Start date
Agree and disagree.
I think his time at Texas, being COO of one of the largest athletic departments in college along with being personally responsible for the football program is a positive learning environment.
The other side is Wisconsin is not Texas. They (UW) have no where near the money Texas has. Firing Fickell will cost money, hiring a new proven coach will cost money. Their NIL is not even middle of the pack for the B1G. They have plenty of money sucking programs (hockey).
Some times being cut down to size cures the arrogance problem.
Listening to BA, he all but admitted wiscy is no Nebraska as he spoke of having to win or seats will go empty.
In many ways wiscy reminds me of west coast teams
Depending on how Wisconsin is doing, I’ve seen many open seats, especially from the student body when watching their games on TV.
That’s exactly why he’ll have less true autonomy to hire the next coach. He’ll need the support and endorsement from wealthy supporters. If he loses that, he won’t be able to keep a functional athletic department. He can’t be a one man committee.
Very fair weathered fans.
The pre-Alvarez days you could literally walk in without a ticket.
Alvarez created a positive gameday environment but with very fickle fandom.
Students are the worst. They show up late and leave after jump around.
Lots of distractions … the state is a Green Bay Packer state.
They see Minnesota as their main rival. Hockey attracts sold out stadiums. Their men’s bball has been consistently good. Women’s Volleyball has been good.
Their university system has division 3 athletics with division 2 enrollment and funding. UW-Whitewater, UW-Stevens Point, UW-Oshkosh, UW-Platteville, UW-LaCrosse, UW-River Falls … all really solid teams. I think it distracts a bit from the main university, especially if it isn’t winning.
Same in Minny. The main difference is it's even worse in Minny, where getting their home grown recruits is worse. The Vikings, several good hockey clubs etc helps to compete with the Goofers.
I took some time to research & draft what I'm calling the exhaustive "wait a minute, did Wisconsin actually make a good athletic director hire?" list. Consider me pro Eichorst for the following reasons:
1. For the past eight years he has been Chris Del Conte's second-in-command at Texas, and Texas has navigated the NIL and revenue-share era better than anyone in the country. Wisconsin hired the guy who ran the business of football at Texas in 2026, which is an objectively more applicable description for the actual job in front of him than 'the guy who didn't save the [still] crap Nebraska football program".
2. Texas promoted him during that run. Retention and elevation under one of the most respected ADs in the business is performance evidence.
3. Del Conte has credited him with helping steer Texas's budget and operations through the SEC transition — meaning he has already executed the kind of conference-upheaval management the next decade of Big Ten life will demand.
4. He is a lawyer in an era when the AD job has become a legal job: House settlement compliance, revenue-share contracts, cap management, employment questions, collective bargaining issues, etc.
5. Eichorst was second-in-command under Alvarez from 2006 to 2011. During that time, UW had one of the best-run departments in the country: financially self-sustaining, competitively elite across sports, and and really strong football and basketball programs.
6. He's a native Badger. He knows the institution, the donors, the culture, and the state. He should be able to work Wisconsin politics at a high level.
7. At Miami, he inherited the Nevin Shapiro scandal and was credited with a steady, cooperative, professional handling of one of an incredibly ugly NCAA case. Proven crisis management leadership is valuable.
8. Related to 7, he was poached by Nebraska from Miami. He was a hot commodity at the time Nebraska hired him. So much so that Neraska made him the 5th highest paid AD in the country with a $2 million early exit penalty in the contract.
9. Oh, and about his time at Nebraska — the main reason some Badger fans are underwhelmed. The fact is that his tenure at Nebraska was perfectly respectable, and Husker fans would be wise to want him back. His four full football seasons: 33-19 with three winning Big Ten coferenece game records. The nine seasons since: 38-56 with zero winning conference records. Away from football, Nebraska won three team national championships and ten Big Ten titles. Off the field, Eichort created what Nebraska billed as college athletics' first in-house analytics department, signed an 11-year, $128M adidas megadeal at nearly triple the prior contract's value, and kept the department fully self-sustaining while committing $5M a year of athletics profits to scholarships for regular students. Nebraska still makes that payment today, part of a financial model its current AD says has to be protected. Eichorst did a nice job at a middling institution.
10. He served in NCAA national governance during a period of massive rule upheaval — giving him relationships and firsthand inights into the NCAA rulemaking process.
11. It's the defining job of his career in his home state. The incentives are perfectly aligned with a long, motivated run.Hoping to get some time to flesh this out a little bit more into a BadgerNews editorial.
1. For the past eight years he has been Chris Del Conte's second-in-command at Texas, and Texas has navigated the NIL and revenue-share era better than anyone in the country. Wisconsin hired the guy who ran the business of football at Texas in 2026, which is an objectively more applicable description for the actual job in front of him than 'the guy who didn't save the [still] crap Nebraska football program".
2. Texas promoted him during that run. Retention and elevation under one of the most respected ADs in the business is performance evidence.
3. Del Conte has credited him with helping steer Texas's budget and operations through the SEC transition — meaning he has already executed the kind of conference-upheaval management the next decade of Big Ten life will demand.
4. He is a lawyer in an era when the AD job has become a legal job: House settlement compliance, revenue-share contracts, cap management, employment questions, collective bargaining issues, etc.
5. Eichorst was second-in-command under Alvarez from 2006 to 2011. During that time, UW had one of the best-run departments in the country: financially self-sustaining, competitively elite across sports, and and really strong football and basketball programs.
6. He's a native Badger. He knows the institution, the donors, the culture, and the state. He should be able to work Wisconsin politics at a high level.
7. At Miami, he inherited the Nevin Shapiro scandal and was credited with a steady, cooperative, professional handling of one of an incredibly ugly NCAA case. Proven crisis management leadership is valuable.
8. Related to 7, he was poached by Nebraska from Miami. He was a hot commodity at the time Nebraska hired him. So much so that Neraska made him the 5th highest paid AD in the country with a $2 million early exit penalty in the contract.
9. Oh, and about his time at Nebraska — the main reason some Badger fans are underwhelmed. The fact is that his tenure at Nebraska was perfectly respectable, and Husker fans would be wise to want him back. His four full football seasons: 33-19 with three winning Big Ten coferenece game records. The nine seasons since: 38-56 with zero winning conference records. Away from football, Nebraska won three team national championships and ten Big Ten titles. Off the field, Eichort created what Nebraska billed as college athletics' first in-house analytics department, signed an 11-year, $128M adidas megadeal at nearly triple the prior contract's value, and kept the department fully self-sustaining while committing $5M a year of athletics profits to scholarships for regular students. Nebraska still makes that payment today, part of a financial model its current AD says has to be protected. Eichorst did a nice job at a middling institution.
10. He served in NCAA national governance during a period of massive rule upheaval — giving him relationships and firsthand inights into the NCAA rulemaking process.
11. It's the defining job of his career in his home state. The incentives are perfectly aligned with a long, motivated run.Hoping to get some time to flesh this out a little bit more into a BadgerNews editorial.
Eichorst was the energy vampire.
It would be hard to argue Eichorst isn't a good administrator.
I still question his acumen for hiring football coaches. He fired a coach who hadn't won less than 9 games and replaced him with a .500 relatively obscure nobody. Yeah, Riley won 9 games his second year, then Eichorst stepped in and made him hire Diaco and the defense, which was pedestrian to begin with, tanked. He's going to be faced with handling the Fickell situation at Wisconsin. It'll be interesting to see what unfolds there.
come on man, 33-19? he inherited most of those wins from TO. pelini was 18-8 in the two seasons he coached while eichorst was there. after pelini, he hired riley. the record was 19-19.
You hire guys to do what Eichorst does, then you hire an AD to make the calls.
The #2 in charge at Texas is akin to the #1 at a lot of places.
I understand your point … there are a lot of people who are excellent in that support leadership position and not so good in the ultimate “buck stops here” position but … delete the NU tenure, his resume is outstanding. I think the real question is did he learn from his failures and has he grown/improved/changed enough to be better than he was at NU?
I, unfortunately, believe the answer might be yes.
