According to a paragraph of contract language released by the University of Nebraska to the Lincoln Journal Star pursuant to an open records request, the school is paying $2,912,500 to former athletic director Bill Moos, whose sudden retirement took effect June 30.
That sum includes deferred compensation, salary and bonuses that Moos would have attained if he had stayed until the end of his contract on Dec. 31, 2022, in addition to $59,544 in projected health insurance and retirement contribution costs.
The agreement suggests a motivation on Nebraska's part to have Moos out of the job 18 months ahead of schedule, according to the Journal Star's Parker Gabriel.
Per Gabriel's reporting, Moos was not owed any of his $1.25 million deferred compensation payment for a voluntary retirement, but would have been owed a prorated portion of it if he would have been fired without cause from his position. The fact that NU ultimately paid him $1 million — considerably more than the prorated $875,000 he would have been owed if fired after working 42 of his 60 contract months — along with his full remaining salary shows clearly that the sides negotiated how to get Moos out of the position without calling it a termination.
Moos told the Journal Star on Friday that he and UNL Chancellor Ronnie Green discussed potential timelines for his departure and also the details of his contract in their regular monthly meetings over the past year-plus, but would not say whether it was Green himself who made the decision that Moos' tenure needed to end June 30.
"Those communications were fine. Nothing was ever contentious at all," Moos said of his talks with Green. "As we go into June 30, I’m going to be happy and I think that Ronnie will be content that a new page is going to be occurring with Husker athletics. It wasn’t any problems. It was adult conversations of my future and the future of Husker athletics.
"In our normal meetings — we have a meeting each month — we had discussed the length of tenure just in general terms, because there’s things in the contract that I wanted to make sure that I fully understood in the event that maybe I would leave early. That was all fine."
The money that NU is paying Moos as part of the agreement, the remainder of which was withheld from public disclosure by the school, breaks out like this:
* $575,000 in remaining salary for calendar 2021.
* $1.2 million in salary for calendar 2022.
* $1 million as a prorated portion of the $1.25 million in deferred compensation Moos was due if he had remained in his position until the end of his contract.
* $137,500 in academic performance bonus.
* $59,544 to cover the estimated health insurance and retirement contributions that he would have received in 2021 and 2022.
Moos is set to receive the 2021 salary, bonus money and deferred compensation by July 31 and the 2022 salary money by Jan. 31, 2022.
