Moos returns home

PULLMAN - As expected, William Moos on Wednesday was named the new athletic director at Washington State University.

The former WSU football player and later Oregon and Montana athletic director was the only candidate considered to replace Jim Sterk, who left recently for San Diego State.

Moos, 59, will start his new duties in Pullman no later than May 1, and is expected to sign a seven-year contract.

"In my life, all roads lead back to Pullman," Moos told reporters. "It's a thrill to be back in the business and in the business at my alma mater."

"One thing about Cougars, they love their alma mater," Moos said, adding that three years away from the grind of sports administration had recharged his batteries.

Washington State president Elson Floyd offered the job to Moos last week, less than a week after Sterk announced his departure. Floyd said he was deluged with calls from WSU fans to bring back the popular former player and administrator.

"When I surveyed those individuals who might be available to join us here, at the top of the list was Bill Moos," Floyd said. "I did not waste any time to seek his candidacy for this position."

Moos will be paid a guaranteed $455,000 per year, with incentives that could drive that higher, Floyd said.

That is the third-highest salary for an athletic director in the Pac-10, and above the average of $400,000, Floyd said.

"I wanted it to be over the average," Floyd said. "We are not an average institution."

Sterk was paid about $300,000.

Moos will likely earn his money. He will lead a program that has the smallest budget in the competitive Pac-10, and his tasks will include growing the pool of donors and raising private funds for a major upgrade of Martin Stadium.

Moos said he has to educate himself better on the stadium expansion proposal before deciding how fast to proceed. But he said a stadium upgrade is inevitable.

While the football program just suffered two of the worst seasons in its history, Moos said success can come quickly through the recruiting efforts of coach Paul Wulff.

"We had a very good recruiting year, and that was on the back of a pretty good one the year before," Moos said. "I'm hoping that will transform into victories this fall."

Moos said that his initial reaction to proposals to consider expanding the Pac-10 was that it was a bad idea.

"I want to protect the conference the way it is now," he said. "It's the greatest conference in the country."

Moos was highly successful as athletic director at Oregon from 1995-2007. Oregon's athletic department budget grew from $18.5 million in his first year to more than $40 million by 2007. Under his direction, the Duck Fund donor base increased from 4,930 to 12,290, WSU said in a press release.

Moos left the Oregon job after a dispute with Nike founder Phil Knight, a major Oregon booster. He signed a 10-year noncompete clause with that school that pays him $200,000 per year in exchange for not taking another athletic director job at a BCS conference school west of the Mississippi River. Oregon still owes him $1.4 million, and Moos remains in negotiations with Oregon regarding that agreement.

Since leaving Oregon, Moos has been a rancher in Valleyford, south of Spokane.

A first-team All-Pac-8 offensive lineman as a senior in 1972, Moos graduated from WSU the next spring. He was named an assistant athletic director in 1982 under Sam Jankovich and associate athletic director in 1988 under Jim Livengood. Moos left WSU in 1990 to become athletic director at Montana.

Moos and his wife, Kendra, have three daughters and two sons.

Former WSU football player named athletic director at alma mater