Rooting for the Home Team: Episode 2
Part 2 of 4: We Will Fight, Fight, Fight For Our Mavericks
On March 12th, 2011, the UNO wrestling team had claimed their third straight National Championship. The tournament was held in nearby Kearney, and the team was celebrating and imagining just how far they could take this dynasty. Three in a row had happened for UNO before, but four? five? There really were no limits on just how special this program could become. The proof was already in the trophy case.
They would never get to find out.
Coach Denney got a phone call around 11pm from Trev Alberts. He thought that was weird. Him and Trev didn’t get along.
"...I looked at my phone and I saw that the AD had called. He never congratulated us on anything we'd ever done. We won the national title at home the year before, great championship, sold out, and I don't think he showed up. It was a strained relationship... I knew he wasn't calling to congratulate us because he never did. Not once did he ever do it. He said to give him a call, so I called him up and he said we were dropping the program and we dropped football also, I was in shock.1"
Denney sent a message out to the team to come back to where he had just given a congratulatory speech. He had previously told them all to take a second and soak in the moment, but that moment was over.
The team assumed Denney had planned a surprise after-party or something. Instead, they all learned they were out of a job.
One man became the focal point of the vitriol. At least, that’s certainly how Denney felt.
According to an ESPN Outside the Lines report, he held nothing back on that phone call from Trev. Years worth of pent-up frustration were allowed to escape. He had nothing to lose, he had just lost everything:
“I said, to treat us the way you're treating us is treating us like we're trash, and you know, you can just wad us up and throw us in the trash can. If you keep treating people like this within your organization, it's not going to work. It won't work.2"
But according to an interview Denney did for a national wrestling website, he had a bit more than just a trash metaphor to share:
"My wife was right beside me. I did call him the most arrogant, egotistical, in-love-with-himself, narcissistic, son-of-a-bitch I've ever met. I told him that over the phone because he is. He said, 'Are you threatening me?' I said, 'No, I'm telling you because you are.' I said, 'You won't even meet with me one-on-one? Come on, you have to do this on the phone?'3 "
Kearney, NE is a 2-hour 43-minute drive from Omaha. The location where one of Trev’s programs was the odds-on favorite to win a national championship. I may have seen Trev at hockey and women's soccer games, but apparently that one was a little too inconvenient. Phone calls are way easier.
Trev would later say that he had gotten word that there was a leak. The Omaha World-Herald newspaper was going to run a story the next day about how UNO athletics was about to change forever, and he didn't want Coach Denney to hear it from the press. The reason for his absence was that he was in the process of negotiating UNO’s entry into the Summit League, a Division I mid-major conference that didn’t have wrestling or football (or hockey for that matter). But the latter was staying put. Wrestling and football didn’t get those same graces.
“By early March of 2011, the Summit members voted UNO into the league. Alberts and his chancellor needed to act swiftly. At the same time, the Maverick wrestling team was wrapping up its last Division II championship in Kearney (with the chancellor in attendance). The timing of the move to Division I couldn’t have been worse for Alberts, who knew the World-Herald was going to break the story in the Sunday paper among other online outlets.
‘For me, it just wasn’t physically possible to be in two places at the same time,’ he says. ‘I asked the chancellor to tell me when it looked like UNO had won the national championship (in wrestling). Given social media, I knew that there would be no way that we would be able to keep that information (from leaking). So rather than the wrestling team or the coaching staff reading about it on Twitter, I decided the next best alternative was a quick call immediately, and that’s what I did.’4”
It’s not clear why this entry into the Summit League couldn’t have taken place simultaneously while Trev supported the most decorated program in university history and attending the tournament. Or at a minimum breaking the news man-to-man. At least it isn’t clear to me. It feels a little more measured than just, “well I can’t be in two places at once.” (Which is also an alternative way of stating, “I had somewhere else I’d rather be.”)
But Trev wasn't the only one that was mysteriously absent from that after-party less than 3 hours away in Kearney. It seemed less than coincidental.
"I [Denney] didn't see John Christensen [UNO Chancellor and former college wrestler], but he had been at the national tournament. He left and he had been in every picture for every national championship. We would actually give him a ring and put it in a case. He had a national championship ring for six national championships. We didn't give him one for the seventh. He sneaked out and I thought, 'That was weird. Where's he at?'5 "
Christensen would later tell the Omaha World-Herald that cutting football and wrestling "was the toughest decision I've ever had to make in my life."6
So, it was just Denney with a room full of parents, girlfriends, assistant coaches, and former college wrestlers. Confused. Angry. Hurt. Heartbroken. Holding a national championship trophy that they didn’t know what they were supposed to do with.
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I got word that there was going to be a rally at the Sapp Fieldhouse Athletic Building, and I headed down. I walked straight through the front door, but apparently the wrestling team didn't have things so easy.
When the buses arrived from Kearney, all the locks had been reprogrammed. The card access for the wrestling and football teams had been turned off for fear of vandalism. The team couldn't even get into the building that they had been promised unlimited access to their entire collegiate career. Their home, along with every other student athlete. But, I guess they weren’t student athletes anymore.
Denney took control, using the last little bit of influence he still had.
"Finally, I knew the security guard for 30 years, so I said, 'Open the dang door. Come on.' He did let us in. We didn't know what to do with our trophy. We had a trophy case with a whole bunch of wrestling trophies in it. We didn't know what to do with it. Once we got the door opened, people started showing up. All of a sudden there was a huge crowd there in the Fieldhouse7."
I was one of those people in the crowd.
Frankly, there wasn't really anything going on. It felt like the luncheon after a funeral, except no one was serving cold cuts on dinner rolls. Voices were kept low. Tones were somber. Groups formed with people that knew each other, all saying the same thing: "What the fuck is going on?"
I found my former Resident Assistant from the dorms and chatted with him. He did some work for the athletic department. I thought he might have more insight, but there was no insight to be had. The only people that knew what was going on had made a point to be nowhere to be seen.
I eventually left, there wasn't really any reason to stay unless you wanted to watch people with no influence getting more and more pissed off. Coach Denney got up and made a speech after I was gone, vowing to go to the Board of Regents to fight the direction the school was taking. But Trev was already ahead of him on that one too. The Board of Regents unanimously approved the decision a few days later with a 6-0 vote.
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The reason given for the move had to do with the athletic department’s finances. If you read quotes from Trev or Chancellor Christensen, the situation was painted as dire. Like a ‘if we don't make this move, we’ll have to cancel all sports forever’ kind of gravity. I have no reason to doubt that other than the fact that many other Division II schools in smaller cities than Omaha with a much less active alumni base all still stay afloat. But I honestly don't know.
“Remaining as a Division II program, Alberts says, would not have been a wise fiscal decision. He even considered the demise of athletics at UNO. He assembled a team of fellow administrators to explore the department’s options.
‘That’s when we went into the 16 months of strategy planning,’ he says. ‘We looked very quickly at getting rid of the athletic department entirely. But (in doing that) we would have been the first, and only, public institution with 15,000 students that didn’t sponsor athletics within the NCAA. The group felt it didn’t make a lot of sense to be the first.8’”
There were plenty of people that challenged the representation of the finances and doubted the overall plan. It’s hard to say whose opinions were worth listening to, because the facts weren’t easy to come by. In decisions Trev would make later on, he mentioned that he would ‘“go totally underground’ when evaluating options.9 That seemed to have been his strategy here as well.
Prominent football and wrestling donors were never given the opportunity to overcome any financial woes. In a city that also holds the global headquarters of Berkshire Hathaway and allegedly the most millionaires per capita of anywhere in the United States, that seemed a little odd if the reasons were all fiscal.10
There were conspiracy theories:
"Boeber, Deeb, and other supporters also believe a reason behind dropping the football program comes from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, home to the Cornhuskers, who might see a Division I football team in Omaha as a threat to its successful walk-on program. Nebraska Athletic Director Tom Osborne said that isn't true, and Chancellor Harvey Perlman said he heard of UNO's Division I plans only about a week before they were finalized.
‘Because of the potential powerhouse that Nebraska-Omaha could have built, I think that was intimidating to the powers that be at Lincoln. And I think there might be some other scenarios,’ Deeb said, 'One of my first thoughts was, you know, Trev Alberts in in line for Tom Osborne's job. Or it's going to look a heck of a lot better coming from a complete, full Division I school on your resume than it is coming from a Division II school with Division I hockey.11”
(In reading this ESPN article, I thought this Van Deeb guy looked familiar. On my way to pick up my kids from school I realized why.)
There was confusion:
"In public statements, Alberts said the football program was losing $1.3 million a year. However according to financial statements filed with the NCAA that 'Outside the Lines' obtained through public records requests, the football program was short $50,500 in revenue, and the wrestling program was ahead by $143,000 for the 2009-2010 fiscal year.12"
"When I started in 1979 our operating budget was $22,000," Denney said. "When they threw me in the garbage it was $21,000. We raised $100,000 a year for wrestling. When they said they were going to cut the budget 10% I just smiled. I could raise that on one phone call.13"
Trev said he had considered all options, but the money wasn’t there. At least if you wanted to compete with the likes of Penn State, Iowa, and Nebraska (who just happen to be three of the most storied wrestling programs of all time.)
“Then he looked at the successful wrestling program that won seven Division II titles. Since that sport also wasn’t offered in the Summit League, it created another dilemma for Alberts. To keep wrestling would mean participating as an independent.
‘We took a look at the Division I wrestling programs and (how UNO wrestling could duplicate) the kind of success they were having at Division II,’ he says. ‘Nebraska spent $1.1 million per year on wrestling, Iowa was about $1.9 million and Penn State was even more, around $2 million. We certainly weren’t going to be able to increase the budget, so we would have been in large part the lowest-funded Division I program.’ 14“
There seems to be some data to back up the idea that UNO would be the lowest funded Division I wrestling team, even if you add in the $100,000 that Denney said he raised annually.15
Then again, being the 315th largest budget for Division I basketball seemed to be an acceptable outcome (as of 2024 there are only 78 Division I wrestling programs).16
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False dichotomy
Definition: In false dichotomy, the arguer sets up the situation so it looks like there are only two choices. The arguer then eliminates one of the choices, so it seems that we are left with only one option: the one the arguer wanted us to pick in the first place. But often there are really many different options, not just two—and if we thought about them all, we might not be so quick to pick the one the arguer recommends.
Example: “Caldwell Hall is in bad shape. Either we tear it down and put up a new building, or we continue to risk students’ safety. Obviously we shouldn’t risk anyone’s safety, so we must tear the building down.” The argument neglects to mention the possibility that we might repair the building or find some way to protect students from the risks in question—for example, if only a few rooms are in bad shape, perhaps we shouldn’t hold classes in those rooms.
Tip: Examine your own arguments: if you’re saying that we have to choose between just two options, is that really so? Or are there other alternatives you haven’t mentioned? If there are other alternatives, don’t just ignore them—explain why they, too, should be ruled out. Although there’s no formal name for it, assuming that there are only three options, four options, etc. when really there are more is similar to false dichotomy and should also be avoided17.
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But ultimately, you were largely left to write the narrative for yourself, because the full picture wasn't to be found.
Nebraska Head Wrestling Coach Mark Manning made his feelings known in an interview that was published in March 2021. He had wrestled for Coach Denney and won two national championships as a Maverick - ultimately leading to him being placed in charge of the only Division I wrestling program in the state.
"It doesn't make a lot of sense, I have my Masters' in sports administration and I've been in this sport 35 years at four major universities and I can tell you wrestling is one of the least expensive sports as far as non-revenue. They all cost money, but it's less expensive than almost every sport, and the way Mike ran the program and the fundraising he did- he had two open tournaments that were huge and successful and he did a lot of fundraising and it wasn't like he was asking for handouts. He was doing his part for UNO athletics as a whole. I just don't buy that excuse. Those people over there can tell me that, but that's baloney. Wrestling was not costing them any more money than any other sport. They can say that, but they had a vendetta for Mike Denney. I'm not sure why, but I can speculate that a lot of it stems from being jealous and Mike is a leader. He's not laying down and letting people tell him things that are not true to the values and principles he knew were what made things great and what made things work, Mike Denney should've been AD.18"
Four months later, Coach Manning would get a chance to tell one of 'those people over there' more about how to run a wrestling program than he ever could have imagined.
Then again, maybe he did see it coming. Others certainly did. But we'll get to that part a little bit later.
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The aftermath of the bombshell announcement and move to Division I across all sports was quickly felt. At the end of the day, only Trev knows what his full motivations were, but it’s clear that he intended this to be a new era of athletics for UNO. Division I UNO. Except he didn't want it to be called UNO.
One of Trev's first initiatives was overhauling the branding of the athletic department, and by extension, the entire campus. UNO's logo had long been a red cow with this saw-toothed ear. I never knew what had happened to his ear to get it all mangled, but he's a Maverick after all. He does what he wants.
Confusingly enough, the mascot outfit was a black bull named Durango. Black bull costumes must have been cheaper and more readily available than red ones. It had the look and feel of something someone had picked up from a Spirit Halloween. His head was oddly misshapen and elongated, kind of like the face part of the get-up was just a hat someone wore and then they stretched out a long panel of fabric over the actor's actual head. Despite being an anatomically correct color of bull, the whole ensemble looked like Durango had been grazing outside a nuclear power plant and absorbed too much radioactive grass.
(Ok, this picture isn’t as bad as what I remembered. But I kind of have a feeling they lost this particular costume at one point or used a different suit for ice-skating Durango. But I can’t prove it, I guess you’ll just have to trust me.)
The cow logo had been somewhat phased out in favor of a new red and black "O" that appeared on the football helmets and wrestling singlets. I bought a hat with this logo on it and still have it, though it's kind of uncomfortable so it doesn't get worn a lot. Rumors were circulating that the University of Miami was threatening to sue UNO because the "O" looked too much like their "U". Even though "Omaha" actually starts with an "O" and “Miami” doesn't even contain a "U." But no one at Miami ever claimed to be good at spelling, they claimed to be good at fighting people and Ponzi schemes and threatening to sue small Division II schools.
So, Trev got to work. He hired someone to come up with a new brand concept to create a unique identity for UNO and get Miami to chill the fuck out. I talked to a few people that were on student government that had seen the early logo concepts, and they said they were sweet. When they were announced, I had to admit, they looked pretty sharp.19
We still had a red cow, but the ear had been repaired and the Durango suit had been color coordinated. The "O" had been reworked to look more swoopy, and this was to take over as the primary logo. Instead of trying to be the second Division I Nebraska school to claim red as their primary color (the other school that called themselves ‘Big Red’), black was to be Omaha's. And no more UNO, at least not on an official basis. The new "O" had a slight nod to a ‘U’ and an ‘N’ that you could see if someone pointed it out to you. But from now on, just the word "OMAHA" was to be used when possible. All sports jerseys coordinated. Black away jerseys that said ‘OMAHA’ and white home jerseys that said ‘OMAHA.’ And the slogan ‘OMAHA'S TEAM’ was stamped on anything that we had the advertising budget to stamp it on.
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I moved into my dorm a little early that Summer and went to the on-campus gym to work out. From the staircase that I was filling my water bottle, I could see the mud pit that used to be the Caniglia Football Field. Now it was to be Caniglia Soccer Pitch. The year before they had installed one of the biggest video boards in all Division II athletics, bigger than several current NFL team stadiums.20 They called it ‘DJ Sokolvision,’ named after the son of prominent donor David Sokol. Sokol was a UNO alum and his son loved football, but DJ passed away from cancer at the age of 18.21 The $1 million video board was to honor his legacy and passion for the sport...and home… that he loved. However, the deceased son had no connection to men's soccer whatsoever, no one did, and that really didn’t sit well with his dad. The story around campus was that it pissed him off so much that he was going to take back his jumbotron. I don't know how exactly one does that, but when you're in the Berkshire Hathaway mafia you can do just about anything in Omaha you want. Except keep UNO from cutting football and wrestling.
I went back to Caniglia Stadium a few days ago and it looked like the jumbotron was still there. The words ‘D.J. Sokolvision’ had been replaced with ‘Omaha Soccer;’ the red bulbs formatted for football now covered in soccer banners.
There’s a difference between capital budgets and operation budgets, but it sure seemed like a school that was cash-strapped was sure spending a lot of money on logos and stadiums.
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But then something weird happened. People kind of got over it. Not all people, but enough. Coach Denney found a job at a private school in St. Louis and created a wrestling program from scratch the following season. He had talks with Creighton University about moving things just a few miles from midtown to downtown Omaha, but nothing came together fast enough to get it all in place for the following season. The show went on the road.
The Denney era in Omaha was officially over. The loss was felt by those directly impacted, just ask the Nebraska Wrestling Head Coach that would have been competing against a Division I Maverick team.
“It was devastating how people who are decision makers, the higher-ups in the administration really let him down. Here’s a guy who dedicated his life to UNO and not just UNO wrestling, but to UNO. I know how close he was to all the coaches and how embedded he was into the community but also other people’s programs. He wanted UNO to do well. It wasn’t just wrestling for Mike Denney, it was community. To have people who are supposed to be supporting you let you down and pull the rug out from underneath you, there was a lot of deception.22”
A lot of wrestlers went with Denney, but not all. Some went elsewhere. Some went Division I. Some gave it up all together. I took a class my Senior Year with one of the best pound-for-pound wrestlers in the country. A former individual national champion. And former wrestler.
But for the rest of us, we bought the new gear and eventually forgot about the time ESPN shot a segment in front of the Arts and Sciences Building to break the story of the demise of UNO wrestling.
The changing landscape of college athletics wasn't over yet. A year after joining the WCHA hockey conference, a surprise announcement came that UNO was leaving that conference too. The Big Ten had decided to poach all of its name brand schools and create its own hockey conference. Minnesota and Wisconsin were leaving the WCHA, and Michigan, Ohio State, and Michigan State were leaving the CCHA. Penn State was going to start their own program from scratch to get up to the minimum 6 teams needed for a conference.
Trev wanted to make sure UNO wouldn't get left out of whatever happened next. Along with North Dakota, Denver, Colorado College, Miami (Ohio), St. Cloud State, Minnesota Duluth, and Western Michigan- UNO would join the newly created National Collegiate Hockey Conference (NCHC). In its first year of existence, and every year since, it was considered the top college hockey conference in the nation. And Omaha was considered worthy to be a part of it.
“I knew there would be people who were very angry. But I just didn’t know how to prepare for it. There are people who are still very angry, and I understand that. I probably would be, too. But once you get past the emotion, if you talk facts and data, it gets a little bit easier. I don’t expect any of them to be happy about it or accept it. I just had hoped that they would understand it.23”-UNO Athletic Director Trev Alberts
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The momentum was established. It was clear that even if UNO's financial situation was the justification for the moves, it wasn't the only piece of the puzzle. Trev had a big vision. A big trajectory in mind. He wasn't content with being the little brother anymore. Even if no one had invited UNO, I mean Omaha, to the grown-up table, Trev was prepared to elbow his way in.
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I finished up my final year of Grad school. I walked at UNO's commencement ceremony in the morning, and then went to my individual college's hooding in the afternoon. When we walked in, everyone had a banner that had the new UNO logo and the name of their college. Except us engineering majors had a red "N." The Dean of the College of Engineering drove over from Lincoln to make an appearance. We all got to read ‘University of Nebraska-Lincoln’ on our newly acquired diplomas. And they were signed by UNO's Chancellor John Christensen.
I would only try to explain how exactly that all worked for the rest of my professional career. At least I could claim I went to a Division I school without any reservations. But not with any less confusion.
https://www.flowrestling.org/articles/6922111-destruction-of-a-dynasty-the-bombshell-that-rocked-uno-wrestling
https://www.espn.com/espn/otl/news/story?id=6488960
https://www.flowrestling.org/articles/6922111-destruction-of-a-dynasty-the-bombshell-that-rocked-uno-wrestling
Fey, John Martin, and Don Leahy. A Date with Destiny: The Inside Story of the People and Events That Led to Baxter Arena. Omaha: Interstate, 2015. p.47-48
https://www.flowrestling.org/articles/6922111-destruction-of-a-dynasty-the-bombshell-that-rocked-uno-wrestling
https://www.flowrestling.org/articles/6922996-destruction-of-a-dynasty-aftermath-opportunity-in-omaha
https://www.flowrestling.org/articles/6922993-destruction-of-a-dynasty-a-title-locked-up-and-a-team-locked-out
Fey, John Martin, and Don Leahy. A Date with Destiny: The Inside Story of the People and Events That Led to Baxter Arena. Omaha: Interstate, 2015. p.46
https://theathletic.com/3954590/2022/12/01/nebraska-matt-rhule-coaching-search/
https://www.npdodge.com/blog/2016/08/signs-you-might-be-an-omaha-native/#:~:text=Omaha%20reportedly%20has%20the%20most,in%20the%20world%2C%20Warren%20Buffett.
https://www.espn.com/espn/otl/news/story?id=6488960
Ibid.
https://www.flowrestling.org/articles/6922996-destruction-of-a-dynasty-aftermath-opportunity-in-omaha
Fey, John Martin, and Don Leahy. A Date with Destiny: The Inside Story of the People and Events That Led to Baxter Arena. Omaha: Interstate, 2015. p.47
https://www.levelchanger.com/blog/2020/08/14/how-expensive-is-an-ncaa-wrestling-all-american-2019
https://www.three-man-weave.com/3mw/college-basketball-budgets-2020
https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/fallacies/
https://www.flowrestling.org/articles/6922996-destruction-of-a-dynasty-aftermath-opportunity-in-omaha
https://omaha.com/special_sections/rebranding-helps-uno-operate-on-a-whole-new-level-we-didn-t-understand-who-we/article_09324d3d-6210-5fde-9094-dc7db33c53df.html
https://nonpareilonline.com/archive/dave-sokol-gives-1-million-to-uno/article_d1636dce-7a8c-5137-8e51-f66f43d6555f.html
https://www.spiritofomaha.com/metro-magazine/the-magazine/remembering-d-j-sokol-the-missing-piece-apr-may-2022/article_85f64722-bc1a-11ec-a9c9-6fa2e5284c0c.html
https://www.flowrestling.org/articles/6922993-destruction-of-a-dynasty-a-title-locked-up-and-a-team-locked-out
Fey, John Martin, and Don Leahy. A Date with Destiny: The Inside Story of the People and Events That Led to Baxter Arena. Omaha: Interstate, 2015. p.48