His office in the Casanova Center directly overlooks Papé and Kilkenny Fields, which were a part of the $14.6 million Ed Moshofsky Sports Center project that was completed in 1998 under his guidance.
Inside his office there are team photos of Oregon sports from the past five years.
There are commemorative footballs from the Oregon Ducks’ significant bowl games.
There is a framed copy of the front page of The Oregonian sports section that features a story on him from his first year on the job back in ’95.
Not to mention, there is a television and a comfortable leather couch to give the office a rather homey feel to it.
Despite all of that, however, what has Oregon athletic director Bill Moos smiling the most is a simple, yet gratifying oil panting that hangs on the wall directly across his office desk.
It’s a beautifully colored oil panting of Moos and his father.
But it’s not your typical portrait of a father and son posing for the camera. It’s an action shot, of the two grown-up kids standing knee-deep in water, fly fishing amid the gorgeous background that only Alaska can provide.
“Man, I love that picture,” said Moos, recalling that summer day of ’99. “We had fish on the line all the time. But there was this one 22-pound chum salmon that day, and boy, was it wild. It took me 45 minutes to catch it on my six weight fly rod.
“It went up stream and created a rooster tail. And then, bam, it hit me so hard. It went up, in the air and just went right at me. He was going to take me out.
“Went back and forth like that five times with it jumping all around before I finally hauled it in. Great fun.”
Chum salmon are persistent fish that can perform great feats of physical effort. During the times of ocean migration, these salmon travel distances as great as 35 miles per day. Once they reach their destination, they don’t quit, swimming over 10 miles upstream per day. And with one flick of the tail, the chum salmon will explode from the water at 14 miles per hour.
In direct comparison, there’s Moos and Oregon athletics. Moos came onto the scene in July of ’95 and quickly helped Oregon become one of the most prominent athletic programs in the nation. Moos and his staff will travel any length and do whatever it takes to further along Oregon’s climb to national prestige.
And once he succeeds — such as last year, when 14 of the 16 athletic teams at Oregon reached the postseason — he continues working. Planning for the future.
You give Moos and the Duck athletic program one pat on the back, and they’ll turn around and work their collective tail off to succeed once again.
Moos recently sat down with the Emerald to discuss this ever growing national presence of Oregon athletics, as well as other newsworthy items of the past few months.
Q: Oregon Daily Emerald: When you look back to 1990, the significant upward climb of Duck athletics over the past ten years is clearly evident, particularly in the past five years. How proud does that make you feel to be a part of that growth?
A: I’m extremely proud of the success we’re enjoying right now. We’ve built stability in our program and that’s probably best illustrated through the support we’ve been receiving through season ticket sales, attendance at all events and donor gifts to the program — all of which are at an all-time high.
Overall, the community and the fans of Oregon athletics have really stood up and taken notice of our accomplishments and continue to support us in a great way. On top of that, we continue to enhance our facilities, to the tune of $40 million just in the five years that I’ve been here. Of course, that combined with our success in sports, has attracted some of the top talent in regards to student-athletes in all of our programs. But the challenge now, if you don’t mind me rambling on, is to realize that we are in the upper tier of the Pac-10 and what once was hoped for is now expected. We have to realize that we are no longer the hunter. We are the hunted.
Q: The obvious question then is how do you a top a year like last year with most of your athletic teams reaching postseason play?
A We continue to strive to have all of our programs realistically compete for a Pac-10 championship and we’ve got several that are in that position right now, and others that are moving towards it. Again, we’re talking about a conference that is the best intercollegiate conference in America. So if we can compete for a league title, then we’ll continue to be recognized across the country. I think this program has every opportunity to repeat what it did last year and maybe even better it.
We were one of only four colleges in the country that had the men’s and women’s basketball teams in the NCAA Tournament and the football team in a bowl game, with the others being Purdue, Tennessee and Stanford. And we were the only one who won a bowl game, so that makes us a little bit more elite than them. This is significant because those are the kinds of schools we want to be associated with. The real judge of the program will be to prove that you can do that year in-and year-out.
Q: Along those same lines, what are your keys to keeping the Oregon program a success in the year 2010? Or is that too far to look forward to?
A: Oh no, not at all. We certainly form a vision and a plan to keep ourselves successful. The one thing that I believe is so important is to keep that continued vision among President Dave Frohnmayer, Vice President Dan Williams and many others that are pertinent to our cause. Just to get everybody realizing the importance of a successful intercollegiate athletic program and what it can do for an entire institution.
We feel that the expansion of Autzen Stadium is critical to our future. When you look at the fact that we’ve discontinued football season ticket sales for the past two years and have led the Pac-10 in attendance in terms of percentage of capacity for four of the last five years, it goes to show you that we need more seats. Football creates over half of our entire budget and in order for our coaches to have the resources to continue to recruit, to continue to operate their program successfully, we’re going to have to have a major revenue strength and that is the significance of the expansion. We’ll be able to realize between four to six million dollars a year in revenue that can be a direct benefit to our other sports as well as the institution as a whole.
Q: It’s no secret that the expansion has already been delayed a year, and a big topic on campus last year was Nike CEO and Oregon alum Phil Knight’s decision to withdraw his $30 million toward that expansion. What’s been the progress, if any, of the relationship between Oregon and Knight?
A: It has occupied a lot of time and energy and I really think there has been progress. Phil Knight is a supporter of the U of O, has a passion for his alma mater and wants to be involved. He just feels very strongly about the issues at stake. President Frohnmayer continues to work hard on this matter and I feel we’re making progress in regards to the relationship that we have with the school’s largest benefactor.
Ideally, we’d like to have Phil back, and a primary goal of mine is to just get him back here as a fan and let everything fall where it may. But at the same time, we need to explore alternate ways to fund the Autzen Stadium project, which is what we’re doing now. That’s how critical I think it is that we go forward with this. I would love for Phil to be a part of this and enjoy it all, but we can’t delay this any further. It’s that critical to our future.
Q: Obviously, this topic has divided the campus in half. What message would you send to the student body?
A: I urge the students to study the issue. I know that many people, myself included, know
a whole lot more about such things as the WRC (Worker Rights Consortium) and the FLA (Free Labor Association) than they did a few months ago, and I think that’s good. It’s brought awareness to the campus. This university is about students, it’s about faculty, it’s about community and it’s about freedom of expression. To communicate and express feelings is very important, and if nothing else comes out of this all, at least the awareness and the lessons that we can learn from studying these issues will have benefited everyone in the University.
Q: Probably the biggest story of this past summer was Notre Dame’s highly publicized pursuit of Oregon basketball coach Ernie Kent. What does it mean to Oregon to have Kent turn down an offer at a major university to remain a Duck?
A: Ernie Kent is an outstanding basketball coach and a wonderful person and I’ll always take it as a compliment when other schools look at our coaches. But at the same time, I think we’ve moved into a position now where we can realistically say that we are destination and not a steppingstone. We are able to attract people from quote-unquote marquee programs.
So when Ernie looked at that Notre Dame opportunity and compared it with the one that he had, he felt that this here was a better job. Ernie’s plan for Oregon basketball is far from over. He sells Oregon with a sincere passion for a university, a community, Mac Court and that’s all contagious. We’re far from seeing what the end result to Ernie’s plan will be, but it’s going to be very pleasing when we get there.
Q: You look at this UO sports season, you have a strong fall, a busy winter and then a spring where Oregon gets to host the 2001 NCAA Track Championships. That’s got to be pretty exciting as an athletic department to embark on such an active year.
A: We certainly have a lot of opportunities to bring positive exposure to the university and its surrounding community. Last year could arguably be one of the very best athletic years in the history of this school, and I’m excited to see how we respond this year. I always get excited when the school year starts. It’s great to see our student-athletes back. They’re all in terrific shape and looking good and very focused on the tasks at hand.
We’ve got a tremendous amount of respect from people around the country and that’s taken a lot of effort by a lot of people. We cherish that and want to work very hard to retain such a reputation. A lot of eyes are going to be on us and that’s a fun position to be in.