It became clear in the days after Division II powerhouse Nebraska-Omaha won its third straight national championship that the Mavericks were facing a battle they had no chance to win. 

An hour into the team's celebration of the 2011 D2 title, the Mavericks learned their school was eliminating wrestling and football. Almost immediately, they shifted their thoughts to program preservation. But the more they learned about the situation, the more apparent it became there was no wrestling out of this position. 

The day after the tournament they arrived back on campus to find the locks on Sapp Fieldhouse — which housed the UNO wrestling room — had been changed out of fear wrestlers and football players would turn destructive in the wake of the decision. 

The same day, UNO athletic director Trev Alberts announced the school was transitioning to the Division I Summit League. What’s more, he also revealed UNO was adding men’s soccer and men’s golf. 

The Maverick wrestlers still had hope then that the state Board of Regents would block UNO’s decision to drop the two sports. Instead, they supported it with a 6-0 vote. 

A decade later, it remains unclear exactly why UNO would drop the most successful athletic program in the school’s 113-year existence. 

Was it a dollars-driven decision as school officials have suggested? Was it a move to balance the Mavericks out on the gender equity scale? Was a fractured relationship between Alberts and longtime wrestling coach Mike Denney to blame? Or was UNO’s move to the Summit League and the absence of a strong wrestling presence in the conference the primary factor?

This is the third of a three-part oral history series by Andy Hamilton chronicling the stunning elimination of a powerhouse program at the peak of its dynasty and the aftermath as told by Denney, his former wrestlers and others connected to the decision. An interview request for Alberts made through the Nebraska-Omaha sports information department was declined. 

Part I: Destruction of a Dynasty: The Bombshell That Rocked Nebraska-Omaha Wrestling

Part II: Destruction of a Dynasty: A title locked up and a team locked out

From the time Alberts was hired in 2009 until the night he pulled the plug on UNO’s wrestling program, Denney felt like he was spinning his wheels while trying to foster a relationship with his new boss. 

DENNEY: I always tried to be positive with him. I tried to network with him. I had my wife try to get to know his wife. I had their kids up in our wrestling room. His son was younger and I’d get the boxing gloves out with the hand mitts and I’d have him box with me. I was trying to get some common ground and I never could. Now I figured out why.

TWO-TIME ALL-AMERICAN GEORGE IVANOV: I think there were too many alpha males on campus for both of them to be there. Coach Denney was a big name at that time on campus. A lot of people respected him, and here comes Trev Alberts and he starts ordering coach Denney around. Between them two, that didn’t go very well. Immediately, they had a bad connection. I don’t know if that was the reason or not, but it didn’t help. 

DENNEY: I tried to, but I could never connect with him. One time I told him that I’m not going to worship you. He would say things like we were intramurals. He actually made us take wrestling pictures down off the walls. They were in the hallways. You almost have to hand it to him that he could pull all this off. He had some charisma. He’s elegant. This guy is sharp. 

IVANOV: I don’t think it was his decision to drop wrestling. I think he was just the face, the bad guy. I don't think he could possibly have the power to make that decision. I think he was just the face and someone higher than him made him make that announcement. 

In his 41 years at the school, former Chancellor John Christensen said he had never encountered a financial crisis like the one UNO faced a little more than a decade ago. The school was in such a bind that the entire athletic department was in jeopardy, Christensen said in a 2019 interview with the Omaha World-Herald prior to his retirement. In the same story, Christensen said cutting wrestling and football “was the toughest decision I’ve ever had to make in my life. Two of my kids were college wrestlers and one of them is the head coach at North High. They were incredible fans. My wife is a tremendous fan. When I told them, they were devastated.” 

CHRISTENSEN: It hurt. And it hurt Trev, as well. It hurt both of us. We had talked with several potential people about a way we could solve the financial thing for the entire campus. It all came down to the fact that the answer wasn’t other things that we were going to throw out in order to reduce the devastation that was occurring. With those things, we didn’t have options. 

I hated seeing that happen, but the reality is UNO’s a totally different place now. Simply said, we were in a financial situation where critical decisions had to be made. And if you look at where it’s at now compared to then, even the people who were really upset about it understand now that, yes, I cared about wrestling and football, but now if you look at where the University of Nebraska-Omaha is at educationally, community-engagement wise and the entire campus being advanced, along with student housing along Pacific Street and the building of Baxter Arena and the property purchases there, all of that educationally and athletically and student support-wise advanced the entire campus. And it happened to be there were tremendous financial concerns, but look at where it came now. 

There also may have been some Title IX ramifications in play. 

According to the Omaha World-Herald, UNO was missing the Title IX mark in 2011 with females representing 52 percent of the student population but just 36 percent of its student-athletes. Dropping football and wrestling immediately made the Mavericks Title IX compliant. 

But if finances and Title IX compliance were primary factors, why then did UNO dispose of a dominant wrestling program only to launch two new men’s programs?

None of it makes sense to Denney and others closely associated with UNO wrestling. In fact, ESPN obtained UNO financial statements for a 2011 Outside the Lines feature that showed the wrestling program was profitable by $143,000 for the 2009-10 fiscal year. 

DENNEY: When I started in 1979 our operating budget was $22,000. 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 percent I just smiled. I could raise that on one phone call. 

UNO ASSOCIATE HEAD COACH RON HIGDON: With all these schools adding wrestling programs, they look at it as dollars because you’re bringing kids in to generate revenue by attendance. UNO never really gave us credit for all the guys we brought to school specifically for wrestling. They gave us $28,000 for our travel budget. It was ridiculous. We typically raised over $100,000 a year to supplement our wrestling program. Actually, the $28,000 was our total budget not counting our salaries and not counting scholarships. We had an extra 25 guys on the roster paying tuition who were walk-ons that we never got credit for bringing in that kind of money to the school. For them to say we cost them too much money, they couldn’t say that. And they didn’t, really. They were saying it was about conference alignment. It was an excuse.

IVANOV: If you take a look at the program as a whole, financially we were doing great. Coach Denney was fundraising a big part of his salary. We were fundraising 90 percent of our budget. It was crazy. We had so many volunteer coaches. We had so much support from the community, so financially it was not an issue. We were a positive force in the community. We did community service. We went to hospitals. We had a pancake feed. We had so many positive things we were doing on campus that I don’t think that was an issue at all. The results were there. The media and publicity was there. 

Quite honestly, I still don’t know what the reason was for dropping wrestling. There was no good way to handle this. If there was an issue for them to drop us, they should’ve had a meeting with coach Denney and Ron Higdon and the coaches and at least communicate what the problem was and give us a chance to fix it if there was a problem. I just don’t think there was a problem. I think this was much more political than we know with UNO going Division I. 

NEBRASKA COACH MARK MANNING, A TWO-TIME NCAA CHAMPION AT UNO: 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 other 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 being a leader. He’s not laying down and letting people tell him things that are not true and are not the right thing for UNO athletics. He was holding true to the values and principles he knew were what made things great and what made things work. Mike Denney should’ve been the AD. 

Instead, Denney had another opportunity headed his way. With calls and texts flooding his phone lines in the days following UNO’s decision, the longtime coach of the Mavericks began pondering the next move for him and his wrestlers. One thought that crossed his mind: Moving across town and starting a new program from scratch. 

HIGDON: Coach Denney had meetings with Creighton about moving everyone over to Creighton and starting a program there. They had meetings and they listened, but the time frame was too tight. They said if we had time then we could have had some serious discussions about it. We had guys on scholarship that had to make a decision about school prior to August. You only have a few months. That’s a huge undertaking to start a program from scratch. Gender equity. Where are you going to practice? Facilities. All the things that go into it. 

DENNEY: We became so focused on trying to hang together. Our team and our alumni were so close. I had 700 calls — people trying to call me. One of them got through on my office phone when we had the old hard lines. It was Jeff Miller from Maryville University. For some reason I answered the phone. 

He said, “This is Jeff Miller from Maryville University.” I was like, “OK.”

He blurted it out right away: “We heard what happened. We want to know if you want to start a wrestling program for us.” I’m like, “Where’s Maryville University?”

He said he would be up to Omaha right away. It was like a miracle kind of thing. And get this: Maryville is the same colors as we are. I just felt called to keep it going. Just keep our wrestling family going. Somehow we can get through this thing. We’re survivors. 

Denney was named the head coach at Maryville on June 1, 2011. In the 82 days between UNO’s dampened title celebration in Kearney and Denney’s arrival at the private school on the west side of St. Louis, the Mavericks began to scatter. Some remained in school at UNO and never wrestled again. A few followed Denney to Maryville. Others transferred elsewhere. Ivanov ultimately signed with Boise State after contemplating wrestling for former UNO standout Steve Costanzo at St. Cloud State. Costanzo’s talks with UNO wrestlers sparked a temporary rift with his former team. 

IVANOV: I felt like I had nothing else to prove in Division II. I was getting recruited by Steve Constanzo. I even went on a recruiting trip and it was amazing. They treated me like a king. It was an amazing experience, but at the end of the day I called coach Denney and said, “If I’m going to compete in Division II it’s going to be with you. But I just don’t see it happening.” I promised him I was not going to go to another Division II school and compete against him. 

COSTANZO: Coach Higdon and myself had some words. I was up at St. Cloud and Ronnie sent me an email and I dropped everything that I was doing and I drove to Omaha to confront him. I sat in coach Denney’s office with Ron Higdon. I was really upset by some of the things they said to me and don’t recall word for word. They were still upset about the program being dropped and that I was communicating with some of their guys, but some of their guys reached out to me. At the same time, I didn’t feel the best about it, but if I didn’t take them then someone else would. It doesn’t mean I felt like it wasn’t right. I honestly felt like I was stabbing them in the back. It was a little too early to go down that road to be recruiting some of their guys, even though they reached out to me. It was still a very fresh topic there. That’s why I drove down there, to settle it and let them know that I have the ultimate respect for the program and the coaching staff. I by no means was trying to do anything to hurt anybody. 

HIGDON: At that point, we were trying to keep everybody together and we had a place to go at Maryville. We were trying to keep as many together as possible to go to Maryville. They were calling those guys and I just called him on it. I said, “Steve, the vultures are circling. Don’t be one of the vultures.” We were trying to recruit our whole team and we were trying to recruit them back and keep them with us. It was a challenge. It’s emotional. You have a tie to those guys and you’re vested in them and they’re a part of your family, then someone else that’s part of your family, which was Steve, we felt like was trying to swoop in and cherry pick some guys out of our program.

But, that being said, Steve didn’t try to call or anything. He got in his car and he drove straight to our offices from Minnesota. We had a meeting and we talked about it and he understood where we came from and we understood where he came from. To be quite honest, the guys that went there were in great hands. It was probably a great decision for them. 

It was emotional. Steve and I are really great friends. Hopefully he said the same thing about me. It shows you what kind of guy he is. It was personal to him. It was personal to us. We didn’t get in any fist fights or anything, but we were able to talk. It ended up really good. He’s done an unbelievable job at St. Cloud. 

It’s perhaps no coincidence that Division II wrestling remains a kingdom ruled by the UNO family. Costanzo’s St. Cloud State squads have won four of the last five national championships. Combine that with the crowns Marc Bauer claimed at Nebraska-Kearney in 2012 and 2013 and UNO grads have claimed six of the last eight D2 titles. 

Meanwhile, Maryville is still trying to complete the climb to the top at the NCAA Championships. The Saints finished third in 2014 and 2015 and won the National Duals in 2015 with two members of the 2011 UNO title team — Mario Morgan and Ivanov — on Denney’s coaching staff. Ivanov, who wrestled for Bulgaria in the 2016 Olympics, trained in the Maryville room during his preparation for the Rio Games.

Though Denney has built a highly competitive program at Maryville, the architect of the UNO dynasty hasn't yet been able to replicate the formula that produced seven national titles in Omaha.

DENNEY: That’s the part that gnaws at me. A big difference is in-state tuition. 

MORGAN: The universities are set up totally different. You go from a public university to a private university. You have different tuition amounts and things like that. 

DENNEY: It’s tough academically here. It’s the real deal. I’m not saying that as an excuse — that’s good. It’s a different level than what it was at UNO. We’ve won two academic trophies. Here at Maryville, that’s big. 

IVANOV: The community that was around UNO at the time was tremendous. We had basically every high school coach in the area wanting to send their kid to UNO. That was not quite the case in St. Louis. There were so many factors. And it takes years. 

MORGAN: It really shows how hard it is for a university to build a dynasty and sustain. It took coach Denney 40 years of trial and error and adjusting and finding the right pieces that clicked. I appreciate the success we had even more now. Going from being at the top to starting from scratch, it’s humbling and eye-opening. What we did in those five years I was there at UNO — that was special.

Destruction Of A Dynasty Part I: The Bombshell That Rocked UNO Wrestling

Destruction Of A Dynasty Part II: A Title Locked Up And A Team Locked Out

Destruction of a Dynasty Part III: Aftermath & Opportunity In Omaha