A former All-American with the Cornhuskers and a first-round draft pick, Alberts seemed like he could have stayed in Lincoln for as long as he wanted. But he said that, in the uncertain atmosphere surrounding college athletics, Texas A&M's positives took on a greater appeal.

"Texas A&M is a pretty remarkable place with a remarkable trajectory, with remarkable leadership," he said.

Alberts reiterated several times that the chance to work with President Mark Welsh was one of the primary reasons he decided to come to Aggieland.

"You have to earn the right to have people follow you ... the more I interacted with General Welch, I could tell he was a genuine, authentic leader and he is who he purports to be," he said. "And that's really, really important. It's clear, he's really really intelligent, which I think is really important too. And, you know, generally when you when you interact with some people at that type of level, I found him to be incredibly humble, which is important to me as well. And so you combine his experience, I think to myself about, there's going to be tough days here. There's going to be things that are really hard. I don't think they're going to rattle General Welsh. He's been through a lot tougher things."

Welsh, for his part, said Alberts' unique views on the business side of the job made him stand out.

"He looks at things a little bit different than a lot of the other athletic directors look at the business of college athletics and how it needs to adjust in the future. I don't think he anybody knows what the right answer is yet, but he is certainly willing to explore the possibilities," Welsh said.

Alberts said that he took a crash course in business and how to run a company while at the University of Nebraska-Omaha, when the university president caught him off guard with a request for a 25-year strategic plan. What he learned during those lessons clearly impressed Welsh and members of the search committee.

"He picked up some mentors from the business side, especially some of the board members who worked for Warren Buffett's company, and one in particular became kind of his his mentor on the business world and how things work in the business world and how do you develop options from a business perspective to solve problems in any type of organization? And he talked through his thought process in that regard. We all thought it was an exceptional discussion and really applicable to our college sports stands today," Welch said.

Alberts said he intends to be transparent with the operations of the athletic department, but also expects to have to make difficult choices in the process.

"That was not my athletic department at Nebraska. This is not my athletic department. It belongs to Aggies," he said. "My job is to make recommendations to do the work and ultimately seek and search for solutions. And I also recognize that business doesn't employ a whole lot of emotion. And so the chief challenge right, is that athletics is all about emotion. You know, fans, it's emotion. And business is about data. And so they taught me a lot and we made tough decisions."

Alberts said that he believes the athletic department needs to provide "genuine, authentic leadership" and create a culture of success.

"We want to win. And so we get so fixated all the time on winning, winning, winning, winning, winning, when Coach (R.C.) Slocum will tell you like, at the end of the day, let's stop talking about winning. Let's start talking about the process that leads to the wins," he said. "The culture precedes the championships. I mean, winners act like winners long before they ever win. You know, so it's, it's the things that nobody sees, it's the culture, it's the hard work."

Alberts said he was looking forward to working with another new arrival who has talked about changing the culture, football coach Mike Elko.

"I didn't know Coach Elko personally, but I know of him. That's a real football coach," he said. "He knows how to build a culture. He knows how to build a tough team."

While Alberts knows his role as the AD requires a focus on athletics, he said that he understands that his department is just part of the larger university as a whole.

"We're really focused on the wins and losses of athletics, but you look at the enrollment, you look at the research dollars, look at where this institution is today -- I don't know of many institutions that are on the trajectory that Texas A&M is right now," he said.