Eight years ago, Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte hired Shawn Eichorst to be his No. 2, bringing him on as the Longhorns' deputy athletic director.
Now, Eichorst is at the top of the list to be the next AD of the Wisconsin Badgers, reportedly becoming the focus of that athletic department's search for who will fill the role after the Badgers' most recent AD, Chris McIntosh. He left the program to become the Deputy Commissioner for Strategy for the Big Ten.
20 years ago, he actually held the deputy athletic director role for the Badgers, and then went on to become the Director of Athletics for the Miami (FL) Hurricanes in 2011, before then holding the same role for the Nebraska Cornhuskers from 2012 until 2017.
Del Conte added him to the Texas staff in 2018, after his less-than-ideal tenure at Nebraska, and while acting as the deputy AD for the Horns, he has also held the role of Chief Operating Officer on the 40 Acres.
Sources: Wisconsin is targeting Shawn Eichorst as the school’s new athletic director. He’s the former AD at Nebraska and Miami and is currently the deputy AD and COO at Texas. pic.twitter.com/NdfF86DeOd
— Pete Thamel (@PeteThamel) June 30, 2026
Shawn Eichorst's AD career has been a roller coaster
Eichorst started his career in Athletic Departments at his alma mater, the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, as the Director of Athletics in 1999. After spending five and a half years there, he took the role of Senior Associate Athletic Director for Administration (yes, quite a mouthful) at the University of South Carolina.
He spent just over two years at USC before taking his first role with the Badgers. Nearly three decades into his athletic department career, he is expected to return to one of the first schools that ever took a chance on him.
Eichorst comes from a legal background, gaining his Juris Doctorate in law at Marquette University in 1995. From 1995 until 1998, he was an associate attorney before making the leap to senior associate attorney in 1998, spending just one year in the role.
He graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater with a bachelor's degree in business administration.
Just before coming to Texas, Eichorst was fired by the Cornhuskers after spending five years as Nebraska's AD. While at Miami, he hired men's basketball coach Jim Larrañaga, who helped rebuild the Hurricanes' program, but Eichorst didn't make many other notable moves before heading to Nebraska.
"Great hire for Wisconsin! Immediately took Nebraska to [unprecedented] depths of success," one fan wrote on X after ESPN's Pete Thamel broke the news that the Badgers were targeting Eichorst.
Also read: Chris Del Conte continues to set the standard in college sports with 5th Directors' Cup
"Wisconsin is targeting Shawn Eichorst as the school’s new athletic director. He’s the former AD at Nebraska and Miami and is currently the deputy AD and COO at Texas," Thamel wrote on X.
While the Texas Longhorns clearly haven't suffered with Eichorst on the athletic department staff, it seems like a few skeletons in the closet are cropping back up with talks of him becoming an AD once again.
As of now, Del Conte and other Texas athletic department representatives have yet to comment on the news, but if he accepts the position at Wisconsin, a statement from the Longhorns would be highly expected.
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