Rob Childress admits hiring at Nebraska was 'emotional'

Rob Childress had the opportunity to go elsewhere this offseason, but he ultimately chose to stay on at Nebraska. The Cornhuskers promoted Childress from his role as director of player development to pitching coach just last week.

On Tuesday, Childress appeared in front of the media for the first time since the news broke. He opened by describing the “emotional” process of the past week-plus, explaining the many conversations that ultimately led to his decision to stay.

“It’s been an emotional 10 days,” Childress said. “Having an opportunity to go and do some other things and at the end of the day, having an opportunity here, that was the talks that I had with my family over the last five or six days. At the end of the day this, to me, is where God needs me for my family and most importantly for the players and the program.”

This marks the second stint as pitching coach for Childress at Nebraska, as he also served in that role from 1998-2005. He later became the head coach at Texas A&M, a position he held for 16 seasons. He helped the Aggies to a 622-336-3 record and two College World Series appearances during that span, but the school decided not to renew his contract after the team finished last in the SEC in 2021.

That’s when Childress made the move back to Lincoln to take over as director of player development the past two seasons. There he rejoined Cornhuskers coach Will Bolt, who was an assistant on Childress’ A&M staff from 2015-19.

Childress saw success in his past stint at Nebraska, as he was a part of three trips to the the College World Series. However, the Cornhuskers have not made it back to Omaha since his last season with the team in 2005. This past season they finished 33-23-1 but failed to make the NCAA Tournament.

As Childress gets ready to take on the role of pitching coach, rekindling that success is one of his top priorities.

“This is where I want to be and I look forward to doing the very best that I can to help Nebraska baseball be what we’re supposed to be,” he said. “That’s compete and get to a Regional every year and hopefully have an opportunity to host every so often and compete to get to Omaha. We’ve done that here before and the expectation is to do that again and to be consistent Regional contenders. We’ve gotta be at the top of the league each and every year to have a chance to do that.”