A Titan of Business? Just Call Him Coach

He had been the linebackers coach at Dartmouth, and he spent the long detour on Wall Street and then in Omaha, as chief executive and chairman of TD Ameritrade, the online brokerage firm.

For the last three years, his compensation totaled nearly $41 million, not bad for a coach.

Moglia, 60, said he had not dreamed of returning to coaching but began to think about it when he stepped down as TD Ameritrade’s chief executive in 2008 to become chairman.

“There were a lot of opportunities, but then a group of alumni from the Ivy League started talking to me about what would happen if I went back to coaching,” he said in a telephone interview.

Instead of returning to his former conference, he met with Tom Osborne, the athletic director at Nebraska, which led to two years as the executive adviser to Coach Bo Pelini.

The role has let him watch the team operate but not much else.

“The N.C.A.A. doesn’t allow me to coach a position or contribute to the game plan,” Moglia said. “What I’ve gotten really was a private tutorial from Bo Pelini.”

Now he is leaving big business — his contract with TD Ameritrade expires in May — and big-time college football for the U.F.L., which will have six teams when his Virginia club starts next season.

The money-losing league has teams in Orlando, Fla.; Hartford; Las Vegas; Omaha; and Sacramento.

“Projecting forward,” Moglia said, “if the N.F.L. goes on strike, we’re the only game in town.”

Joe Yukica, the coach at Dartmouth during Moglia’s tenure there, said that he did not think Moglia would have difficulty reacquainting himself with coaching a team. “He’s got a good feel for football, and the techniques stay with you,” he said.

Although the league’s news release said that Moglia had been Dartmouth’s defensive coordinator, Yukica said he was a linebackers coach and had the best defensive knowledge of his assistants and the most input into the defensive game plan.

Moglia is the latest high-level official from TD Ameritrade to break into sports. The family of Joe Ricketts, who founded the company that became TD Ameritrade, now owns the Chicago Cubs.

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