The central problem at Nebraska has been the same for a quarter-century now: every single head coach, starting with Saint Thomas, has killed us with their buddy hires.
Instead of accepting that the rise of cable would allow top recruits to get consistent TV time close to home, thus requiring top programs to hire ace recruiters and developers to succeed...and instead of recognizing that we alone among blue-bloods reside in a demographic wasteland, thus putting the most pressure on us to adapt to the new reality...we continually chose to indulge our "family atmosphere" and wither away as coach after coach replicated the endless sub-par hires that destroyed this program.
Callahan alone understood the need for a truly professional staff, yet even he wouldn't rid himself of his old roommate, who ended up sinking him. Frank, Bo, and Mike made laughable assistant hires. Dr. Tom handed fooball's premier program over to a totally unproven RB coach, then years later he refused to slay Voldemort after the 2012 CCG debacle and accompanying tape tirade made it blindingly obvious that wholesale changes needed to be made while we were still in a strong position to make them.
So here we are, with a coach who brought his entire JV staff over to complete our slide to irrelevance. Many of us here warned the board that this experiment likely would end badly, but faith in the 90's hero ran too high for most at first. Now reality is staring everyone in the face. Frost has only one shot at turning this fiasco around: completely overhaul this staff, starting with axing his utterly-useless best-bud Chinander as soon as possible, and bring in the best proven coaches our considerable money can buy.
Even then, he has only an outside shot at succeeding after three years of failure. Most likely, he'll flail away for another season or two and then find his rest in our well-stocked coaching graveyard.
Maybe by then we'll finally have learned our lesson.
Instead of accepting that the rise of cable would allow top recruits to get consistent TV time close to home, thus requiring top programs to hire ace recruiters and developers to succeed...and instead of recognizing that we alone among blue-bloods reside in a demographic wasteland, thus putting the most pressure on us to adapt to the new reality...we continually chose to indulge our "family atmosphere" and wither away as coach after coach replicated the endless sub-par hires that destroyed this program.
Callahan alone understood the need for a truly professional staff, yet even he wouldn't rid himself of his old roommate, who ended up sinking him. Frank, Bo, and Mike made laughable assistant hires. Dr. Tom handed fooball's premier program over to a totally unproven RB coach, then years later he refused to slay Voldemort after the 2012 CCG debacle and accompanying tape tirade made it blindingly obvious that wholesale changes needed to be made while we were still in a strong position to make them.
So here we are, with a coach who brought his entire JV staff over to complete our slide to irrelevance. Many of us here warned the board that this experiment likely would end badly, but faith in the 90's hero ran too high for most at first. Now reality is staring everyone in the face. Frost has only one shot at turning this fiasco around: completely overhaul this staff, starting with axing his utterly-useless best-bud Chinander as soon as possible, and bring in the best proven coaches our considerable money can buy.
Even then, he has only an outside shot at succeeding after three years of failure. Most likely, he'll flail away for another season or two and then find his rest in our well-stocked coaching graveyard.
Maybe by then we'll finally have learned our lesson.
