Well, you're in luck - none of us here are involved in the hiring/firing decision making, so we won't be firing Mike Riley today. In fact, he's likely to be back next year, too.
However, if you expect fans on a message board to simply say "aw shucks, we lost to Purdue", then you're being more than a little naive. The Nebraska football team is awful. This is the worst team the vast majority of living fans have ever seen. Worst by a huge margin. Awww, shucks.
I'm sure no one's worst case scenario involved what we have seen this year. There were bound to be disconnects and growing pains with a coaching transition. Those things might even result in a disjointed effort against BYU that ends ins a fluky loss....or a team wholly unprepared to play their first road game. But no one's worst case scenario included being outplayed and beaten by sad sack programs like Illinois and Purdue...or the inability to play even remotely sound football at home against extremely beatable NW and UW teams. Basically, Nebraska now has all of negatives of a Bo Pelini coached team without any of the positives.
We've seen one good football game played in 9 tries by this team. Is that really an outcome that fit within even the most conservative of expectations? Does that really not warrant some serious scrutiny about the coaching staff. Especially when the new coach was getting pressure at Oregon State (!) to make changes - including dumping the D.C. who is now in that position at Nebraska? And, when the coach was hired with nary an exploration of any other viable candidates?
We all hope that Riley will turn this mess around. Maybe the recruiting really will improve and everything will fall beautifully into place. But can you blame anyone for feeling like we are on the edge of a cliff with no lifeline in sight? This, right now, has many of the earmarks of a pending, epic disaster.
