Don't normally bump my own thread, but I am curious as to who in their right mind disagrees that Miles needs to be shown the door...especially after today.
While a coaching change is probably warranted and needed, it feels like something deeper needs to change as well for the program to truly take the next step. I’m not saying I know what else needs to change, but when I took a look at the winning percentages of the basketball, football, and baseball programs since 2000, they all appear to be trending fairly flat (maybe slightly downward). Of course, there are some peaks and valleys, but the general trendlines seem to indicate a slight downward track. Obviously, this is just a simple analysis of one metric and the full performance of a program/department would be analyzed on many other factors as well (on field, off field, academics, financial, etc), but from a fans perspective wins and losses rule. When you take into account that there have been 3 baseball coaches, 4 football coaches, 4 basketball coaches (only 1 year for Nee), numerous assistant coaching changes, 4 ADs, 2 Chancelors (mostly Perlman though), 4 Presidents, 2 conferences with a couple division alignments, and significant facility upgrades, the flat trends seem to indicate that these types of changes have had very little impact on the winning percentage of the programs. Does it mean that the athletic department and university as a whole need a new level of commitment, a clear goal or mission, some significant re-branding or clear identity? Perhaps the administration is happy with where things are, they are making money, still receive donations, stands are full, still selling merchandise. Hopefully they aren’t too short sighted to realize that the fans want more wins and if it doesn’t happen, eventually the gravy train will start to slow. The volleyball program has been built into a destination program with a clear identity. It happened over years of hard work with grass root development. Perhaps Riley is making progress down this path with the football program. I do like his idea of selling Nebraska football as a centralized training and NFL preparation facility. Maybe they should jump on that notion and brand around it. Basically making a college level IMG academy. They probably should promote the NAPL and CB3 and bring in professional athletes of all sports for training, evaluations, analysis, etc. and really highlight that to recruits.
As far as the basketball program, it would probably be the easiest of the 3 to be significantly impacted by a coaching change. But again it needs an identity and brand with connections to recruits. If the program doesn’t have that identity and connection, the AD needs to bring in a coach who has his own identity/brand/connections. Right now it feels like they are in a perpetual state of trial and error when selecting coaches, hoping the next one will be the magic bullet.
And yes, I realize that this thread has evolved in a different direction, but I wanted to address the original question.