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Nebraska Coaching Carousel

DudznSudz

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Feb 4, 2016
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A roundtable discussion from Corn Nation:

https://www.cornnation.com/2018/6/2...lls-coaching-carousel-a-cornnation-roundtable

The overall consensus seems to be that:

Solich probably shouldn't have been fired, though this is debatable, and definitely not in the way he was (he had a 7-7 season but then made changes and went 9-3, so he should have either been fired at 7-7 or been allowed more time to let his changes sink in, but then he also didn't recruit as well as Osborne had). The following crazy, incompetent coaching search by Stevie P was an embarrassment, and that led us to...

Callahan. Apparently he was a decent offensive mind, but really didn't give a flying F about defense. And he relied on some jabroni named Cosgrove who was, apparently, the worst D-coordinator to ever even think about coaching football at any level. Pop Warner included. The thinking was, lets get the biggest splash hire we can, an NFL coach who will come in and revolutionize the program! Yeah, that didn't happen, and soon Stevie P and this guy were shown the door. The one thing he COULD do though was recruit, which means the next coach, chosen by Dr. Tom, actually had some talent to work with. That guy was...

BO PELINI! Ahhh, bobbity boopy! He was, for all intents and purposes, a pretty decent coach. He just never learned how to truly BE a head coach from Dr. Tom, he had a pretty hilariously bad temper, and boy, did he get us beat down by good teams that figured out that if you confused either Bo or the players, his whole scheme broke down. He also was not great at recruiting, and eventually, when Dr. Tom was forced out of being AD (or decided to step away, whatever), a new AD that was hired decided that Bo's meltdowns and televised, once-a-year blowouts had to stop. So, they hired...

Smilin' Mike! Now, I myself carried a lot of water for Riley when he was hired, because I wanted to see us succeed. That was wrong. Riley hired some decent assistants, was a very nice guy, and managed to land some decent recruits, but he had Oregon State in a tailspin (their fans used to post on this board and warn us about his .500 record and the state of their program), and he just never rose above the level of .500, even with "more resources." That, and the changes Riley made last year just did not work. We had a defense that...didn't really defend? and an offense that loved to hand the other team the ball. Or pass it to them.

If you look at all of the above, it really is a miracle the program even still exists, much less hired the hottest young coach in the country. I think we lucked out, given that Scott Frost is a Nebraskan, an alum, and has shown that he can coach a football team. Without that, I think the goofy tailspin continues until Nebraska football being dominant becomes a thing for the history books.

Here's hoping for a great season, and I'm interested in everyone else's take on the last 18 years of the program!
 
A roundtable discussion from Corn Nation:

https://www.cornnation.com/2018/6/2...lls-coaching-carousel-a-cornnation-roundtable

The overall consensus seems to be that:

Solich probably shouldn't have been fired, though this is debatable, and definitely not in the way he was (he had a 7-7 season but then made changes and went 9-3, so he should have either been fired at 7-7 or been allowed more time to let his changes sink in, but then he also didn't recruit as well as Osborne had). The following crazy, incompetent coaching search by Stevie P was an embarrassment, and that led us to...

Callahan. Apparently he was a decent offensive mind, but really didn't give a flying F about defense. And he relied on some jabroni named Cosgrove who was, apparently, the worst D-coordinator to ever even think about coaching football at any level. Pop Warner included. The thinking was, lets get the biggest splash hire we can, an NFL coach who will come in and revolutionize the program! Yeah, that didn't happen, and soon Stevie P and this guy were shown the door. The one thing he COULD do though was recruit, which means the next coach, chosen by Dr. Tom, actually had some talent to work with. That guy was...

BO PELINI! Ahhh, bobbity boopy! He was, for all intents and purposes, a pretty decent coach. He just never learned how to truly BE a head coach from Dr. Tom, he had a pretty hilariously bad temper, and boy, did he get us beat down by good teams that figured out that if you confused either Bo or the players, his whole scheme broke down. He also was not great at recruiting, and eventually, when Dr. Tom was forced out of being AD (or decided to step away, whatever), a new AD that was hired decided that Bo's meltdowns and televised, once-a-year blowouts had to stop. So, they hired...

Smilin' Mike! Now, I myself carried a lot of water for Riley when he was hired, because I wanted to see us succeed. That was wrong. Riley hired some decent assistants, was a very nice guy, and managed to land some decent recruits, but he had Oregon State in a tailspin (their fans used to post on this board and warn us about his .500 record and the state of their program), and he just never rose above the level of .500, even with "more resources." That, and the changes Riley made last year just did not work. We had a defense that...didn't really defend? and an offense that loved to hand the other team the ball. Or pass it to them.

If you look at all of the above, it really is a miracle the program even still exists, much less hired the hottest young coach in the country. I think we lucked out, given that Scott Frost is a Nebraskan, an alum, and has shown that he can coach a football team. Without that, I think the goofy tailspin continues until Nebraska football being dominant becomes a thing for the history books.

Here's hoping for a great season, and I'm interested in everyone else's take on the last 18 years of the program!

Your post sounds about right to me except Bo having to deal with pencil-neck Perlman & worthless SE. Yes, we came very, very close to becoming Minnesota. A once terrific program that never recovered.

Pedeyshine, Perlman & SE damn near sunk the ship.
 
We are under 4 weeks away from the first Frost era practice to start a season.

Can we as fans let the past be the past and move forward? alabama and OU fans don't waste their time talking about the bad hires before greatness came back.
we haven't done anything yet..

people are acting like it has all been solved, when nothing could be further from the truth.
 
Interesting to read this tonight, the same night BTN had a “Nebraska Classic” game on. Last year’s Purdue game. Lucky we weren’t 3-9.
 
And all of this matters why? As was stated, Frost has a lot of work to do and it won't come easy. I predict a lot of complaining on this board for the upcoming season.

As for Bo, I will NEVER forget the endless accolade that were bestowed on him for his "fire" and "get in your face" attitude and then there was the joining of the B1G where we were supposed to have an endless cadre of speed that would dominate the league. Both turned out to be false premises. Bo didn't have the temperament to be a head coach and it showed in his dealings with the administration, fans and public in general and obviously spilled over into recruiting or the lack thereof. I think Bo proved he can coach if he has the players but this roster has been seriously depleted and has a ways go go.

I am not sure why we feel the need to keep going to the past on our coaches. If we would not have had a steady hand in TO all those years, our comparison group/stats would be much different so what is the point?
 
Here is all we need to know about Pelini’s coaching ability. He is the coach of a FCS team that went 6-5 last year. Obviously there are worse coaches, see Riley, but of Pelini was a good coach, he wouldn’t be at an FCS school and he wouldn’t be 6-5.
 
And all of this matters why? As was stated, Frost has a lot of work to do and it won't come easy. I predict a lot of complaining on this board for the upcoming season.

As for Bo, I will NEVER forget the endless accolade that were bestowed on him for his "fire" and "get in your face" attitude and then there was the joining of the B1G where we were supposed to have an endless cadre of speed that would dominate the league. Both turned out to be false premises. Bo didn't have the temperament to be a head coach and it showed in his dealings with the administration, fans and public in general and obviously spilled over into recruiting or the lack thereof. I think Bo proved he can coach if he has the players but this roster has been seriously depleted and has a ways go go.

I am not sure why we feel the need to keep going to the past on our coaches. If we would not have had a steady hand in TO all those years, our comparison group/stats would be much different so what is the point?

Cause it's a message board and people have always loved dissecting NU history and the new era hasn't fully started up yet
 
I posted it because I think it is worth understanding how this once-dominant program fell of the grid and became average. I remember back when these things were actually taking place, thinking "Don't upset the apple cart, its a fragile balance!" and then Solich was gone.

I am not a tall saying "WE ARE DOOOOOOOOMED!!!" In fact, I think this represents our best shot at becoming a badass program again. I could not be more excited for the season to start!

By the way, this has happened to almost every program. Very few have sustained dominance for as long as Nebraska did. It just happened here for a little while longer than is normal for most programs (I feel like the blue bloods, when they fall off, tend to fall off for like 4-8 years before they come back again, on average). Just a thought.
 
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I posted it because I think it is worth understanding how this once-dominant program fell of the grid and became average. I remember back when these things were actually taking place, thinking "Don't upset the apple cart, its a fragile balance!" and then Solich was gone.

I am not a tall saying "WE ARE DOOOOOOOOMED!!!" In fact, I think this represents our best shot at becoming a badass program again. I could not be more excited for the season to start!

By the way, this has happened to almost every program. Very few have sustained dominance for as long as Nebraska did. It just happened here for a little while longer than is normal for most programs (I feel like the blue bloods, when they fall off, tend to fall off for like 4-8 years before they come back again, on average). Just a thought.

So, you are saying it is natural and expected? To this I agree. I guess if you look at the past and use it to NOT repeat the same mistakes, that is one thing but it doesn't seem so easy to actually do. A lot of moving parts.
 
Here is all we need to know about Pelini’s coaching ability. He is the coach of a FCS team that went 6-5 last year. Obviously there are worse coaches, see Riley, but of Pelini was a good coach, he wouldn’t be at an FCS school and he wouldn’t be 6-5.

I agree with you about his coaching ability for the most part. Guys like Suh and Glenn Dorsey made him look like a defensive genius at times. Without a great defensive line, his scheme is nothing special.

With that said, had they not put that 1 second back on the clock in 2009, Pelini would not be coaching an FCS team right now. He would likely either still be here or would have left a while back for another major program.
 
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With that said, had they not put that 1 second back on the clock in 2009, Pelini would not be coaching an FCS team right now. He would likely either still be here or would have left a while back for another major program.

I think he wanted to bail ASAP for a "better" job so if he pulled off that win or beating freaking 7-5 Wisconsin in 2012 he would've left on his own for sure.
 
Your post sounds about right to me except Bo having to deal with pencil-neck Perlman & worthless SE. Yes, we came very, very close to becoming Minnesota. A once terrific program that never recovered.

Pedeyshine, Perlman & SE damn near sunk the ship.
Nebraska is still close to becoming Minnesota, until shown otherwise.
 
Here is all we need to know about Pelini’s coaching ability. He is the coach of a FCS team that went 6-5 last year. Obviously there are worse coaches, see Riley, but of Pelini was a good coach, he wouldn’t be at an FCS school and he wouldn’t be 6-5.
Pelini at a school that doesn’t have to recruit hard to get decent talent, would still look decent.

He’s not a horrible coach, just lazy where it matters.
 
And all of this matters why? As was stated, Frost has a lot of work to do and it won't come easy. I predict a lot of complaining on this board for the upcoming season.

As for Bo, I will NEVER forget the endless accolade that were bestowed on him for his "fire" and "get in your face" attitude and then there was the joining of the B1G where we were supposed to have an endless cadre of speed that would dominate the league. Both turned out to be false premises. Bo didn't have the temperament to be a head coach and it showed in his dealings with the administration, fans and public in general and obviously spilled over into recruiting or the lack thereof. I think Bo proved he can coach if he has the players but this roster has been seriously depleted and has a ways go go.

I am not sure why we feel the need to keep going to the past on our coaches. If we would not have had a steady hand in TO all those years, our comparison group/stats would be much different so what is the point?

It probably keeps getting brought up because people keep responding with posts rehashing the careers, strengths, and weaknesses of our former coaches.
 
Anyone who believes Solich deserved to get more time to run the great program he took over further into the ground than he had, is a moron.
 
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Your post sounds about right to me except Bo having to deal with pencil-neck Perlman & worthless SE. Yes, we came very, very close to becoming Minnesota. A once terrific program that never recovered.

Pedeyshine, Perlman & SE damn near sunk the ship.

Who's to say that we don't still end up as Minnesota? By all accounts it looks like the school made a homerun hire with Scott Frost, but we don't know yet.
 
We pretty much are Minnesota to many high school recruits, but with better facilities and fan support. We haven't won a championship of any kind since before they were born.
 
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Your post sounds about right to me except Bo having to deal with pencil-neck Perlman & worthless SE. Yes, we came very, very close to becoming Minnesota. A once terrific program that never recovered.

Pedeyshine, Perlman & SE damn near sunk the ship.

Eichorst hid in his office the entire time he was here and just plain sucked at his job. Pedey should have been a great hire, a native that had excelled at NU previously and as the AD at Pitt, but he had some weird obsession with trying to erase our history and put his stamp on everything.

He created a toxic culture of fear and was doing some tinfoil hat stuff by the end of his tenure, probably keeping urine in jars and walking around with Kleenex boxes on his feet. Bottom line, both he and SE made catastrophic coaching hires and that was that. At least SE quickly and quietly delivered Smilin' Mike. SP drug us through a 40-something day search and still delivered Callahan. It was Tennessee before Tennessee.

Perlman meddled too much in athletics and shouldn't have publicly criticized Bo they way he did (even though he was right). He also extended Pedey right before we canned him, costing NU a big chunk of change, apparently because he hadn't received any bad feedback on his performance. Who's fault is that, Harvey? How do you not have a handle on the performance of your AD?

But I'll always give credit to Perlman along with TO for getting us into the B1G. He sold the academic side at a time when our AAU membership was going in the crapper and it was a buyer's market with schools in vulnerable conferences looking for life preservers.

Our slice of the B1G pie is up to $51 million and we're now fully vested. That's six times our peak haul in the Big 12. Not to mention the hundreds of millions of research dollars through the CIC, which has also multiplied since we joined the B1G.

For all of Perlman's failures and faults, his one major achievement was a biggie.
 
Freemasons run the country....

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Who's to say that we don't still end up as Minnesota? By all accounts it looks like the school made a homerun hire with Scott Frost, but we don't know yet.

Yes, of course you are 100% correct. I have zero facts to counter that.

However, there is at least a reasonable amount of hope based on HCSF's resume. We'll see....
 
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