Yeah, irrelevant is an overused term...if NU is so irrelevant, why are they talking about them. They aren't talking about NW winning...they are talking about NU losing. I think part of this piling on is out of their own frustration. College football is better when Nebraska is good. No one notices if NW is good. They notice when NU is bad.
In any case, the list of those at fault can be traced back to Tom Osborne. He did not give Bill Byrne a chance to perform a nation-wide search for his replacement. He poisoned the well by essentially naming Frank as the successor. Maybe Byrne would have decided Solich was the best choice - but it would have been nice to have choices.
From there, almost every decision turned out to be a bad one. Most decisions may have seemed reasonable at the time but turned sour; with the odd exception of hiring Mike Riley - that never seemed reasonable.
I'll leave Trev off the list for now. Keeping Frost around one more year is defensible in that Frost is a former Husker star, so he gets more wiggle room than others.
We were the 7th most watched team last year. There is a difference between being bad and being irrelevant. Something many just can't seem to understand.