The slam-dunk hire that wasn't: If Scott Frost didn't work, where does Nebraska go from here?
Nebraska seemed to strike it big grabbing an alumnus who happened to be the nation's most in-demand coach
www.cbssports.com
Would love Patterson, he's one of my personal top choices.
Best part:
As long as the Nebraska job is open, the program is a national story. No. 6 Oklahoma visits this week, so consider that game a three-hour commercial for what could be in Lincoln, Nebraska. A potential coaching savior and the talent who might follow will be watching. There are scores of accomplished coaches who would be great fits.
Gary Patterson, a youthful 62, would be interested. The former TCU coach, now a Texas analyst, had his fingerprints all over the Longhorns' stout defensive effort against No. 2 Alabama last Saturday.
Kentucky coach Mark Stoops has competed at the highest level at a basketball school in the SEC, winning 10 games twice in a division that includes Florida and Georgia. How hard can it be for Kentucky's winningest coach -- Stoops passed Bear Bryant on Saturday -- to win the Big Ten West?
Iowa still hasn't broken double-digits in points in a game two weeks into the season. Wisconsin just got beat at home by Washington State. Heck, if interim coach Mickey Joseph can light a fire, Nebraska's not out of the division race this year. But let's not get carried away.
The head-scratching at Nebraska is drawing blood in the scalp at this point. Still, a turnaround is possible. USC this season has the look of going from 4-8 to Pac-12 champion. All it took was going all in on Lincoln Riley and giving him room to be successful. Riley brought with him a quick-flip transfer philosophy that was worked magnificently thus far.
But a turnaround has been possible at Nebraska many times throughout the quarter-century since Osborne retired. If there was an obvious process, there wouldn't be The Process -- Nick Saban's mysterious, ultra-effective corporate-athletic philosophy. It has been often imitated but never duplicated.
Consider that Alabama faced a similar situation in 2007. Rich Rodriguez, according to substantive reports at the time, had accepted the job. Fortunately for the Crimson Tide, he got cold feet. Saban will go down in history as the world's best-ever backup plan.
That's as mind-boggling as Nebraska being this average. There is a whole separate discussion to be had on whether the program ever gets to national championship contention again. Probably not, if only because there has been only a handful of teams who have been in the conversation over the past 15 years. Most of those teams reside in the SEC.
But the Big Ten has sent a message it wants to surpass the SEC in ... everything. The conference just announced a historic media rights deal that could net over $1 billion annually, and Nebraska will have access to that money beginning in 2023. Will that make a difference? (Typically, such revenue is backloaded, starting out as a trickle and peaking in later years.) Nebraska can't afford that sort of slow pace to this rebuild.
The Cornhuskers program, fans, players -- heck, all of college football -- have waited long enough. In the end, Nebraska will pay whatever it takes to get the guy it identifies as the ideal candidate to lead this program back to prominence.
