Sure, but the brand of Nebraska was never stronger than in 97. Could've had literally anyone. But picking Solich made Nebraska slowly lose their brand, making it hard for any good coach to want to come here. The tipping point was absolutely the Solich hire.
I was 5 in 1997. Idk how I can wrap my head around this better than people who can actually remember everything.
"tipping point reference" I'm hearing you.
FYI Solich played for a National Championship in 2001 with his players. I would love to see what would have happened had we stayed with Solich. Would we have repeated the TO era? No. I'm guessing had we stayed with Solich we might have a few conference championships and would be much further ahead as a program today. We would have mixed in a few losing seasons like every team in the country eventually does. TO did what he did for a very good reason. He doubled down on our niche.... running the option, mobile QB, etc. He knew as soon as we went mainstream it was all over. The hiring of Callahan and Nebraska moving away from our niche and duplicating the status quo was the true tipping point and end of an era.