College Coaches in the Hot Seat

[Bigdaddydvo]

Excerpt of omahadomer's post on NDnation regarding Nebraska. I think he's spot on:

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Solich was fired in a 10-3 year after going 58-19 as the Huskers head coach, finishing #2 once and having played in the NC game less than two years before he was axed.

From early on, I thought that Callahan would likely not get Nebraska back to national prominence. To me, he's Bill Diedrick with a slightly better haircut. And he does recruit hard.

To some extent, the jury was out as Nebraska seemed to be gradually improving (5-6, 8-4, 9-5) but this season, playing with highly regarded recruits at almost every position, Nebraska has tanked. The Huskers were expected to make a better showing against USC than they did, but really the game that set everyone on edge was giving up 600 yards and 40 points to Ball State. And as I posted a week or so ago, the Missouri game truly rocked them to their foundations. Losing 41-6 to a team that Nebraska beat every year from 1979-2002 was the death knell. Losing 45-14 to Oklahoma St. just said that the body was cold. Nebraska might not win another game this season. Actually their best shot might be at beating an equally disfunctional program in Texas A&M this week.

Really, the only question to me was whether Pederson would be fired before or after Callahan. We now have our answer: "Before." Now the only question is whether Callahan will be fired before or after the season is over.

Nebraska cut the cord of what made it great for so many years. They had tremendous continuity, a homegrown offense and a lot of homegrown talent who would only play for the Huskers. Once they tried to become like everyone else, they found themselves competing with everyone else for player and coaching talent and it wasn't so easy.

Nebraska needs to hire someone who understands the place and can get it back to playing Nebraska football. That doesn't necessarily mean someone who has been at NU before, but it does mean someone who can embrace it and understand both its limitations and the opportunity.

If you cut the cord, it takes some time to tie it again. N.D. had two "cord cutter" coaches in Davie and Willingham and retying it is not an easy deal. Nebraska is probably in for more of the same.


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