As much as I love Osborne... there are a few things we have to consider here.
1) When Callahan was fired, Osborne stepped in to hire his successor. As said above, he didn't want to spend a lot of money and he only interviewed guys who were unproven as head coaches on the BCS level like Gill, Pelini, etc.. Pelini was a logical choice at the time and fans were calling for him to come back. He had massively improved our defense the one season he was here. He had taken OU to a National Championship with their defense. He had won a National Championship at LSU with their defense. Nebraska had offense and needed defense. So when Pelini got the job... he retained the offensive coordinator from the good offense and brought in his defense.
2) Because Osborne didn't want to put 3-4 million dollars down for a head coach, he immediately took us out of the question for any BIG named proven coaches. When Nick Saban, Mac Brown and Bob Stoops each make over $5 million. Urban Meyer and Lane Kiffin make $4 million. Kirk Ferentz and Les Miles make $3.8 million for goodness sake. Bo, to this day who has had good raises each year, makes $2.78 million he started out under $2million.
3) Tom is a loyal guy. He was a coach himself and remembers the fans disapproval at him at one time. He has said Bo runs his program the right way. Tom has liked the emphasis he has seen on life skills, academics, work ethic, accountability, etc etc. Thus it comes down to this... Tom Osborne will only hire a man of honesty, integrity, and ethics. A large majority of winning coaches in football are cheating, lying, slip it under the table, manipulating, game playing guys. The stuff that goes on in recruiting at a lot of these major schools is unbelievable and what we know about it is just a small small part. Many of the guys never get caught because their tactics cover their tails. But they win football games... So yeah we can go out... offer somebody $4 million dollars... get them to come in and win... but at what cost to our reputation? Ethics? Honesty? Integrity? When you hire someone who plays fair in a world of cheaters sometimes the really good cheaters win. Point blank.