Husker Coaching Hires: “The Pick Of The Litter”

I don’t think Pelini was the best possible get at the end of 2007.    There were better guys out there but for the life of me no one is ringing a bell.

 
Pelini was the best hire we could have made, and he was a damn good one. He was a Brent Venables esque perceived up and coming coordinator at the time, he was the opposite culturally of Callahan (fiery, hard nosed, old school, defensive lunch pail kind of guy) which is what new coaching hires usually are, and he liked and mostly understood/had experience with Nebraska.

It was the right hire and it was a good hire.

 
Landlord said:
Pelini was the best hire we could have made, and he was a damn good one. He was a Brent Venables esque perceived up and coming coordinator at the time, he was the opposite culturally of Callahan (fiery, hard nosed, old school, defensive lunch pail kind of guy) which is what new coaching hires usually are, and he liked and mostly understood/had experience with Nebraska.

It was the right hire and it was a good hire.
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Not to mention what everyone at the time was clamoring for, for the most part.

 
NowledgeableFan said:
I trust Osborne knew what he was doing.  Pelini won a lot of games at Nebraska and his personality was that of a Defensive coach.

The players loved him and he brought a lot of fire.  I'd take him over Mr. Nice Guy Mike Riley ....
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Sure.  But, that bar is set pretty low.

I supported his hire.  I supported him for the vast majority of the time he was here.  I supported his firing.  It was time for him to go.

 
It's hard to say. We don't know if the coaches assumed to be "available" seriously considered the Nebraska job, or if backchannel communications had weeded out a lot of names that the fans were throwing around. You don't want to go too public and get turned down, like Nebraska did lobbying hard for Houston Nutt in 2004. Callahan was a face-saving pick, but we didn't exactly miss the boat by whiffing on Houston Nutt. 

Supposedly Eichorst approached Brett Beilema, maybe a couple others, before going after Mike Riley. It's likely lot of guys we wanted in 2014 weren't giving Nebraska serious consideration.  

Bo Pelini felt right in 2007. I don't remember that much fretting that he wasn't a college HC. He'd just led the LSU defense to the national championship. Don't remember much controversy over his choice at all, or any other coach seriously in the running. Even Turner Gill fans -- myself included -- thought Bo was the safer pick.

I no longer remember a preferred back up choice to Scott Frost. It was all or nothing around here. 

 
OH HSKR FAN said:
He is a coordinator not a head coach.  
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If you're referring to Pelini, I think that's significantly easier to say as Husker fan circa 2019 than Husker fan circa 2007. Pelini was one of the hotter head coaching candidates at the time and there wasn't really much evidence to suggest he would be a poor head coach. He was mostly a head coaching unknown but with a lot of potential due to his success as a coordinator and his brief stint as the interim HC back in '03.

 
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My original point being is that the list of HC's was very short.  If there ever was a list.  I understand that nobody was interested in coming to Nebraska, (who was JimGrobe, where is he now)?  Cutcliffe?  Nobody was coming to Nebraska, especially the money we were offering.  Grobe was a good coach, but he would of been equivalent to Riley at Nebraska............Turner Gill made the most sense at the time.......He would of been at least equal to Bo without the national tarnish.  Let me ask you one other question..............Who and Where would we be at right now if Frost said NO to NU........and we all know he almost did.  NU football was tarnished on a national scope.

 
Landlord said:
Pelini was the best hire we could have made, and he was a damn good one. He was a Brent Venables esque perceived up and coming coordinator at the time, he was the opposite culturally of Callahan (fiery, hard nosed, old school, defensive lunch pail kind of guy) which is what new coaching hires usually are, and he liked and mostly understood/had experience with Nebraska.

It was the right hire and it was a good hire.
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I think it was probably the right hire at the time. So, I guess in that aspect it was also a good hire. But, in hindsight, I think we could've made a better hire obviously. Of course Riley proved it could've been worse.

 
Riley to me was an interim hire nothing more nothing less.    The university felt the same way.   I feel bad for Mike as he was a pawn.  He got caught in the middle of a restructuring at the administrative level. 

 
As far as Mike Riley goes, looking back I don't have that many problems with him.  He delivered exactly what his resume promised. SE didn't understand the culture and didn't have the connections or the effort to try to find the right person for the job.  If you bring a stray dog into your house and it craps everywhere, it's not the dog's fault.  We needed an athletic director with the vision and respect for the fan base to find the right guy.

 
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