Which 'What If' Would Have Caused the Biggest Change?

OH HSKR FAN said:
Say the program stayed the course with Solich.   At what point would people become frustrated?   
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This is a good point, because I do remember a pretty high level of frustration, especially after getting waxed at home by KSU.

The problem, though, is that we won 9 regular season games, and then 10 with the dismantling of sparty in the bowl game. You just don't fire a coach and staff after 9 wins. I believe even Urban Meyer said as much, and then many others after Eichorst pulled the same idiocy. No one wants to step into that atmosphere, unless they're a disgraced NFL washout that called his team the 'dumbest in America,' or a guy that had been coaching 30 years and never won his own conference. Ugh.

It was a monumentally horrible string of decisions that has buried our beloved program in mediocrity -or worse- for nearly 2 decades. 

 
Jeremy said:
hiring Callahan, to me, was just as impactful. From the losses to all the things I've heard about him and his staff,  the glaring issues present from day one, it was absolutely a failure of epic proportions. Rivaled only, of course, by 3 years of Mike Riley.
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If I had to choose, I'd take Callahan over Riley. Maybe the second time around, he could pick a halfway-decent DC. But of course, if I were actually the AD...

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Toe said:
If I had to choose, I'd take Callahan over Riley. Maybe the second time around, he could pick a halfway-decent DC. But of course, if I were actually the AD...
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The major problem with any best case scenario involving Callahan is he simply didn’t want to be here. He never embraced much of anything of the college experience and I have little reason to believe, had he been successful, that he’d have stayed around.

Now, if we played make believe and pretend Riley wasn’t in completely over his head......

 
Landlord said:
A lot of people talking about extended mediocrity since 2001 or 2003 depending on how you look at it, don't seem to understand the definition of mediocrity.

2006, 2008-2014, and 2016 were not mediocre. Maybe compared to your expectations they were, but not compared to actual results.
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Landlord said:
A lot of people talking about extended mediocrity since 2001 or 2003 depending on how you look at it, don't seem to understand the definition of mediocrity.

2006, 2008-2014, and 2016 were not mediocre. Maybe compared to your expectations they were, but not compared to actual results.
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I've argued plenty of times with people on here saying we're bad or a "dumpster fire," but I don't agree with this either. I disagree with it for a couple reasons.

One reason is I think that what a team has going for it should be taken into consideration when judging their record(s). Nebraska having a 9-4 record is not the same as Iowa State having a 9-4 record, because Nebraska has better facilities and better fan support which leads to having better recruits. Based on pretty much every factor, Iowa State winning more games is more impressive than Nebraska doing it because their foundation isn't as good, therefore the minimum number of wins for Nebraska to not be mediocre is higher than it is for Iowa State.

Another reason I disagree is that people are talking about spans of years. If a team wins 12 games in 10 years, but all 12 were during the same season, people would say they were bad over the past 10 years and they'd be correct.

 
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Iowa State going 9-4 would be remarkable, exceptional, and incredible. Nebraska going 9-4 in one season in general according to only Nebraska standards is still only maybe mediocre, but Nebraska going 9-4 for 7 seasons compared to college football as a whole and given the downward trend in talent brought in, is at least "good". 

In the case of your 10 years/12 games example they'd be generally correct but it's a lot easier to do that when you have one anomalous data point that only makes up 10% of the span. If you have above average or above median results half of the time period being referenced, it's not mediocre. 

 
Let's not get too forgetful. 9 - 4 is the definition of mediocre if you aren't challenging for your conference, finishing outside the Top 25, and routinely embarrassed by elite teams, or simply by an 8-5 Wisconsin team that ran through you like a knife through butter. 

The problem with the Pelini years was lack of forward motion. 2008 - 2014 may look good in hindsight, but I don't remember anyone who felt excited about the prospect of Bo's Season 8. 

 
Landlord said:
Iowa State going 9-4 would be remarkable, exceptional, and incredible. Nebraska going 9-4 in one season in general according to only Nebraska standards is still only maybe mediocre, but Nebraska going 9-4 for 7 seasons compared to college football as a whole and given the downward trend in talent brought in, is at least "good". 

In the case of your 10 years/12 games example they'd be generally correct but it's a lot easier to do that when you have one anomalous data point that only makes up 10% of the span. If you have above average or above median results half of the time period being referenced, it's not mediocre. 
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It’s not “at least ‘good’” if your foundation is far better than most of the teams with similar records.

And I’m not sure about our talent having a downward trend, but even if so it was still top 25, maybe 30. That means we should average ending up as one of the top 25 teams in order to be meeting expectations. Instead, that was our top achievement. How many times was that? And we have enough bad seasons to bring that average down to below top 30.

I was making a point to explain where people are coming from. If 60% of the seasons are good but we have enough non winning seasons to pull it down, the span of years can be mediocre.

 
Guy Chamberlin said:
Let's not get too forgetful. 9 - 4 is the definition of mediocre if you aren't challenging for your conference, finishing outside the Top 25, and routinely embarrassed by elite teams, or simply by an 8-5 Wisconsin team that ran through you like a knife through butter. 
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9-4 isn’t mediocre if you have the resources of Illinois or Kansas. So I don’t agree with this either. 

Basically my view is if you are more often then not underperforming based on talent you are mediocre. Although the argument against that is part of being a good coach is recruiting well - but part of it is the resources/facilities/etc.

If a program has good facilities in a good location and they’re only bringing in the 30th ranked class, then part of the failure is on the coach for not doing better. So in my view if you’re bringing in the 40th best talent and you should be able to bring in the 20th and your team is 30th best, you still aren’t performing as well as you should.

The above isn't able to be perfectly quanitified though of course which is why we can argue about it. 

 
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December 2, 2002 is probably the date that sticks out most to me in terms of causing a lot of change.  This was the date Bill Byrne handed in his letter or resignation.  On one hand, it's hard to fault Pederson, TO, and Eichorst.  They were simply hired as AD to fire the current football coach.  On the other hand, it's hard not to fault them for the clowns they hired.  It probably isn't fair to include TO, but he was hired as AD to can Callahan.  It also isn't really fair to include Bo as one of the clowns as he did inherit a mess and changed the direction of the program even though he really wasn't a long term solution. 

 
Landlord said:
A lot of people talking about extended mediocrity since 2001 or 2003 depending on how you look at it, don't seem to understand the definition of mediocrity.

2006, 2008-2014, and 2016 were not mediocre. Maybe compared to your expectations they were, but not compared to actual results.
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I agree with what you're saying. I would take 9-3 back in a heartbeat. It just seems so far away after 3 losing seasons in 4 years, starting 0-6, and 4-8 two years in a row.

In my opinion, firing Solich and hiring Callahan started the ball of suck rolling to where we are now.

 
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