sea o said:
ok kansas fans i have to give it up to you you guys had an amazing season and ended on a hot note BUT where would kansas have been had they hired callahan as their coach? im sure theyd be battling it out with the likes of ksu and iowa state. as for next year i see kansas losing to oklahoma and texas and will lose again in the big 12 championship to oklahoma, lets face it oklahoma is going for a national championship much less the big 12. for you iowa state fans, i think they will have an improved year after their stunning second half beating colorado and ksu possibly winning maybe 6-7 games. nebraska will have a much improved season on defense especially and i dont see their offense dropping too much, if you compare joe ganz and sam keller youll note that keller likes to dump it off to the rb for maybe 3 yards while ganz can through the deep ball, i say well win 9-10, i think well have the possiblity of upsetting mizzou maybe even ku, i cant tell the odds for vt until they play a game noting their up and down season last year we might have a chance. finally to all those fans who bash us husker fans for talking up our team...get over it, what fan doesnt take pleasure in saying their team will have a better year so dont come to a husker forum and bash us for liking our team and giving hope to the other husker fans on here
Just to be fair to your comment, if we hired Callahan, we would probably not be nearly as good. Mangino is better than he is. Now we still would be better than we were under Terry Allen, because we were AWFUL. You all are not happy with 6-6, but after Terry Allen, we would have been. Callahan would have had more time to build, because KU would have taken any signs of success. In the end, he is an average coach at best and NO WAY should he have a job like Nebraska, which is a great job for a coach to have if he wants a good chance at winning titles. Mangino built Kansas himself, and he runs it his way, and he deserves a lot of credit. WInning an Orange Bowl is so special, we have never accompliched so much in our almost 120 years of football, so that is an accomplishment to be recognized. As for Big Red, Tradition and fan support do not go on the field and play, but they help a lot in recruiting and on game day and they tend to help perpetuate success. I am not sure you will win as much as you think, but there is a lot more talent then most teams coming off a bad season with a new coach, and this new coach has a history, so we will see. I think if you have a winning record next year, considering all the change and how good your oppostion has become, it would be an ok start.
Look at us! We have a one year winning streak! We are teh football experts! Woot!.... <_<
I would gladly put my knowledge of College Football up against yours Cyclone... Just because my team is not traditional power has nothing to do with my personal knowledge of College Football. I did not just start showing up this year to games, I was at 11 games in person for the Hawks and I can assure you the tickets for all but the Bowl game were bought this summer before I had any idea that we would be that good. It is a compliment, in a way, though. If you can't make an intelligent comment on my ideas, just start throwing ignorant insults that are independent of my content. I also have followed Nebraska for a long time, so maybe you could help me out with a comment on my analysis or where I have said something untrue or unbalanced...
First of all...this article says much better than I about the true situation regarding your wunderkind coach:
It must be said that Mangino did an excellent job this past year. He over-achieved for his talent level, and that's always a credit to the coaches. That said, however, one year does not a legend make. Nystrom continues:
One other thing about him: his trophy case now features the 2007 Big 12 Coach of the Year award along with eight separate National Coach of the Year awards. Plus, he won an Orange Bowl at the University of Kansas, for crying out loud.
Here are some minor details that Nystrom leaves out:
You know those "eight separate National Coach of the Year awards"? Yeah, they're all from 2007. Mangino has been at Kansas for six seasons. Before this year, Mangino had only once broken .500 (going 7-5 in 2005). He had never had a winning season in conference play. In fact, he'd never done better than 3-5 in conference before this year. He had never ended the season ranked. Coming into the season, Mangino was 25-35 all time at Kansas and if he had lost the bowl game, he'd still have a losing record with the Jayhawks. Even after this year he's still 18-30 in conference play. (Which means that it will take him a minimum of two more years to get into the black there)
Nystrom also lays out another argument against Mangino pretty well: "He won the Orange Bowl with a roster full of one-, two- and three-stars." In six years of coaching at Kansas, the man has been unable to lure the four- and five-star athletes that his conference competitors have. He does, obviously, coach them well, but coaching is only half of the college battle. You just can't win consistently (that's the key word) with poor recruits.
The harsh truth of the matter is this: 2007 was a spectacular year for Mangino which followed five miserable years as a bottom-dweller in the Big 12. He's got a few years to go before anyone's beating down his door, and if he doesn't parlay this national prominence into some highly regarded recruits, no major program will ever want him: if you can't recruit when you're winning, you can't recruit period.
Now lets reflect on your opinion of Terry Allen's coaching prowess as compared to Mangino...
Let's see...Allen as a head coach with Kansas and UNI compiled a overall record of 95 & 59. Mangino has a head coaching record of 37 & 36. Allen, in his five years at KU compiled a record of 20 wins - 33 loses. Mangino in his first five years at KU compiled a record of 24 wins - 34 loses. Hmmm...oddly similar for a fantastic coach and an AWFUL one. Well...maybe conference records will be the telling difference. Allen in his five years had a conference record of 10 - 30. Mangino in his first five years had a conference record of 11 - 29....again, hmmmm...Maybe if Allen could have had one more year to coach he too could have gone to the Orange Bowl because, other than the fluke 2007 year, there ain't a dimes worth of difference between the two of them.
Now...is Mangino a better coach than Callahan? Hard to prove or disprove that though Callahan did bring in higher ranked recruits than Mangino did and never ran counter to the ethics of the NCAA through academic fraud as happened on Mangino's watch. Looking at the records I'd have to say they are both about even as far as results go...it's just that Nebraska expects more from their football program than KU does apparently.
I'll be glad to pit my football knowledge against yours...but you'll probably need to bring some friends to help you out.
OK big boy, let us look at your brilliant and ill informed insight. You can easily make stats say things they don't in the macro. Lets look at the details of what makes Mangino better, since you brought it up. Terry Allen was brought in to a much better situation than Mangino. Two years before Allen, the Jayhawk finished in the top ten. Tery Allen did not inherit a complete turd. He was a decent X-Os guy, and Glen Mason was not super strong in that departmenr (being more aof a recruiter), so he had on OK situation to walk into.
Lets look at the trends Under Allen
Year 1: 5 wins
Year 2: 4 wins
Year 3: 5 wins
Yaar 4: 4 wins
Year 5: 3 wins (and Allen was fired by the time the 3rd win happened in the last game) By the last year, we beat Tech, Wyoming (sans TA) and SW Missouri State. We got blown out by Iowa State (the shame of it), Texas, Nebraska, K-State, and OU in conference. We lost those 5 conference games by an AVERAGE of 41.4 points. We were not only not competitive with the majority of the conference when he left, but we only beat 1-AA SW Missouri 24-10. Our team had dropped in talent by a lot.
Now lets look at Mangino. To say the cupboard was bare was very accurate. The team he had, after the Allen years, was not even competitive anymore. He had to rebuild from scratch.
Year 1: 2 wins and still blown out by Iowa State
Year 2: 6 wins and a BOWL appearance (thanks to our JUCO QB, we had 1 player, but he was good at least)
Year 3: 4 wins (our Juco QB gone, but still almost beat Vince Young's Texas team and lost 6 games by 6 or less and to CU by 9 We were competitive, don't see that in the W/L column, but see 3 years before for a contrast under Allen, plus beat K-State for the first time since 992)
Yaar 4: 7 wins and a BOWL Victoy, plus ended Nebraska Streak.
Year 5: 6 wins, beat K-State Again, other than MU game (which was bad, the losses were by 5 points a game. 2 nd time in a row we gave Nebraska a good game in Lincoln, not easy to do (both 7 points or less)
Year 6: 12 wins, BCS BOWL win. The team had been competing better for a long time, this year they put it together. Do not beleive me, go look at the scores....
So you can use you data how you want, but looks to me like Allen took middle quality Big 12 team, KU was at as high a point as they had been for a long time, and drove them into the basement. Mangino got a cellar team, and drove them back to a solid competitive team. The devil is in the detail, which you seemed to gloss right over, CY...
