HuskerfaninOkieland
Heisman Trophy Winner
NE Statepaper
A Decade of Upheaval - and Healing
Commentary: Nebraska finally met the "business" of college in the last ten years - and is worse for the introduction
by Samuel McKewon
December 26, 2009
This decade of Nebraska football came closer than you think to traveling full circle.
It began with a Fiesta Bowl win over Tennessee that seemed to validate the Frank Solich era, and position the Cornhuskers as a prime national title contender in 2000.
It ended with Nebraska coming within one second of earning another trip to Arizona and setting up a run at the national title in 2010.
In between those bookends, the seams of the program came apart not once – but twice.
It's plenty juicy, painful and unforgettable.
When mediocrity, struggle, frustration - and the bottom-line “business” of college football - finally knocked on NU's door – as it has with every college football program in the last 30 years – it rocked most fans. They had grown to love the bucolic, never-changing nature of the Cornhuskers - nine wins, option football, red balloons, stoic head coaches – without understanding the brilliance, timing, effort and sheer good fortune that went into that incredible run from Bob Devaney's hiring until the end of 2001, when Colorado smashed the Huskers in the Day-After-Thanksgiving Massacre, triggering whispers that only continued in a blowout Rose Bowl loss, and a subsequently disappointing 2002 campaign.
We discovered what most major programs already knew: Money, influence and image overshadows the mission of educating and coaching 18-to-22-year-old men.
That TV dollars and coverage matter more than it should.
That winning is put at such a premium that most programs are willing to lard up their non-conference schedules with fattened lambs so as to ensure a bowl game that's apparently so precious to student-athletes.
That a great running backs coach doesn't necessarily translate into an inspiring head coach.
That the best-laid plans of the Ozfather went awry, to some extent, because he handed over leadership to Frank Solich, but not complete ownership, a pond rock whose ripple effects weren’t felt until this decade, well after Solich had taken over the job.
We'll never know how Solich might have fared if he'd courted and hired a staff solely of his choosing. If Tom Osborne hadn't offered the seemingly wise, but ultimately imperfect advice of retaining his entire staff. Solich might have soared higher. Or he might have flamed out sooner.
After the extraordinary run (and runs) of Eric Crouch, Solich never got his man at quarterback – and no, I don't think Joe Dailey was that guy, either – and the program swiftly lost momentum. In 2002, it was a team still flush with athletes, but not much levity. Solich looked beleaguered for much of that season – a confused on-field visage was one of Solich's unintended, but real nonetheless, weaknesses – the offense hinging, primarily, on whether Jammal Lord could whittle and plow his way through the defense. The innovation, inspiration and pluck were on empty.
Leaks on the just-then-burgeoning Internet message boards abounded. Practice scuffles. Coach squabbles. Pointless debates over Solich and his recruiting coordinator, Dave Gillespie. Boosters took to these boards like ingénues to retro boutiques, and, to some extent, the man was a casualty of that technology. Recruiting discussions, fueled by the emerging market of exclusive (and intrusive) recruiting coverage, became the belle du jour. Solich was a casualty of the media in general. The Husker nightly radio program, far from the weak, perfunctory broth it is today, took its shots. The papers tread gently at first, but started asking harder questions, in louder word choices, after the Day-After-Thanksgiving Massacre.
By the end of 2002, after a loss to thoroughly average Mississippi in the thoroughly average Independence Bowl, Nebraska was, let's face it, a fading light.
And then Solich hired Bo Pelini.
There was no way to measure Bo's impact before he marshaled Nebraska's defense into a lethal force. If then-Athletic Director Steve Pederson made a mistake of hubris, it wasn't necessarily firing Solich – we could debate that all day - but believing Solich was incapable of making a top-shelf decision.
Except Frank did: He got Bo. And that was damn smart for Nebraska.
And inconvenient for Pederson.
Had Solich stuck with Craig Bohl, or hired 90 percent of the perfectly-functional defensive coordinators in the football world, NU finishes 6-6 in 2003 and Pederson gets his pick of the coaching litter. We never know Bill Callahan. Pederson probably never considers Houston Nutt, for that matter.
But Pelini was a wild card. The game-changer. A tactician and motivator. His defensive success, as we've seen, wasn't lightning in a bottle. It wasn't apocryphal. It was the real thing. And his players loved him for it. In the eyes of many fans, he even saved Solich's job.
I wonder if fans appreciated that when they clamored for Solich to get one more year, who they were really applauding was - Pelini. The offense in 2003 was sluggish and one-dimensional. Even more than 2002. Almost as bad as 2009. And there was no real guarantee it was getting any better. Aside from making one brilliant hire, Solich's attachment to the defense was negligible. And yet Pelini produced the bulk of a 10-3 season, and made an incredible splash, the kind that earned him, frankly, a shot at the head coaching job.
Much like Ndamukong Suh earned the Heisman, but finished fourth because of sheer, ingrained politics and shoddy thinking, Pederson, a modern-businessman-acting-as-AD, rejected Pelini for a lack of flash, media savvy and experience. While Pelini flourished elsewhere, Pederson embarked on what turned out to be an intensely personal odyssey over the next four years – an era that turned out to be as much about him as it was Bill Callahan.
The events, controversies, triumphs and tumbles of that time you already know well. I can’t profess to having the pleasure of covering the first three years. By the time I did, in 2007, Callahan’s hook was well set in the media despite some alarming signs to the contrary, namely that the guy couldn’t overcome a halftime deficit to save his life.
Enchanted they were, like so many fans, with Callahan’s vision to create a midwestern USC. It was about talent, not scheme. Any overland route could work, see, as long as the proper horses were saddled up to work the trail. And by year four, 2007, Callahan, it was agreed, had finally assembled such a team. The movie star transfer quarterback in Sam Keller. A fleet of great wide receivers. The five-star stud, running back Marlon Lucky. Elite linebackers.
The coronation was to be a home game vs. No. 1 USC in late September. That night, Nebraska’s defense turned the Trojans’ running backs into the Four Horsemen, and Keller threw two back-breaking interceptions in the second half. Callahan, embarrassed, berated his team in a team-wide film study the next day. Then he kicked their collective rear ends in practice.
And then - the meltdown. Ball State. Iowa State. Missouri. Oklahoma State. Nebraska actually won two of those games, but you wouldn’t have known it. Although the Huskers would later get crushed by Kansas 76-39 in November, that month was the darkest hour. Before, as they say, the dawn.
And then UNL chancellor Harvey Perlman pulled an unthinkable trigger: Just months after giving Pederson a new contract, he called that prominent chin into his office and axed it. Such was the vitriol for Pederson that nary a Husker fan batted an eye at Perlman’s spurious explanation that he had zero idea that athletic department morale had plummeted under Pederson. How could Perlman not know - and what did that say about Perlman? That question passed in the night.
Because Perlman hired The Man to take Pederson’s place. Stately, humble, genteel Osborne - who recommended Pederson - calmly accepted a temporary role as athletic director as hundreds looked on in the Van Brunt Visitors Center, stunned and overjoyed. Osborne shook hands and signed autographs for an hour afterward. Five games later, he fired Callahan. Then he hired Pelini. Then he became the permanent athletic director So ended NU’s New Coke experiment.
Well, sorta.
I think Pederson's imprint – especially in the way Husker fans view recruiting – is deeper than some think. Pederson's strange methodology was criticized; his brazen greed for winning, for putting his stamp of restraint on the school (which he has done with that blockish, monolithic font that's used for everything Husker) is not unlike most in the business world. Indeed, Pederson, and the boosters that supported him, introduced Husker fans to the uncomfortable “efficiency model” of college athletics. It's groupthink, multiplied. A place where individualism was reserved, primarily, for the coaches – not the department employees.
I won't lie – the corporate business model does little for me. Never has. It's put college sports, and America, in a reasonably phony place that eyes the “popular” and “marketable” more than it does the “sustainable.” I recall reading Callahan's comments before his first season, about how “geeked up” he was to coach NU. Huh? This, the son of a Chicago cop.
Pederson liked being hip. So many of visual, stylistic choices around campus – especially the donor wall recalling (somewhat inappropriately) the Vietnam Memorial - suggested the spare, modern look of suburban office buildings, which architects fancy as commercial art in a landscape of Interstate and topiary mazes. He never could appreciate the decided uncool of a guy like Pelini, who pairs a sweatshirt with khakis, tucking a play card into his pants. The man is subtle like a meatball sub.
Osborne could, though, and when he returned to NU, he immediately filled all that spare wall space Pederson adored with trophies, plaques, pictures and various memorabilia. He commissioned a giant, gaudy (and, it must be said, striking in a colorful, pretty way) mural to be placed in the front hall of the North Stadium building named after him. And he hired Pelini, who, in turn, thanked Frank Solich in the opening statement after his hiring.
Some of the old critics have walked back through the door. It stands to reason they would. For Pelini’s evident brilliance on the defensive side of the ball, serious questions about the offense loom. And Bo - no one else - will ultimately have to answer. Then there is the man’s combustible temper. It is the source of his fire, what makes the players knows he cares so much. But it puts him in potentially embarrassing spots, too.
And yet he is not Solich. The fire, energy and spirit is back in the program - like it was on that early January in 2000. When defensive coordinator Charlie McBride coached his last game.
A Decade of Upheaval - and Healing
Commentary: Nebraska finally met the "business" of college in the last ten years - and is worse for the introduction
by Samuel McKewon
December 26, 2009
This decade of Nebraska football came closer than you think to traveling full circle.
It began with a Fiesta Bowl win over Tennessee that seemed to validate the Frank Solich era, and position the Cornhuskers as a prime national title contender in 2000.
It ended with Nebraska coming within one second of earning another trip to Arizona and setting up a run at the national title in 2010.
In between those bookends, the seams of the program came apart not once – but twice.
It's plenty juicy, painful and unforgettable.
When mediocrity, struggle, frustration - and the bottom-line “business” of college football - finally knocked on NU's door – as it has with every college football program in the last 30 years – it rocked most fans. They had grown to love the bucolic, never-changing nature of the Cornhuskers - nine wins, option football, red balloons, stoic head coaches – without understanding the brilliance, timing, effort and sheer good fortune that went into that incredible run from Bob Devaney's hiring until the end of 2001, when Colorado smashed the Huskers in the Day-After-Thanksgiving Massacre, triggering whispers that only continued in a blowout Rose Bowl loss, and a subsequently disappointing 2002 campaign.
We discovered what most major programs already knew: Money, influence and image overshadows the mission of educating and coaching 18-to-22-year-old men.
That TV dollars and coverage matter more than it should.
That winning is put at such a premium that most programs are willing to lard up their non-conference schedules with fattened lambs so as to ensure a bowl game that's apparently so precious to student-athletes.
That a great running backs coach doesn't necessarily translate into an inspiring head coach.
That the best-laid plans of the Ozfather went awry, to some extent, because he handed over leadership to Frank Solich, but not complete ownership, a pond rock whose ripple effects weren’t felt until this decade, well after Solich had taken over the job.
We'll never know how Solich might have fared if he'd courted and hired a staff solely of his choosing. If Tom Osborne hadn't offered the seemingly wise, but ultimately imperfect advice of retaining his entire staff. Solich might have soared higher. Or he might have flamed out sooner.
After the extraordinary run (and runs) of Eric Crouch, Solich never got his man at quarterback – and no, I don't think Joe Dailey was that guy, either – and the program swiftly lost momentum. In 2002, it was a team still flush with athletes, but not much levity. Solich looked beleaguered for much of that season – a confused on-field visage was one of Solich's unintended, but real nonetheless, weaknesses – the offense hinging, primarily, on whether Jammal Lord could whittle and plow his way through the defense. The innovation, inspiration and pluck were on empty.
Leaks on the just-then-burgeoning Internet message boards abounded. Practice scuffles. Coach squabbles. Pointless debates over Solich and his recruiting coordinator, Dave Gillespie. Boosters took to these boards like ingénues to retro boutiques, and, to some extent, the man was a casualty of that technology. Recruiting discussions, fueled by the emerging market of exclusive (and intrusive) recruiting coverage, became the belle du jour. Solich was a casualty of the media in general. The Husker nightly radio program, far from the weak, perfunctory broth it is today, took its shots. The papers tread gently at first, but started asking harder questions, in louder word choices, after the Day-After-Thanksgiving Massacre.
By the end of 2002, after a loss to thoroughly average Mississippi in the thoroughly average Independence Bowl, Nebraska was, let's face it, a fading light.
And then Solich hired Bo Pelini.
There was no way to measure Bo's impact before he marshaled Nebraska's defense into a lethal force. If then-Athletic Director Steve Pederson made a mistake of hubris, it wasn't necessarily firing Solich – we could debate that all day - but believing Solich was incapable of making a top-shelf decision.
Except Frank did: He got Bo. And that was damn smart for Nebraska.
And inconvenient for Pederson.
Had Solich stuck with Craig Bohl, or hired 90 percent of the perfectly-functional defensive coordinators in the football world, NU finishes 6-6 in 2003 and Pederson gets his pick of the coaching litter. We never know Bill Callahan. Pederson probably never considers Houston Nutt, for that matter.
But Pelini was a wild card. The game-changer. A tactician and motivator. His defensive success, as we've seen, wasn't lightning in a bottle. It wasn't apocryphal. It was the real thing. And his players loved him for it. In the eyes of many fans, he even saved Solich's job.
I wonder if fans appreciated that when they clamored for Solich to get one more year, who they were really applauding was - Pelini. The offense in 2003 was sluggish and one-dimensional. Even more than 2002. Almost as bad as 2009. And there was no real guarantee it was getting any better. Aside from making one brilliant hire, Solich's attachment to the defense was negligible. And yet Pelini produced the bulk of a 10-3 season, and made an incredible splash, the kind that earned him, frankly, a shot at the head coaching job.
Much like Ndamukong Suh earned the Heisman, but finished fourth because of sheer, ingrained politics and shoddy thinking, Pederson, a modern-businessman-acting-as-AD, rejected Pelini for a lack of flash, media savvy and experience. While Pelini flourished elsewhere, Pederson embarked on what turned out to be an intensely personal odyssey over the next four years – an era that turned out to be as much about him as it was Bill Callahan.
The events, controversies, triumphs and tumbles of that time you already know well. I can’t profess to having the pleasure of covering the first three years. By the time I did, in 2007, Callahan’s hook was well set in the media despite some alarming signs to the contrary, namely that the guy couldn’t overcome a halftime deficit to save his life.
Enchanted they were, like so many fans, with Callahan’s vision to create a midwestern USC. It was about talent, not scheme. Any overland route could work, see, as long as the proper horses were saddled up to work the trail. And by year four, 2007, Callahan, it was agreed, had finally assembled such a team. The movie star transfer quarterback in Sam Keller. A fleet of great wide receivers. The five-star stud, running back Marlon Lucky. Elite linebackers.
The coronation was to be a home game vs. No. 1 USC in late September. That night, Nebraska’s defense turned the Trojans’ running backs into the Four Horsemen, and Keller threw two back-breaking interceptions in the second half. Callahan, embarrassed, berated his team in a team-wide film study the next day. Then he kicked their collective rear ends in practice.
And then - the meltdown. Ball State. Iowa State. Missouri. Oklahoma State. Nebraska actually won two of those games, but you wouldn’t have known it. Although the Huskers would later get crushed by Kansas 76-39 in November, that month was the darkest hour. Before, as they say, the dawn.
And then UNL chancellor Harvey Perlman pulled an unthinkable trigger: Just months after giving Pederson a new contract, he called that prominent chin into his office and axed it. Such was the vitriol for Pederson that nary a Husker fan batted an eye at Perlman’s spurious explanation that he had zero idea that athletic department morale had plummeted under Pederson. How could Perlman not know - and what did that say about Perlman? That question passed in the night.
Because Perlman hired The Man to take Pederson’s place. Stately, humble, genteel Osborne - who recommended Pederson - calmly accepted a temporary role as athletic director as hundreds looked on in the Van Brunt Visitors Center, stunned and overjoyed. Osborne shook hands and signed autographs for an hour afterward. Five games later, he fired Callahan. Then he hired Pelini. Then he became the permanent athletic director So ended NU’s New Coke experiment.
Well, sorta.
I think Pederson's imprint – especially in the way Husker fans view recruiting – is deeper than some think. Pederson's strange methodology was criticized; his brazen greed for winning, for putting his stamp of restraint on the school (which he has done with that blockish, monolithic font that's used for everything Husker) is not unlike most in the business world. Indeed, Pederson, and the boosters that supported him, introduced Husker fans to the uncomfortable “efficiency model” of college athletics. It's groupthink, multiplied. A place where individualism was reserved, primarily, for the coaches – not the department employees.
I won't lie – the corporate business model does little for me. Never has. It's put college sports, and America, in a reasonably phony place that eyes the “popular” and “marketable” more than it does the “sustainable.” I recall reading Callahan's comments before his first season, about how “geeked up” he was to coach NU. Huh? This, the son of a Chicago cop.
Pederson liked being hip. So many of visual, stylistic choices around campus – especially the donor wall recalling (somewhat inappropriately) the Vietnam Memorial - suggested the spare, modern look of suburban office buildings, which architects fancy as commercial art in a landscape of Interstate and topiary mazes. He never could appreciate the decided uncool of a guy like Pelini, who pairs a sweatshirt with khakis, tucking a play card into his pants. The man is subtle like a meatball sub.
Osborne could, though, and when he returned to NU, he immediately filled all that spare wall space Pederson adored with trophies, plaques, pictures and various memorabilia. He commissioned a giant, gaudy (and, it must be said, striking in a colorful, pretty way) mural to be placed in the front hall of the North Stadium building named after him. And he hired Pelini, who, in turn, thanked Frank Solich in the opening statement after his hiring.
Some of the old critics have walked back through the door. It stands to reason they would. For Pelini’s evident brilliance on the defensive side of the ball, serious questions about the offense loom. And Bo - no one else - will ultimately have to answer. Then there is the man’s combustible temper. It is the source of his fire, what makes the players knows he cares so much. But it puts him in potentially embarrassing spots, too.
And yet he is not Solich. The fire, energy and spirit is back in the program - like it was on that early January in 2000. When defensive coordinator Charlie McBride coached his last game.
Just a humble opinion. lol