How would things have gone if we had retained Solich as coach?

[Elf]

Who in the world can take a team with 3 titles in 4 years and go 9-4 in year 1? That is just astoundingly awful. Opponents of Solich mostly cite the 7-7 season but I want to cite the 98 season as well. If there ever has been a season where it was justified to fire a coach after 1 year this might have been it.

I had high high hopes when Osborne initially retired but the '98 season brought me back to reality. I knew then Nebraska football was headed for a down cycle.

[NUinID]

Losing 5 of top 6 linemen, an all pro level back, and starting freshman QBs (who got injured as I recall) is a decent reason to go 9-4 that year. 2 of the losses were to top 10 teams (that finished #4 and #10). Another was to an 18th ranked team that finished #11 and a Texas team that finished #15.

 

Each of those losses were by 10 or less and 3 of them were by a score or less.

 

People are pretty unfair when evaluating Frank, especially as a first time HC.

 

CM on this I agree with you. Lots of injuries that year. Started 3 different QBs at one point or the other that year. Loses were pretty close for the most part. To many poeple thought it would just continue forever. The system was a great system that worked and could still work at Nebraska, but to many forget that the biggest piece of that system was TO.

[cm husker]

I was watching a Devaney documentary on YouTube this morning (highly recommend it) and while reading about Bob, I came across this article with some on point comments from TO.

 

I defer to him: http://www.huskers.com/ViewArticle.dbml?ATCLID=205498962

[Guy Chamberlin]

 

Who in the world can take a team with 3 titles in 4 years and go 9-4 in year 1? That is just astoundingly awful. Opponents of Solich mostly cite the 7-7 season but I want to cite the 98 season as well. If there ever has been a season where it was justified to fire a coach after 1 year this might have been it.

I had high high hopes when Osborne initially retired but the '98 season brought me back to reality. I knew then Nebraska football was headed for a down cycle.

 

 

 

Huh?

 

Pretty much any coach inheriting a team with 3 titles in 4 years has nowhere to go but down. Tom Osborne faced a similar situation taking over for Devaney, and responded with a string of seasons similar to Solich's.

 

Come on, guys. After that 9-4 transitional year, Solich went 12-1 in 1999 and ranked #2/3 in the nation. In 2000 he went 10-2, losing only to two ranked teams on the road and ended up #7/8 in the nation. In 2001 he coached a modest Nebraska squad to the NC game, which perhaps we would have been better off missing. After our first meltdown year in decades in 2002, Solich rebounded with a 10-3 season and Top 20 ranking.

 

95% of college football programs would remember this "down cycle" as the "glory years." We would take them right now in a heartbeat.

 

I do think recruiting and talent were starting to show decline, but words like "astoundingly awful" and "justified to fire after one year" do not remotely jibe with Frank Solich's coaching ability.

[flfmrredfan]

I was watching a Devaney documentary on YouTube this morning (highly recommend it) and while reading about Bob, I came across this article with some on point comments from TO.

 

I defer to him: http://www.huskers.com/ViewArticle.dbml?ATCLID=205498962

Too bad that Osborne was not able to step into the AD position like Devaney did when he promoted Osborne to replace him. He would have shielded Solich from the wolves (fans) as Devaney did him, and this thread would not exist. NU would have had three successive coaches who won 100 or more games, an unprecedented feat in the modern times.

[huskered17]

While I think this has been thoroughly discussed too many times to count, I will add my views in a nutshell:

 

It was generally acknowledged by nearly all the pundits that Frank was not recruiting well (whether personally or with the aid of his staff before and after the mass firings).

 

In my view, he should not have fired the best of his staff in an effort to shift responsiblility and blame for the lack of recruiting going on by 2001 and following. Milt Tenopir was not physically well and couldn't travel but he was still picking goog linemen and we were still doing well in that area. Frank's offense had deteriorated into a QB run right, QB run left and QB run for his life in any direction, system. Crouch followed by Lord. No serious DUAL threat (yes he should pass too!) was giving Frank serious consideration.

for whatever reasons, he made some poor choices in his RB selection (he kept thinking power over speed and elusiveness - maybe going all the way back to his Fullback days or something?). Receivers would be wasting a career with Frank since he would not throw the ball in Lincoln although he has used the forward pass more in Ohio oddly enough.

His defenses were lacking toward the end and that may have hurt some in the recruiting on that side of the ball as well.

I think his biggest issues were recruiting and off the field (behind the headlines) as have been cited numerous times before. There were drinking and driving issues and other even more scandalous things floating around as well. Fortunately, for everybody's sakes, the worst never made the newspapers. Social media had not blown up to where it is now or God forbid the stuff we'd be reading today.'

 

I liked Frank and felt Tom would not deliberately impose him on Husker Nation unless he believed he could handle the job. But friendship can cloud one's judgment, even the highly accute judgement of a legend. Tom was deeply loyal to all of his staff and the Osborne firings were few and far between. In return for your best effort, he was decent and honorable so far as we know in every way to the Nth degree (perhaps his only major fault was being too good and too loyal and giving too many second and third and fourth chances).

 

I think Frank was destined to fall short of the expectations of Husker Nation and the 'gravitating to mediocritity' would have been completed within a couple more seasons. Sadly, the Bill Callahan era was no better and by the time another change was made, the Husker magic was all but gone. We were no longer elite and the long slow climb to the summit has begun yet again. Hopefully, it only takes a few more years and not decades. I believe the assent has begun.

 

 

What you say, is a lot of it in a nut shell. One thing I remember is Frank also wanting to know when T O was going to retire. He was talking about leaving for a head coaching job, and this might have caused T O to retire a little bit earlier, than he planed on.

 

GBR!!!

[Landlord]

He should have been fired after 02. There are 2 reasons why I still wish he had been dumped after 02.

1. If he had ended at 7-7 rather than 9-3, nobody would miss him. Nobody would argue his firing was unfair.

 

 

Well, you are wrong.

 

 

9-4

12-1

10-2

11-2

 

 

 

If you fire a coach in year 5 after the first slight whiff of trouble after their first four seasons look like the above, you're inviting a mountain of criticism. Just as much if not moreso than him being fired in 2003, we would have been known as the school that all of the sudden doesn't allow room for even a modicum of failure. Have one mediocre season and you're gone? That's a bad look.

[STL Husker]

I think we would have looked very similar to what Ferentz has done at Iowa. Overall, very average but a bad season and very good season thrown in every few years. Unfortunately we fired him after the bad year before we could make our 12-0 run with no trophies.

[Guy Chamberlin]

 

I was watching a Devaney documentary on YouTube this morning (highly recommend it) and while reading about Bob, I came across this article with some on point comments from TO.

 

I defer to him: http://www.huskers.com/ViewArticle.dbml?ATCLID=205498962

Too bad that Osborne was not able to step into the AD position like Devaney did when he promoted Osborne to replace him. He would have shielded Solich from the wolves (fans) as Devaney did him, and this thread would not exist. NU would have had three successive coaches who won 100 or more games, an unprecedented feat in the modern times.

 

 

Devaney could have shielded Osborne from getting fired, but not from fan grumbling. And it was mostly muttering and grumbling about Oklahoma and bowl game losses, never serious talk about firing Osborne, who always kept Nebraska football relevant.

 

It was Tom who interviewed for the head coaching position of hated conference rival Colorado in 1978 (iirc). He wasn't in danger of being fired, he just thought Nebraska fans would never appreciate him. Was it a ploy for sympathy? Did Devaney talk him out of it? Don't know. I was a UNL student at the time, and I do remember the whole episode made the fans feel kinda stupid for our expectation level. But the grumbling wouldn't fully go away for another 15 seasons.

 

But I'm pretty certain that the fans who grumbled about the direction of the program under Solich wouldn't change their minds if Osborne had been AD, and I'm pretty certain Osborne would not have intervened to tell Solich how to coach and recruit.

 

Long way of saying this thread will always exist. For every coach.

[Redux]

 

I was watching a Devaney documentary on YouTube this morning (highly recommend it) and while reading about Bob, I came across this article with some on point comments from TO.

I defer to him: http://www.huskers.com/ViewArticle.dbml?ATCLID=205498962

 

Too bad that Osborne was not able to step into the AD position like Devaney did when he promoted Osborne to replace him. He would have shielded Solich from the wolves (fans) as Devaney did him, and this thread would not exist. NU would have had three successive coaches who won 100 or more games, an unprecedented feat in the modern times.

I think Tom would have been better at protecting Solich from himself, the results would have reflected that too.

[Guy Chamberlin]

It's also interesting to look back at the guy who turned everything around, using the hindsight of what we now expect of Husker football:

 

Nebraska[edit]

Devaney was the fourth choice of Nebraska's athletic director, Tippy Dye. Utah's Ray Nagel and Utah State's John Ralston had turned down the job. Michigan State coach Duffy Daugherty also turned down Dye, but recommended Devaney, his former assistant, for the Cornhuskers. When Devaney balked at leaving Wyoming for Nebraska, it was Daugherty who convinced him to accept the position because he could potentially win a national title at Nebraska, a goal that Wyoming was very unlikely to obtain. Devaney joined Nebraska in 1962 and immediately reestablished the program as a force in the Big Eight Conference. Prior to Devaney's arrival, Nebraska football had fallen on hard times with seven consecutive losing seasons. The 1961 team under Bill Jennings went 3–6–1 overall and 2–5 in conference. After a winning tradition up until the early 1940s, Nebraska had only two winning seasons in the two decades preceding Devaney's arrival.^[2]

Devaney engineered an immediate turnaround with a 9–2 record in 1962 that included a victory in the Gotham Bowl at Yankee Stadium over the Miami Hurricanes. It was the first of forty consecutive winning seasons for Nebraska. Devaney followed this up with an even better 10–1 season the next year, including a perfect 7–0 record in the Big Eight to claim the conference title and an Orange Bowl victory over Auburn. His success continued through 1966, with records of 9–2, 10–1, and 9–2, bringing his record at Nebraska to 47–8 (.855). This had so revived Nebraska football that Memorial Stadium was enlarged significantly by enclosing both ends. For the first time, Nebraska was on television once or twice a year and fans all over the state sat down to watch the Bob Devaney TV show each week, in which he used his folksy manner to review the tape of the game for all of the fans who hadn't seen it in person.

Consecutive 6–4 seasons followed in 1967 and 1968. Allegedly known as a drinker,^{[citation needed]} Devaney became subject to a whispering campaign about whether he had peaked. However, he had brought in an innovative offensive thinker as an assistant coach, Tom Osborne. Devaney and Osborne revamped the offensive scheme, an I formation with an unbalanced line, and upgraded the recruiting effort. Nebraska began the 1969 season with just a 2–2 start and in its fifth game needed a last-minute comeback at home to beat aKansas team that finished the season 1–9*. But the 1969 Huskers kept winning and concluded the season with a 9–2 record, including a 45–6 rout of Georgia in the Sun Bowl. This set the stage for the highlight of Devaney's coaching career.^{[citation needed]}

* I went to that game with my dad.

[cm husker]

This doc, which I posted in another thread, gives a lot of insight into Devaney, his staff and the Husker "faithful" back in the 60s. It's incredible how quickly people went from just hoping to be respectable to feeling entitled to championships. A lot of lessons to be had. There was also a loss in there... maybe to OU?... that was 37-0 or something like that. I can't imagine he would have survived that season today.

 

HEre's the documentary. It's a very worthwhile watch:

 

[Joe_5700]

He should have been fired after 02. There are 2 reasons why I still wish he had been dumped after 02.

1. If he had ended at 7-7 rather than 9-3, nobody would miss him. Nobody would argue his firing was unfair.

2. I have no idea who the new coach in 03 would have been. But hopefully his name wouldn't have been Bill Callahan.

What was your basis for wanting him fired? On record alone? Is a single .500 or losing season a deal breaker?

[cm husker]

 

 

He should have been fired after 02. There are 2 reasons why I still wish he had been dumped after 02.

1. If he had ended at 7-7 rather than 9-3, nobody would miss him. Nobody would argue his firing was unfair.

2. I have no idea who the new coach in 03 would have been. But hopefully his name wouldn't have been Bill Callahan.

What was your basis for wanting him fired? On record alone? Is a single .500 or losing season a deal breaker?

I agree with your point. A lot of HOF coaches posted .500/losing type seasons, even after championships. I really hope we aren't adopting that standard.

 

As I've mentioned before, NU is not going to hire and fire it's way to glory.

[Mavric]

I agree with your point. A lot of HOF coaches posted .500/losing type seasons, even after championships. I really hope we aren't adopting that standard.

Care to list a few?