Riley to Bookie: “If you were my son, I’d tell you to go to Oklahoma,’”

[drfish]

I love post-mortum equine flagellation, but I thought Bookie was dead.  

 

 

At least he is to me.  

[gorp512]

15 hours ago, onlyHskrfaninIL said:

he also said he'd go out and get the best coaches and then just hired his buddies.  maybe he was lying to bookie too.  who knows with that guy.  good riddance.

 

He fired his buddy and hired the best available/biggest name assistant on the market who was also highest paid assistant in the history of the program. Diaco was not a good fit, but it was a major move at the time. 

 

16 hours ago, Huskers93-97 said:

You cant use that example. Do you think when TO was recruiting Frost do you think he told him yeah you should go to Stanford. Or do you think he fought for him to the last minute? Transferring and being a recruit on the open market are totally different in my mind. 

 

Regardless. I think this just shows how much Riley was not trying to win or be competitive. The team did not look competitive on the field and obviously we were not competitive in recruiting. Hence why he is fired.

 

Yes. I think if Scott Frost came to TO when he was being recruited and confided in him enough to elicit advice that TO would reserve for his own son, that advice would be to go to Stanford if he was so moved by his visit. 

 

He hosted some of the best players in the nation. Sarell, Parsons, Bookie. These guys didn't connect with Riley because he wasn't trying to win. 

 

 

[onlyHskrfaninIL]

7 hours ago, gorp512 said:

 

He fired his buddy and hired the best available/biggest name assistant on the market who was also highest paid assistant in the history of the program. Diaco was not a good fit, but it was a major move at the time. 

 

 

Yes. I think if Scott Frost came to TO when he was being recruited and confided in him enough to elicit advice that TO would reserve for his own son, that advice would be to go to Stanford if he was so moved by his visit. 

 

He hosted some of the best players in the nation. Sarell, Parsons, Bookie. These guys didn't connect with Riley because he wasn't trying to win. 

 

 

Doesn't change the fact that he lied initially.  His buddies shouldn't have been here in the first place.  And it's only speculation on my part, but I'm not sure he would have fired Banker had it been solely up to him.

 

Makes no difference now.  He was a terrible hire (worse than Callahan imo) by a terrible AD.  

[Mavric]

8 hours ago, gorp512 said:

He fired was directed to fire his buddy and hired told to hire the best available/biggest name assistant on the market who was also highest paid assistant in the history of the program. Diaco was not a good fit, but it was a major move at the time. 

 

FIFY

[Ulty]

1 hour ago, onlyHskrfaninIL said:

Doesn't change the fact that he lied initially.  His buddies shouldn't have been here in the first place. 

 

I don't think Riley intentionally lied. He probably thought his buddies really were good coaches. Riley's eye for identifying talented coaches was about as well-developed as the rest of his actual coaching acumen. 

[dvdcrr]

When you are getting paid by our University, then your job is to bring the talent to our University.  Period.  And you are also supposed to believe it when you say NU is the best place.

[Landlord]

I mean, Frost also hired all his buddies too. If it wasn't Frost hiring them, we'd look at many (most?) of our current coaches with skepticism that they weren't elite big name hires. That's usually what coaches do; they hire people they know and trust. 

 

It wasn't unreasonable to think that Riley had the ability to do really well here. His good seasons at OSU, his almost being hired by Bama and USC, his being ranked the 2nd most underrated coach in FBS by a poll of all FBS coaches, the complimentary responses and claims of a great get by personalities and figures in the world of cfb, all of that was real. It wasn't nothing, it wasn't smoke and mirrors. It just didn't turn into wins. Which happens, most of the time. Coaching hires are as much luck as anything. Eventual future failure or success isn't really an accurate measure of whether the hire was good/bad at the time.

 

The Riley hire was, imo, a decent or average one. Wasn't great, wasn't terrible, but ultimately didn't work out.

 

The Pelini one was a good hire. Probably even a great one. 

 

The Callahan hire was a disaster and a total failure.

[gorp512]

Ironically enough, Bookie is with Diaco after all as he is a "defensive analyst" at Oklahoma. 

[brophog]

20 minutes ago, Landlord said:

It wasn't unreasonable to think that Riley had the ability to do really well here.

 

This is the last time I'll ever have to say this because in a week we have better things to discuss:

 

His job wasn't to just do OK. His job was arguably the hardest in all of sports: take a consistently good program and turn it into a great one. Not rebuild. Not maintain. Jump start. His task, in case we all somehow forgot, was to take a 9 win team and get them over that threshold. He was to take a team that was considered mediocre for beating Iowa and make it dominant.

 

No matter how one looked at his past there is absolutely nothing that suggested that man could accomplish that task. It was going to be a failure from the start and anyone that knew anything knew that. I could understand taking a risk on a coach, it's very often necessary to do so to accomplish this particular task. Mike Riley, however, was a very well known commodity and you knew what you were getting. That's the definition of a bad hire in that situation, getting someone you knew couldn't do the job.

[Landlord]

1 minute ago, brophog said:

It was going to be a failure from the start and anyone that knew anything knew that. 

 

 

Plenty of people who know plenty didn't seem to know that. 

 

 

 

[teachercd]

Not one of those tweets mention wins, notice that?  Not one of those guys said anything about how Riley would win big at NU and would dominate the West.  Not one, each tweet basically mentions everything but him winning at NU.  Those experts didn't really say anything at all in their tweets except for pleasantries.  If anything most of them are sort of backhanded compliments.

[Nebfanatic]

31 minutes ago, teachercd said:

Not one of those tweets mention wins, notice that?  Not one of those guys said anything about how Riley would win big at NU and would dominate the West.  Not one, each tweet basically mentions everything but him winning at NU.  Those experts didn't really say anything at all in their tweets except for pleasantries.  If anything most of them are sort of backhanded compliments.

Yea 'Great hire' in nearly every tweet is a backhanded complement...not. It's ok to admit that some people thought Riley was a decent coach. Everyone knows better now.

[TonyStalloni]

On 8/21/2018 at 7:22 PM, Cornfed said:

Yawn, let the past rest. 

This is my thought as well. Let the past 3 or even the past 15 years be a testament to what can happen to a great program when the people hiring coaches have no idea what they are doing and little understanding of our history.  I don't want in any way to throw shade on any players from that era.  They are Huskers for life.

[teachercd]

32 minutes ago, Nebfanatic said:

Yea 'Great hire' in nearly every tweet is a backhanded complement...not. It's ok to admit that some people thought Riley was a decent coach. Everyone knows better now.

The one that says "great hire" from George says "Truly stunning" trust me...that doesn't me that it was stunning that SE was able to hire him...it means that it was stunning that SE DID hire him.

 

The other one is from Kirk...who most of us pretend to hate.

 

 

[Huskers93-97]

7 hours ago, Landlord said:

I mean, Frost also hired all his buddies too. If it wasn't Frost hiring them, we'd look at many (most?) of our current coaches with skepticism that they weren't elite big name hires. That's usually what coaches do; they hire people they know and trust. 

 

It wasn't unreasonable to think that Riley had the ability to do really well here. His good seasons at OSU, his almost being hired by Bama and USC, his being ranked the 2nd most underrated coach in FBS by a poll of all FBS coaches, the complimentary responses and claims of a great get by personalities and figures in the world of cfb, all of that was real. It wasn't nothing, it wasn't smoke and mirrors. It just didn't turn into wins. Which happens, most of the time. Coaching hires are as much luck as anything. Eventual future failure or success isn't really an accurate measure of whether the hire was good/bad at the time.

 

The Riley hire was, imo, a decent or average one. Wasn't great, wasn't terrible, but ultimately didn't work out.

 

The Pelini one was a good hire. Probably even a great one. 

 

The Callahan hire was a disaster and a total failure.

Frost brought his whole staff yes. But a staff of winners. Riley brought a staff of fellow losers. 

 

Callahan just got fired

riley career was on downward trajectory- glory years of Rogers bros was a few years removed. Look at his 4 year record before NU

 

pelini was only guy with upward trending career at the time of hire