Did We Fire (pick favorite coach) too soon?

[Jeepy]

1 hour ago, BoNeyard said:

Things are easier in hindsight.

 

Looking back it is mostly about bad hires and not bad firings. With that, Frost is not a bad hire at all, he's a great hire.

 

Heck, looking back firing Pelini was probably a mistake given we hired Riley. I know many at the time would say it was bad fire, but hiring Callahan was a mistake looking back at it. Obviously that entire coaching search was awful.

 

 

 

The Riley hire was about "nice guy" stuff, not about good coach stuff, let alone about a coach who understands Nebraska.  Remember the quote from the AD?  It was about how impressed he was just seeing and hearing Riley's demeanor.  "I knew right then that was our man," after just meeting him. 

 

Well look at what that nice guy did and what's left of his legacy here. 

[dvdcrr]

18 hours ago, Nebraska Alum said:

It's obvious: Bo should have been kept until Frost was ready to become our head coach. Hiring Mike Riley was the biggest, stupidest mistake that this program ever made. Period. And that is why we are 0-3 this season...

There is a lot to mull here.  

3-4 more years of Bo's angry raging face getting more air time than our players? 3-4 more years of the image of our program being such a raging caricature?

Really liked Bo as a D coordinator but on the whole, and in review, should not have been the face of our program.  

Hiring Mike Riley... the biggest mistake:

1. Firing Solich with no "Plan B?"

2. Hiring Steve Pederson?

3. Hiring Shawn Eichorst?

4. White pants with white jerseys?

[Jeepy]

13 hours ago, dvdcrr said:

There is a lot to mull here.  

3-4 more years of Bo's angry raging face getting more air time than our players? 3-4 more years of the image of our program being such a raging caricature?

Really liked Bo as a D coordinator but on the whole, and in review, should not have been the face of our program.  

Hiring Mike Riley... the biggest mistake:

1. Firing Solich with no "Plan B?"

2. Hiring Steve Pederson?

3. Hiring Shawn Eichorst?

4. White pants with white jerseys?

 

The plane on the tarmac just came to mind. 

 

And all that. 

 

Question is:  Are we really done with all that?  All those mistakes?  I believe in trickle down as to good and bad.  We've had a terrible time with the Athletic Department at UNL as to populating and running the football program.  For twenty years now.  It just makes me wonder about successful schools out there.. the perennial ones must have their stuff together when it comes to "top to bottom" in their approach.  We have not since T.O. left. 

[Mavric]

Solich - No

 

Callahan - No

 

Bo - Most would say yes.  But in the past 17 years of Husker football, the best season (W-L) from any other coach has only been better than Bo's worst season one time, and that took Bo winning the bowl game to do that.  Didn't help that he spent the last two years with an AD that was trying to fire him.

 

Riley - If he were fired the day after he was hired it wouldn't have been too soon.

[Making Chimichangas]

On 9/24/2018 at 9:36 AM, beorach said:

 

You're out of line.  If you didn't understand me at first (and I can own some of that for writing a short post), you certainly do by now, but you've still opted to insult me personally.  That's board pollution.

 

1. CDog did NOT insult you, personally or otherwise.

 

2. Your point about "hiring Frost too late is moot.  None of us had any hand in the hiring decision and those that did opted to hire other people.

 

3. However, to this point of "hiring Frost too late" you are failing to understand one thing: It wasn't a given that even if Eichorst or Perlman had wanted to hire Frost, that he would have said yes.

 

Go back and listen to the interviews Frost gave at the time AD Moos hired him and subsequently...

 

He mentioned several times that just because the HC position at Nebraska was open there was no guarantee he'd take it if offered.  He mentioned multiple times that he wanted to make sure the leadership at the university was right.

 

Listen to what Frost says in those interviews and listen for the subtext, which is: Frost would have absolutely told Perlman and Eichorst no on any offer.  You better believe that Tom Osborne was in Frost's ear and it was TO who basically convinced Frost that the right leadership (Moos, Bounds, Green) was in place.

 

Further, Frost was only going to come back if he got the kind of long term deal he wanted.  Plus, there were rumors that Perlman was really the one making the decisions on which coaches to hire.  Also, after Pelini was fired, there were additional rumors that Perlman and Eichorst wanted to dictate to Frost the assistant coaches he hired.  No idea if that is true, but it sounds like a tactic Perlman would try.  Rumors are that Perlman was the one who told Eichorst to make sure Diaco was hired.

[beorach]

Why I'm resurfacing to the beat of a dead horse I don't know but here goes...

 

I mistakenly thought the OP asked if we hired Frost too soon.  I answered, apparently too simply (i.e., without writing something along the lines of "IF IT WERE POSSIBLE"). that things couldn't have been any worse had we hired him to follow Bo.  What I wrote was that I thought most of us, given the hypothetical choice, would have rather had Frost after Bo as opposed to Riley.  Why that was some kind of affront to anyone, such that I am still being lectured to regarding obvious differences in the situations three years apart, is beyond me.  Maybe I'm wrong and people wouldn't have wanted a promising York native versus a coach whose star had been waning for years, even where it had once shone brightest.

 

I can only be certain of one thing.  If someone told you that your posts were stupid, I'd let you make the call as to whether that was insulting.

[HIHusker]

On 9/23/2018 at 8:56 AM, Jeepy said:

For twenty years we've heard 4 coaches say the same thing:  We need to be patient and let our new system get in place.  

 

We've been very patient for each coach.. generally.  Was the mistake in firing coaches too soon?  Should we have stuck with (Solich/Callahan/Pelini/Riley)?

Way too soon for this kind of talk, and honestly not worthwhile.  In the present moment we have one of the best, if not THE best, young coaches in NCAA.  Not to mention he is a local boy, former national champion/letterman QB.  SF will right the ship and get us back to relevance.  The only thing that stands in his way are fans that want to be fair weather or negative.  Trust in SF and what he is doing.  Give him time.  Encourage the guy.  When the outside world is beating you down it's nice to come home to family and have their love/support...give the guy a break he is going to do just fine and represent the program/state well.  /end rant

[NUinID]

I didn't want Solich fired in 2003 for one simple reason.  He needed more time with his new staff to recruit and develop his own program.  He actually made some very good hires and had a pretty good recruiting class started when he was fired.  At that point in time Nebraska didn't need a complete rebuild it needed fine tuning, but everyone got impatient.  Too many people didn't realize that Nebraska was still a really good program at the time.  The were too worried about being great.  

 

It still boggles my mind that so many people thought when TO retired it would just go on forever, without any drop off.  I knew it wouldn't last forever.  

 

When legendary coaches retire things are not the same.  Alabama muddled through about 25 years of very average football after Bear Bryant retired.  They had 2-3 really good years under Stallings but he was an old man when he took the job.   

 

Look at FSU,  Miami, Tennessee, Texas, USC all traditionally great teams that have struggled of late.  It takes a great coach.  I think SF is that coach, but it is going to be a rebuild and not be something overnight.  It takes time.  It took years for Barry Alvarez to build Wisconsin into what they have now, it took Ferentz 4-5 years to bring Iowa back to respectability.  It might take years at Nebraska. 

[beorach]

15 hours ago, NUinID said:

I didn't want Solich fired in 2003 for one simple reason.  He needed more time with his new staff to recruit and develop his own program.  He actually made some very good hires and had a pretty good recruiting class started when he was fired.  At that point in time Nebraska didn't need a complete rebuild it needed fine tuning, but everyone got impatient.  Too many people didn't realize that Nebraska was still a really good program at the time.  The were too worried about being great.  

 

It still boggles my mind that so many people thought when TO retired it would just go on forever, without any drop off.  I knew it wouldn't last forever.  

 

When legendary coaches retire things are not the same.  Alabama muddled through about 25 years of very average football after Bear Bryant retired.  They had 2-3 really good years under Stallings but he was an old man when he took the job.   

 

Look at FSU,  Miami, Tennessee, Texas, USC all traditionally great teams that have struggled of late.  It takes a great coach.  I think SF is that coach, but it is going to be a rebuild and not be something overnight.  It takes time.  It took years for Barry Alvarez to build Wisconsin into what they have now, it took Ferentz 4-5 years to bring Iowa back to respectability.  It might take years at Nebraska. 

 

I don't disagree but would add that the Solich firing also had a lot to do with the perception he wasn't long for the job.  Given how important recruiting is, that was no small thing (to add to the history of how it came to be people looked at him as a lame duck).

[Big Red 40]

A few things remember about the Solich years were Jamaal Lord , Solich's  blah personality,  getting destroyed by Miami , and the Subsequent loss of prize recruit/program changer Haloti Ngata.

In his defense ,Lord was a great at running , bad at passing, and that Miami team  was a top ten team all time, but the loss of Ngata hurt. At that time we were used to winning and being a perennial top 25 team so i thought we could, and should do better. Fired too soon or not, i remember feeling the program was slipping backwards under Frank.

[NUinID]

37 minutes ago, Big Red 40 said:

A few things remember about the Solich years were Jamaal Lord , Solich's  blah personality,  getting destroyed by Miami , and the Subsequent loss of prize recruit/program changer Haloti Ngata.

In his defense ,Lord was a great at running , bad at passing, and that Miami team  was a top ten team all time, but the loss of Ngata hurt. At that time we were used to winning and being a perennial top 25 team so i thought we could, and should do better. Fired too soon or not, i remember feeling the program was slipping backwards under Frank.

 

Yep, a 10-3 season in 03 sucked.  I much prefer the 5-7 in Callahan''s first year.    Yeah I know your counter is that all 3 losses were blowouts.  I don't remember Nebraska really having some chance at Ngata.  Wasn't me committed to NU for about a week and a half, them committed to Oregon?