Husker Coaching Hires: “The Pick Of The Litter”

[Thanks_Tom RR]

Moos said in the Hoiberg presser that with his coaching searches for Frost and Hoiberg that he did not have to go to No. 2 on his list. It could be argued that both were the best realistic hires for Nebraska at the time of job openings. It got me thinking with the four HC football hires post-Osborne leading up to Frost, were any the best realistic coach prospect for that time? If not, who would it have been during each of the three coaching searches?

 

I do qualify with the idea that it is a realistic hire for Nebraska, I mean if you wanted to argue that Saban or Dabo would have been a better hire than Frost, fair play, but those guys weren’t coming to Lincoln.

[funhusker]

2 hours ago, Thanks_Tom RR said:

Moos said in the Hoiberg presser that with his coaching searches for Frost and Hoiberg that he did not have to go to No. 2 on his list. It could be argued that both were the best realistic hires for Nebraska at the time of job openings. It got me thinking with the four HC football hires post-Osborne leading up to Frost, were any the best realistic coach prospect for that time? If not, who would it have been during each of the three coaching searches?

 

I do qualify with the idea that it is a realistic hire for Nebraska, I mean if you wanted to argue that Saban or Dabo would have been a better hire than Frost, fair play, but those guys weren’t coming to Lincoln.

Callahan: NO

Pelini: YES.  An argument could be made that he was the defensive version of Scott Frost. (Minus the 1 year of amazing success as a HC)  And he had Nebraska ties.

Riley: NO

Frost: YES

[Huskers93-97]

Solich- NO. Hindsight the obvious choice was Bob Stoops

[Enhance]

Callahan is definitely a no. There were objectively better coaches available at the time (including ones Nebraska was talking to) but they didn't come through.

 

I think Pelini is a lean towards yes. There were some "better" coaches Nebraska could've looked at but Pelini was a really good fit in a number of ways at the time.

 

Riley... hell no.

 

Frost is a definite yes. He was the best available candidate two years ago, IMO.

[Cdog923]

39 minutes ago, Huskers93-97 said:

Solich- NO. Hindsight the obvious choice was Bob Stoops

 

Rumor is that Mack Brown was at the top of Byrne's list in '97. 

[Toe]

Urban Meyer would've been a hell of a hire in 2003, when he was still at Utah.

[PasstheDamnBallGuy]

3 hours ago, Cdog923 said:

 

Rumor is that Mack Brown was at the top of Byrne's list in '97. 

 

 

[Landlord]

I'd say Pelini was pretty confidently the best pick available in '07. Other new coaches that got hired that year were Art Briles, Rich Rod (Michigan), Kevin Sumlin, Mike Sherman, Bobby Petrino and so on. 

 

Rich Rod was the only one at the time who had much more clout but Pelini was the up and comer and had a connection here.

 

Solich, I don't know - I'm sure there would have been better hires but I don't think Solich was a bad coach by any stretch, and I do think Osborne earned the right to give him the chance. He did a pretty damn good job overall too. Not great, not elite, not up to Osborne standard, but pretty good.

[BigRedBuster]

38 minutes ago, PasstheDamnBallGuy said:

 

 

You would not have wanted the same success that Texas had with him as coach?

[Landlord]

Just now, BigRedBuster said:

You would not have wanted the same success that Texas had with him as coach?

 

Midwesterners don't want anything from anybody with a southern accent

[Cdog923]

1 minute ago, BigRedBuster said:

You would not have wanted the same success that Texas had with him as coach?

 

There is no guarantee that, without the Texas recruiting pipelines, that Brown would have had the same success here. However, I do think he's a better coach than a lot of people give him credit for. 

[Toe]

31 minutes ago, Landlord said:

Midwesterners don't want anything from anybody with a southern accent

 

There were a lot of people who wanted Paul Johnson in 2007...

[TGHusker]

33 minutes ago, Toe said:

 

There were a lot of people who wanted Paul Johnson in 2007...

Me being one. Not sure how his option would worked here long term - since no one was running the option in the big 12 at the time - it may have been hard to defend as teams were use to it.  But one has to remember that Big 12 Ds faced up tempo passing teams so the there was probably more speed on defenses in 2007 than the ones we normally faced when Solich and Osborne ran the option  (outside of OU and the florida schools)

[Toe]

@TGHusker If we'd ended up with Paul Johnson, I think the biggest problem would've been terrible recruiting. Half of his recruiting classes didn't even crack the top 50, despite being at a school in great recruiting territory. Can you imagine what we would've ended up with if he'd tried recruiting to Nebraska?

[TGHusker]

26 minutes ago, Toe said:

@TGHusker If we'd ended up with Paul Johnson, I think the biggest problem would've been terrible recruiting. Half of his recruiting classes didn't even crack the top 50, despite being at a school in great recruiting territory. Can you imagine what we would've ended up with if he'd tried recruiting to Nebraska?

Yes I started to recognize that after he had been at GT for a while.  He was great at Navy for what the restrictions were  - I thought he'd do more at GT than what he did.