Here's the thing, despite some of the stupid things Callahan has said, I like him. If he extended me the invitation to break bread with his family, I would gladly accept and expect nothing less than a pleasant, cordial evening, afterwhich I'd walk to my car thinking about what a great guy Bill is and how glad I was to get the opportunity to see what he's like outside the media circus.
However Bill Callahan isn't paid to be a nice guy. He's paid to be a head football coach.
I'd rather we have a steaming bad guy who bites a chunk out of a reporter in the postgame presser than a smiling spinster who won't publicly account for his team's failures to live up to Nebraska's storied standards. And at the end of the day all this is a big, giant piece of worthless. It doesn't matter if Callahan's distance lost the team, if the players lost it, if George W. Bush lost it: it all comes back to Bill Callahan. He's the head coach, paid an ungodly sum of money to manage a team and go out there and have a decent season while providing the hope of even better things to come.
Moreover, under Callahan we've seen the diminishment of several ancient traditions, not including that of winning, and so far as I'm concerned, everything else is shadows and dust. If Callahan had gone out onto the field with a savage blackshirt defense that put a few opposing QBs in the hospital and dropped five straight, I'd be pissed, but I could at least justify bringing him back after keeping the games close. If he'd stared into the cameras and said, "Yeah, I f'd up, and there'll be hell to pay if this isn't corrected starting five minutes ago," I'd probably have his back.
I don't think we'll ever have all the answers to the Callahan mystery, but unlike what the one gentleman said above about Nebraska fans believing what we read (lining up like ducks, apparently), I believe what I see. And I see failure "in all areas." We lose games and the manner in which we do it is embarrassing.
Spin that.
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