Guy Chamberlin
Heisman Trophy Winner
College football has also changed a lot in the last 20 years. More teams demanding more excellence shared the same recruiting pool, and advantages Nebraska once enjoyed were being whittled away.
Not all of this is on the administration. But if you really were savvy enough to see the way college football was going, and knew you had to act ahead of the curve to meet the incredibly high expectations of Husker fans, you could see how replacing Frank Solich in 2003 was the right move.
Problem was, most of us thought the position of Head Coach at the University of Nebraska was going to be attractive to that transformational next generation coach, and it actually wasn't. That all got played out in public and Bill Callahan was a face saving measure, an NFL head coach one year removed from coaching a Super Bowl. Firing Callahan wasn't a mistake. Firing Bo wasn't a mistake. Firing Riley wasn't a mistake. And now that we have the only coach every Husker fan can agree on, and he's turned in the worst back to back seasons of them all, we finally get the humbled expectations and patience needed for a genuine rebuild.
Then again, a half-dozen of the right recruits could make a world of difference overnight. I'm going to expect better every year because I really, really need to believe this is the bottom.
Not all of this is on the administration. But if you really were savvy enough to see the way college football was going, and knew you had to act ahead of the curve to meet the incredibly high expectations of Husker fans, you could see how replacing Frank Solich in 2003 was the right move.
Problem was, most of us thought the position of Head Coach at the University of Nebraska was going to be attractive to that transformational next generation coach, and it actually wasn't. That all got played out in public and Bill Callahan was a face saving measure, an NFL head coach one year removed from coaching a Super Bowl. Firing Callahan wasn't a mistake. Firing Bo wasn't a mistake. Firing Riley wasn't a mistake. And now that we have the only coach every Husker fan can agree on, and he's turned in the worst back to back seasons of them all, we finally get the humbled expectations and patience needed for a genuine rebuild.
Then again, a half-dozen of the right recruits could make a world of difference overnight. I'm going to expect better every year because I really, really need to believe this is the bottom.