How would things have gone if we had retained Solich as coach?

[alwayshusking]

He should have been fired after 02. There are 2 reasons why I still wish he had been dumped after 02.

1. If he had ended at 7-7 rather than 9-3, nobody would miss him. Nobody would argue his firing was unfair.

2. I have no idea who the new coach in 03 would have been. But hopefully his name wouldn't have been Bill Callahan.

What was your basis for wanting him fired? On record alone? Is a single .500 or losing season a deal breaker?

I agree with your point. A lot of HOF coaches posted .500/losing type seasons, even after championships. I really hope we aren't adopting that standard.

As I've mentioned before, NU is not going to hire and fire it's way to glory.

So you've agreed to give Mike Riley some time to build his program? Glad you've finally come around.

 

[cm husker]

I agree with your point. A lot of HOF coaches posted .500/losing type seasons, even after championships. I really hope we aren't adopting that standard.

Care to list a few?

Sure. How should we set parameters for ".500 type season"? Let's say we are we just talking about only DIA HOFers who won NCs and then had a season of .550 (i.e., 6-5) or worse? Some would say that an 7-5 type season is pretty poor, but we'll exclude those for this list.

Under those parameters, the list includes:

Bear Bryant (1969, 1970)

J. Paterno (1984, 1988, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2010)

B. Bowden (2006, 2007, 2009)

Fulmer (2005, 2008),

L. Edward (1993, 1997, 2000)

L. Holtz (1994)

J. Robinson (1996, 1997*)

McKay (1970, 1971)

If you want to talk about HOFs in general who won a conference championship and then had .500 type seasons or worse, you add guys like Snyder, Beamer, Bellotti, Slocum, Alvarez, Fry, Don James after winning P12s but before winning an NC, V. Dooley after winning SECs but before winning NC, Schembechler, Stallings, etc.

Many of them had multiple seasons like that, including straight up losing seasons, and even more had a lot of 7-5, 8-5 type of seasons. Among DIA NC winners, as far as I can tell, TO is the only coach to never dip below .700 in a season after winning a NC. If Switzer posted multiple .667 or worse seasons. Astonishingly, TO never dropped below .750 in any season during his entire career).

 

[Mavric]

And how many of those you just listed got fired (or basically fired) for those down seasons?

 

[cm husker]

He should have been fired after 02. There are 2 reasons why I still wish he had been dumped after 02.

1. If he had ended at 7-7 rather than 9-3, nobody would miss him. Nobody would argue his firing was unfair.

2. I have no idea who the new coach in 03 would have been. But hopefully his name wouldn't have been Bill Callahan.

What was your basis for wanting him fired? On record alone? Is a single .500 or losing season a deal breaker?

I agree with your point. A lot of HOF coaches posted .500/losing type seasons, even after championships. I really hope we aren't adopting that standard.
As I've mentioned before, NU is not going to hire and fire it's way to glory.

So you've agreed to give Mike Riley some time to build his program? Glad you've finally come around.

I've always said that (a) if Riley posts Solich and Pelini type results, he should not be fired, and (b) we really aren't in a position to fire Riley prior to at least 2019 without setting the program back even further - for a number of reasons.

There was a window where it may have arguably made sense to "gamble" on pulling the trigger for Frost, but realistically that wasn't going to and couldn't happen.

Now we are sort of in no man's land because barring a 4-8 type season you can't really fire him and find a good replacement. I really hope 4-8 doesn't happen because I don't know who NU could hire if it did and we fired him. I don't see frost jumping after one year at UCF (maybe he would like Saban did at Toledo (?)) and I don't see a third party quality coach accepting the position over other similar openings.

 

[cm husker]

And how many of those you just listed got fired (or basically fired) for those down seasons?

Fired outright? Almost none. Maybe Dooley?

If we look only at the NC winners, think the only coaches that didn't make it through at least 4 seasons at the same school past his first down season were Holtz (who retired amid NCAA investigations after posting back to back 8-3 and 9-3 top 25 seasons) and Robinson, who retired.

Oh, and I forgot about Woody Hayes, who had 4 seasons that we described, including two outright losing seasons, after winning an NC.

 

[flfmrredfan]

Devaney could have shielded Osborne from getting fired, but not from fan grumbling. And it was mostly muttering and grumbling about Oklahoma and bowl game losses, never serious talk about firing Osborne, who always kept Nebraska football relevant.

There was never any serious talk about firing because the AD, Devaney, would never have pulled a SPEM. He was smart enough to know what he had.

It was Tom who interviewed for the head coaching position of hated conference rival Colorado in 1978 (iirc). He wasn't in danger of being fired, he just thought Nebraska fans would never appreciate him. Was it a ploy for sympathy? Did Devaney talk him out of it? Don't know. I was a UNL student at the time, and I do remember the whole episode made the fans feel kinda stupid for our expectation level. But the grumbling wouldn't fully go away for another 15 seasons.

That is what entitlement minded fans do. Which is why it was important for Osborne to have the full support of his AD, unlike with Solich, and of course Pelini.

Long way of saying this thread will always exist. For every coach.

There isn't one for Osborne. And, thanks to Devaney, there is no reason for one.

 

[Mavric]

Bowden was basically fired. Fulmer and Robinson would all be basically in that same boat I believe.

And having a losing season in a second stint or at a different university is not really the same thing we're talking about.

 

[flfmrredfan]

I think Tom would have been better at protecting Solich from himself, ...

Yeah? In what way?

Do you believe Devaney did the same for Osborne?

 

[cm husker]

There's no doubt that both Devaney and Osborne felt at risk during their coaching careers at NU. It's been widely acknowledged by them and their staffs. For example the petition to fire Devaney and ressure by Regents to fire staff members during the 6-4 seasons. And for Tom, the "Bluebonnet must win" conversation that he has talked about.

To say that they weren't at risk among the fans and boosters is incorrect, I think. What is correct is that both benefited from AD wherewithal and courage, so in that sense, they weren't at risk.

 

[NUinID]

Bowden was basically fired. Fulmer and Robinson would all be basically in that same boat I believe.

And having a losing season in a second stint or at a different university is not really the same thing we're talking about.

Wow, he gave you examples and then you try downgrade all the work he did to find them. He had plenty of examples on that list, and I usually don't agree with CM. I was actually surprised there was that many.

 

[cm husker]

Bowden was basically fired. Fulmer and Robinson would all be basically in that same boat I believe.

And having a losing season in a second stint or at a different university is not really the same thing we're talking about.

But each did survive for a period. It would be more accurate to say that multiple .500 seasons forced them out. Not a single one. I think if Frank had posted multiple <.550 seasons, the decision to fire him would have been more palatable.

And the Fulmer thing is more complex. He was 29-21 in his last four seasons at UT. But there's a lesson to be learned because who replaced him? You guessed it, Lane Kiffen. Wonder if any UT fans are kicking themselves because UT is 44-51 since then.

For all the claims about "hey, Alabama, OU and USC had to fire a bunch of guys before finding the right one" there are probably 2 or 3 Tennessee-type cautionary tales on the other side.

 

[cm husker]

Bowden was basically fired. Fulmer and Robinson would all be basically in that same boat I believe.

And having a losing season in a second stint or at a different university is not really the same thing we're talking about.

Wow, he gave you examples and then you try downgrade all the work he did to find them. He had plenty of examples on that list, and I usually don't agree with CM. I was actually surprised there was that many.

If I wanted to complain, I'd post a meme about goalpost moving, but I actually think it's fair to examine what the consequences of those moves were (kind of like it's fair to drill down on evidence that's presented in any other discussion even if on its immediate face it appears to satisfy a criteria).

It's only through rigorous debate, including the honest and thorough evaluation of history, do we determine what policies would be best for NU going forward. That's really want most of this debate is about. Some think "We made the right decision and should make similar decisions in the future." Others things "We've been making poor decisions and should not make similar decisions on the future." So while it may seem like it's a debate over a specific hiring or firing that is dead and gone, it's really a debate about the policies and concepts that underpin those individual decisions.

That's why I've never really considered those discussions, positive or negative, as "harping on the past."

 

[Guy Chamberlin]

Devaney could have shielded Osborne from getting fired, but not from fan grumbling. And it was mostly muttering and grumbling about Oklahoma and bowl game losses, never serious talk about firing Osborne, who always kept Nebraska football relevant.

There was never any serious talk about firing because the AD, Devaney, would never have pulled a SPEM. He was smart enough to know what he had.

It was Tom who interviewed for the head coaching position of hated conference rival Colorado in 1978 (iirc). He wasn't in danger of being fired, he just thought Nebraska fans would never appreciate him. Was it a ploy for sympathy? Did Devaney talk him out of it? Don't know. I was a UNL student at the time, and I do remember the whole episode made the fans feel kinda stupid for our expectation level. But the grumbling wouldn't fully go away for another 15 seasons.

That is what entitlement minded fans do. Which is why it was important for Osborne to have the full support of his AD, unlike with Solich, and of course Pelini.

Long way of saying this thread will always exist. For every coach.

There isn't one for Osborne. And, thanks to Devaney, there is no reason for one.

Dude, there wasn't an Internet when Osborne was coaching.

Trust someone who is older and wiser: the grumbling, the second guessing and the entitlement bandied about here is very familiar to some of us Husker veterans.

Back then we had cocktail parties and water coolers instead this fancy information super highway all the kids are on.

 

[Guy Chamberlin]

This doc, which I posted in another thread, gives a lot of insight into Devaney, his staff and the Husker "faithful" back in the 60s. It's incredible how quickly people went from just hoping to be respectable to feeling entitled to championships. A lot of lessons to be had. There was also a loss in there... maybe to OU?... that was 37-0 or something like that. I can't imagine he would have survived that season today.

Of course Devaney would survive the same situation today, if by "today" you mean the era of Callahan, Pelini, Riley and plenty of other coaches who aren't fired according to single games and seasons but by the body of work and where it's trending.

 

[Gobigred44]

Lol at comparing Devaney to Solich. Devaney inherited what had been one of the most god awful programs in the country from 1941-61. Forget about taking a team over after a bad season or 2- Nebraska had performed similiar to worse than how Kansas and Colorado are currently performing for 21 years before Devaney. Of course Devaney couldn't win national titles as soon as he took over.