Unfortunately there really wasn't anyone else in the mix. Callahan was our only option because, our AD didnt think his firing of solich through. He didn't have anyone lined up to take the position so we spent 4 months trying to find a coach. Note to Pud: When firing a coach, you should always have someone lined up already to take his place. As far as I know Pud didn't offer the job to Pelini so he left, which is the dumbest thing ever. I still don't understand why Pud didn't offer him the job. The guy was a defensive guru, and last i checked defense wins championships. You can always bring in someone to run the offense, but defense is what gets it done.
And now this thread will turn into Solich v Callahan and how much we hate Pud. I think this is the 3,393,678,498,801,001 thread on this.
I agree with most of your post, but you must remember that Notre Dame did have someone in mind and tried to lure him aggressively (Urban Meyers). Florida was also trying to lure him there. In the end, he turned down his supposed dream job at Notre Dame for Florida. It made Notre Dame look foolish for a while. Just because we may have had someone in mind, doesn't mean they would take the job considering the circumstances. The biggest reason we didn't have many/any people interested in the job were because of the circumstances under which Solich was fired. If you're a big name coach out there, why would you want to come into a program that just fired a coach with a 75% winning percentage that finished the year ranked #17? He was Big 12 coach of the year 3 times. Nobody in their right mind wants to jump into that kind of fire.
Wanstedt would have been remarkably worse than BC. I really don't think there is any debating this. Look at what stellar job he's done at Pitt. He's ruined every team he's ever been a head coach at. It took the Bears a lot of years to recover from Wanstedt. Before him, they made a BCS bowl. Now, they don't make bowls. Houston Nutt is a horrible coach but good recruiter. Sound familiar? He simply used the NU job as a bartering chip with Arkansas. If Arkansas had any balls at all they'd can his a$$ because he's a horrible coach.
If BC is fired at the end of this year, I don't think we'll have many/any coaches beating down the door for the job. However after 5 or 6 years and we're still struggling to crack the top 25, yeah I think we could get a big name coach to come in here. It's going to cost probably 2.5 million or better, but we could easily pluck a great one to come here.
If BC is fired, I just hope Pud has the decency and intelligence to find our next coach. I hope he used some restraint and has learned something from his last dibacle. If he hires Norv Turner, I'll sh#t myself!