Rhule finally feels like the "right coach" for Nebraska

Mavric said:
Our record was decent that year. We beat one P5 team with a winning record and got blown out in the losses. So the record was propped up by a weak schedule.



He didn't win a conference title in the MAC. He never won more than 9 regular season games. There isn't any reason to think he would have have done better in a tougher conference.

The good MAC coaches get better jobs. He seemed to be a nice guy who had decent success for a long time. He probably got at least as much Hall of Fame credit for being part of a coaching staff that won multiple national championships as he did for what he was able to do on his own. Basically a lifetime achievement award.
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Frank sort of lucked out by taking a horrible job at a school with no history so anything he did there looked really good.
 
BigRedBuster said:
The "aging staff" was forced on him by TO. He finally cleaned house and had a good year. He should have been given more time after that happened
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Not having a national coaching search and just elevating Frank was the original sin here. Better coaches were out there that, from reports, were willing to come.
 
Mavric said:
Our record was decent that year. We beat one P5 team with a winning record and got blown out in the losses. So the record was propped up by a weak schedule.
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It was an improved record from the year before and there was momentum in recruiting. He should have been given more time after hiring a new staff. If he hadn't done that, I would have no problem with him being fired.
 
So far I agree that Rhule feels like the "right coach." I guess every coach we've had since Solich I tried hard to get behind and support - as a fan what else could I really do?

Eventually with each one of our post-Solich coaches I wanted them gone long before they were fired. I hope Rhule works out here, the last 20 years have sucked.
 
So all of the above posts bring up one of the big time "Nebraska 'What ifs". What if Tom didn't have his way and the AD hired the new coach to replace him in 97? Could it have been Bob Stoops? Good chance. Good chance our whole coaching 25 year coach carousal doesn't happen. As @BigRedBuster notes above, Tom required Frank to keep the old staff. The recruiting dropped off. A younger Bob Stoops might have kept the recruiting pipeline full. Tom should have stepped away and let the AD be the AD.

The other big "What If" that I wonder about - If Tom had won the 3 NC that were in the bag for him that he lost (2 stolen by refs: PSU 1982, FSU 2003, and 1 if he had just kicked the d*$M extra point in '83) would he be considered GOAT with Saben chasing him? If he had won NC in 82 and 83, I suspect he would have won more in the 1980s because of the exposure to better recruiting a NC gives a school. Nebraska won the 1990s and we could have won the 1980s and an argument could be made that we won the 1970s wt 2 NC and with the 71 team being top 3 or 4th all time per some analysts.
 
Back to the original post: I do agree that Rhule gets it - he understands Nebraska. I think Bo understood Nebraska to a certain extent. If one second had not been put up on the clock vs Texas, he may have had greater success and a longer terms hear. But his anger did him in.
BC and MR did not get Nebraska. Both were terrible hires. SF- who knows what happened to him - he surely understood Nebraska more than any of the other coaches during the past 28 years. He obviously wasn't ready for the big fish bowl and bright lights.

Rhule - he's tasted the downside of coaching in the NFL and Nebraska breathed new life into him. It feels like he is fully invested, understands the fan base, history and tradition. I do believe he will turn this around and we can reclaim by experience our Blueblood status. This will be the first year back to respectability & relevance. It will take a few more years to make it consistent. So drink some 🍻 and let see how the season unfolds.
 
SuperBigFan69 said:
You mean he is 57, super rich, happy and retired? Yeah, what a loser. The guy got 4 million in one lump sum to leave LSU.
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No. I mean two other schools, fan bases and athletic directors lost patience with Bo Pelini quicker than Nebraska. Hence it may not have been a big mistake for Nebraska. That was the premise you offered, not how happy Bo Pelini is getting paid to not coach.

"Laughing all the way to the bank" always sounds cool, but I'm betting Bo Pelini isn't super happy that his last memory of coaching football is being run out of LSU after overseeing the worst defensive performance in school history.
 
Guy Chamberlin said:
No. I mean two other schools, fan bases and athletic directors lost patience with Bo Pelini quicker than Nebraska. Hence it may not have been a big mistake for Nebraska. That was the premise you offered, not how happy Bo Pelini is getting paid to not coach.

"Laughing all the way to the bank" always sounds cool, but I'm betting Bo Pelini isn't super happy that his last memory of coaching football is being run out of LSU after overseeing the worst defensive performance in school history.
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Can I ask, why do you dislike Bo either as a HC or as a person.
 
I was actually an optimist for what would be Bo's final season in 2014. I liked the talent and I liked the motivation. Bo was on the hot seat but they'd be playing with house money --- ears pinned back and ready to disprove the haters.

I guess I'm an optimist every year because given the choice ---- why not?

And now I'm getting a really warm and fuzzy feeling about everything coming out of Rhule's summer camp. Much more than last season. So I'm gonna run with that.
 
If you are happy with Rhule, you had to have been full on erection with Bo.

Rhule has losing seasons, no 9 win seasons and has the lame blowouts (like at Indiana last year)

If you just like him because of his "personality" well, that is lame.
 
SuperBigFan69 said:
Can I ask, why do you dislike Bo either as a HC or as a person.
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As a coach Pelini's teams fell apart in big games. Serious meltdowns across the board: Offense. Defense. Special Teams. It wasn't about the quality of the opponent. It looked self-inflicted. The players came out too tight and when things went wrong they got worse. That goes to coaching. Pelini often refused to make in-game adjustments allowing other teams to continue exploiting our schemes. That seemed to mystify Husker alums, the network announcers, and opposing coaches, who all mentioned it. It wasn't just my perception about big game failure. I believe only two P5 football programs had worse records against ranked opponents than Bo Pelini's run at NU.

As a person? Don't know him personally, of course, but from what I could see he had thin-skin, prized loyalty above all, and fostered an "us against the world" bunker mentality that didn't serve the team or the program well. His language never bothered me but sometimes the fire he showed on the sidelines against players, coaches or refs looked less like fire and more like loss of control. Underneath the bluster and the way the media portrayed him, it seemed like Bo might be an a$$hole after all. If you had any doubt, his final speech to the team after his firing was the very model of unprofessionalism, containing almost nothing you'd expect a leader to say to the young men he'd be seeing for the last time.

Bo's best moment was the run-up to the 2011 Penn State game, the first of the post-Paterno/Jerry Sandusky era. That was a media circus and mine-field, and Bo handled it masterfully. Won the game, too. Later we would learn it was the same year he said fuk the fans and started looking for other job openings without success.
 
Okay sort of what I thought. You loved that he won a lot of games but it hurt you as a fan that he played in a lot of big games (because he won a lot of games) and him losing those 'big games" bothered you, fair enough.

And then the rest of it is you being thin skinned, which is also fair enough. We all love to believe that the players and coaches love us because of how supportive we are...even though we spend a lot of time ripping on them non-stop.

I appreciate your reply!
 
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