Rhule Positivity & is the Solich Curse Broken?

[Guy Chamberlin]

Frank Solich inherited a national championship team, but essentially so did Tom Osborne. 

And 5 of Solich's 6 seasons would have fit perfectly well on Tom's resume. Three of Solich's seasons would be among the best of Osborne's 25 year career. If the measure is Osborne, Solich pulled off a pretty good Osborne. 

The combination of the first non-winning season in 40 years, the unimaginative Jammal Lord offense, and a dangerous attraction to alcohol and young coeds made the firing of Solich justified. But we don't need to further undermine his run as a coach at Nebraska. 

 

[TGHusker]

And yet he won 75% of his games at Nebraska and went back to winning 10 when he could have his own assistants.  My opinion has always been that they should have fired Frank a year earlier....or allowed him to keep going when he changed his staff and had won 9 games at the time he was fired.

Agreed.  Winning 9 games with the new staff should have given him enough rope for 2-3 more years.  But too many people still had visions of the 90s in their heads.  Same reason we ended up with an unprepared Scott Frost. 

 

[HuskerX]

Frank Solich inherited a national championship team, but essentially so did Tom Osborne. 

And 5 of Solich's 6 seasons would have fit perfectly well on Tom's resume. Three of Solich's seasons would be among the best of Osborne's 25 year career. If the measure is Osborne, Solich pulled off a pretty good Osborne. 

The combination of the first non-winning season in 40 years, the unimaginative Jammal Lord offense, and a dangerous attraction to alcohol and young coeds made the firing of Solich justified. But we don't need to further undermine his run as a coach at Nebraska. 

Yet you just did.

 

[Guy Chamberlin]

Yet you just did.

Not the part where his seasons largely measured up to Osborne standards, something the revisionist posts were trying to revise. Hence the words "further undermine." Frank coached some great Nebraska teams. 

I did bring up Frank's off-field issues because some people forget it wasn't entirely a football decision, though had he won that Natty he might have been given a longer leash.

 

[JJ Husker]

Not the part where his seasons largely measured up to Osborne standards, something the revisionist posts were trying to revise. Hence the words "further undermine." Frank coached some great Nebraska teams. 

I did bring up Frank's off-field issues because some people forget it wasn't entirely a football decision, though had he won that Natty he might have been given a longer leash.

Agree with everything you said. But I do feel the linchpin was that 2001 game in Boulder. (At least that was the issue for me). Nothing even approaching that sort of on field embarrassment had happened to any Nebraska team dating back to the Devaney years and probably prior to that.

Only 7 wins…..well, okay but don’t make a habit of it. Losing in a natty game we shouldn’t have even been in. Meh, okay. But that debacle in Boulder just couldn’t happen ever again….until Bo made a habit of getting our doors blown off once or twice per year.

 

[TGHusker]

Frank coached some great Nebraska teams

To your point, the 99 team was perhaps the best Nebraska team to not win the NC. More balanced than the 83 scoring explosion and edging out the 82 team (denied the NC by the 1 yard out of bounds).  Outside of the fumble going across the goal line at Texas, we would have been in the NC game and would have been favored.  In the end, we stuck it to a highly ranked Tenn team in the bowl game, again, and finished 3rd in the polls. 

 

[Guy Chamberlin]

Agree with everything you said. But I do feel the linchpin was that 2001 game in Boulder. (At least that was the issue for me). Nothing even approaching that sort of on field embarrassment had happened to any Nebraska team dating back to the Devaney years and probably prior to that.

Honestly, I think 2001 did not rank among the greatest Husker teams in terms of talent, but Frank did a good job coaching them into the national championship game against 2001 Miami, considered among the most talent loaded in college football history. We did not deserve the invite after the Colorado debacle, but in a surprise to some of our younger viewers, there was a pro-Nebraksa bias back in the day.

To say Tom Osborne never had a similar crushing? Maybe half right. Tom's Huskers lost 35-10  to Oklahoma when we were #2, had another 38-7 blowout to Oklahoma, and a 27-0 shutout, and some ugly blowout bowl losses to Miami, Florida State and Georgia Tech. I think all those teams, especially Oklahoma, was better than 2001 Colorado. But I was there and those losses definitely felt like a blow to our reputation. 

 

[Hooked on Huskers]

Solich Curse?  I thought SF curse instead of Solich curse .....

 

[admo]

Eh ... he took over a team that won 60 games the previous five years.  You should still be able to win quite a few games with that kind of a program.

I won't argue that he shouldn't have been fired a year earlier.  As far as winning 10 his last year - which was really 9, Bo won the last one after Frank was fired - I think it was mostly smoke and mirrors.  Frank only beat two teams that finished with winning records (9-4 Oklahoma State and 9-4 Southern Mississippi).  We beat 3-9 Penn State by 8 at home.  And the three games we lost we were blown out - lost by 17 to 8-5 Missouri, lost by 24 to Texas and lost by 29 to Kansas State.  So the record looked better but I'm not sure the product on the field was still all that great (compared to the record).

And I'm also probably somewhat biased by being in the stands for most of the games in that stretch.  I could literally tell my friends around me what play we were going to run about 60% of the time based on what formation we came out in.  But I'm sure opposing defensive coordinators who studied film all week couldn't figure out any tendencies.  And he liked to run the wing-bone formation where he could have run the option to the wide side of the field with Crouch in Newcombe but instead insisted on running it to the short side with Lance Brown.  Osborne ran option to the short side because - in a Pro-I formation - the offense was (usually) strong to the field which meant there was also an extra defender to the field side, so short side made sense.  But the wing-bone is a balanced formation so the defense also had to be balanced, so it would have made more sense to run where there is more space (and with one of your most dynamic players).  And then there's the gem he spewed in a post-game news conference when someone asked him about running the fullback so much.  His response was that you had to run the fullback a lot to open up the option.  Really??? Have you not been paying attention the past 20 years when we'd run option all day until they forgot about the fullback and then he'd run by people who weren't even looking?

He just didn't get it as as OC. 

But I'm not bitter or anything.

To the bold, you sound like me and as an identical brother 

I agree with all of this.  I was frustrated formations and play calls, and reading the plays before they happened.  

I personally threw a fit because I did not want Solich, because I wanted to see Nebraska evolve after Osborne and become more of a passing team with speed in space, but could also run the ball.  

The culmination of Solich's predictable and outdated offense, and watching Stoops flip OU into a passing team with Heupel confirmed that I was "throw the damn ball guy" going into the 2000's.  But we had no one on staff to show the way of a new era.

And even though I loved Crouch, I always looked at how OU could spread the field, with QB's Heupel, Jason White, Bradford, Mayfield, Kyler Murray, Hurtz...... but still have guys that ran through defenses with the likes of Quentin Griffin, Adrian Peterson, DeMarco Murray, Chris Brown, Samje Perine.... 

OU was spreading out their offense, throwing the ball, but also had RBs that could get 200-400 yards in a game when opposing defenses tried to defend the pass.  

Meanwhile, Solich was unimaginative and forced the wing-bone with 9 defenders in the box.  And if the Huskers got down 2 scores, it was over.  

 

[JeffKinney87]

Reading the comments makes me think we are never going to get out of the muck and mire that is NU Football. 

Osborne anointed a man who's record at Nebraska was 58-19.  Frank was left championship level talent, but so was Osborne, and both of them had trouble getting a steady hand on the wheel (albeit it is true that Frank had a harder time of it).  When Frank was let go our AD hired Bill Callahan who went 27-22.  Tom Osborne came back as AD and hired Bo Pelini who went 67-27.  After Bo was fired, our AD hired Mike Riley who went 19-19, then a new AD hired Scott Frost who went 16-31.  

Osborne selections: 125 - 46, all other ADs: 62 - 72. 

The problem was not Osborne or Solich, it was that despite us having 2 golden opportunities in both Frank and Bo to slowly build a championship level program (Like Osborne's long journey to his first National Championship), we decided to instead gulp down the excuses for firing proven winners given to us by incompetent ADs, and sports writers.  

Winners win, losers don't.  You can say all you want about the rumors and attitude and off the field stuff from Solich and Pelini, but at the end of the day they won games, and had relatively clean programs.  Everything else that gets peddled out there like a "curse", or "we had to fire Bo", is just people trying to excuse what they probably knew then, and certainly know now, were poor decisions.

Now in the Year of Our Lord 2023, we are hiring a career .500 coach who has beaten one ranked team at the college level, and expecting to restore the glory.  My glass of kool-aid is running low.  

 

[JJ Husker]

Honestly, I think 2001 did not rank among the greatest Husker teams in terms of talent, but Frank did a good job coaching them into the national championship game against 2001 Miami, considered among the most talent loaded in college football history. We did not deserve the invite after the Colorado debacle, but in a surprise to some of our younger viewers, there was a pro-Nebraksa bias back in the day.

To say Tom Osborne never had a similar crushing? Maybe half right. Tom's Huskers lost 35-10  to Oklahoma when we were #2, had another 38-7 blowout to Oklahoma, and a 27-0 shutout, and some ugly blowout bowl losses to Miami, Florida State and Georgia Tech. I think all those teams, especially Oklahoma, was better than 2001 Colorado. But I was there and those losses definitely felt like a blow to our reputation. 

I may be a little biased. I sat through that whole fiasco at Folsom field. Seriously wanted to go down on the sideline and strangle Craig Bohl for not making any defensive adjustments. They just kept gashing us up the middle and off tackle. CUs playbook only needed two plays that day.

And you’re right, Osborne did have some bigger losses, couldn’t get that bowl win for the longest time. But CU was not a bowl game or a Florida team and that loss just seemed way worse.

 

[Guy Chamberlin]

Reading the comments makes me think we are never going to get out of the muck and mire that is NU Football. 

Osborne anointed a man who's record at Nebraska was 58-19.  Frank was left championship level talent, but so was Osborne, and both of them had trouble getting a steady hand on the wheel (albeit it is true that Frank had a harder time of it).  When Frank was let go our AD hired Bill Callahan who went 27-22.  Tom Osborne came back as AD and hired Bo Pelini who went 67-27.  After Bo was fired, our AD hired Mike Riley who went 19-19, then a new AD hired Scott Frost who went 16-31.  

Osborne selections: 125 - 46, all other ADs: 62 - 72. 

The problem was not Osborne or Solich, it was that despite us having 2 golden opportunities in both Frank and Bo to slowly build a championship level program (Like Osborne's long journey to his first National Championship), we decided to instead gulp down the excuses for firing proven winners given to us by incompetent ADs, and sports writers.  

Winners win, losers don't.  You can say all you want about the rumors and attitude and off the field stuff from Solich and Pelini, but at the end of the day they won games, and had relatively clean programs.  Everything else that gets peddled out there like a "curse", or "we had to fire Bo", is just people trying to excuse what they probably knew then, and certainly know now, were poor decisions.

Now in the Year of Our Lord 2023, we are hiring a career .500 coach who has beaten one ranked team at the college level, and expecting to restore the glory.  My glass of kool-aid is running low.  

Wait. Now we're blaming sports writers? 

 

[teachercd]

Well, fans and local media did all the could to get Bo fired.

Fans and local media did all they could to get Frost hired (as they should have) and then to get him fired.

What other state has sooooo many soap opera stories, that actually either get printed, eluded to or talked about on air.

1.  Bo getting kicked out of a middle school basketball game

2.  Bo getting kicked out of a middle school softball game

3.  Bo and Carl stalking a booster and forcing him to meet in the basement of a hotel the morning of the UT game

4. Moos drunk and passed out at a bar

5.  Frost drunk at a golf event where kids were coming to meet him

6.  Frost and Matt tearing up a Lincoln CC and almost having the cops called on them

7.  Frost and Matt having some secret room/apt where they f#&% coeds

I mean, the list goes on and on AND again the local media talks about it.

 

[thexyz]

Reading the comments makes me think we are never going to get out of the muck and mire that is NU Football. 

Osborne anointed a man who's record at Nebraska was 58-19.  Frank was left championship level talent, but so was Osborne, and both of them had trouble getting a steady hand on the wheel (albeit it is true that Frank had a harder time of it).  When Frank was let go our AD hired Bill Callahan who went 27-22.  Tom Osborne came back as AD and hired Bo Pelini who went 67-27.  After Bo was fired, our AD hired Mike Riley who went 19-19, then a new AD hired Scott Frost who went 16-31.  

Osborne selections: 125 - 46, all other ADs: 62 - 72. 

The problem was not Osborne or Solich, it was that despite us having 2 golden opportunities in both Frank and Bo to slowly build a championship level program (Like Osborne's long journey to his first National Championship), we decided to instead gulp down the excuses for firing proven winners given to us by incompetent ADs, and sports writers.  

Winners win, losers don't.  You can say all you want about the rumors and attitude and off the field stuff from Solich and Pelini, but at the end of the day they won games, and had relatively clean programs.  Everything else that gets peddled out there like a "curse", or "we had to fire Bo", is just people trying to excuse what they probably knew then, and certainly know now, were poor decisions.

Now in the Year of Our Lord 2023, we are hiring a career .500 coach who has beaten one ranked team at the college level, and expecting to restore the glory.  My glass of kool-aid is running low.  

There are no curses. The biggest thing that bit us in the butt was irrational decision-making. Specifically, but not limited to, Steve Pederson firing Solich. While the emotionally charged decision to terminate was bad enough, his replacement was worse. The whole thing was handled terribly.

None of the decisions with respect to replacements was particularly good thereafter. Especially Mike Riley (Even though I like the guy personally). He wasn't a good fit for the program or the conference. Bo Pelini was a mixed bag. With respect to him, we exchanged an offensive guy for a defensive one. Scott was "one of us" and there were indications he could return us to the promised land (Not all of us agreed with that sentiment). In each of these cases the selection was to remedy the past choice, when what you're really wanting to achieve is securing who fits. Maybe you need another boot but just a different boot given it's features and not a rugged hiker, flashy sneaker or whatever. 

Now we have a builder in Matt Rhule. We didn't need one in 2003. What we needed then was as we always have since. Rhule's story is only beginning to get written. For me there's cause for encouragement though it's certainly understandable why tummies feel sick drinking all the big red cups filled with sweetness we've been handed again and again over that have led to bitter ends. 

We've been experiencing the legacy of poor decisions. We can't resolve our past errors and what is being done now will determine it's own. You might not like everything coach is doing but his intentions are true, he has an understanding and respect for our program and they're working their tails off to get the ship righted. Not as simple of an endeavor as might be thought.  

 

[walksalone]

We're three games in, and we're 1-2.

I think we're a hell of a long way from knowing whether or not this was the right hire.  I'm more than skeptical, and so far only in one game against an opponent we're supposed to clobber, we did so.

If we somehow make a bowl game, I think that would give a little hope to this fan base, but I'm not sure that's going to happen.