It's the common perception that Eichorst is 100 percent tied to Riley, and my first thought when I saw the news that he went totally out of character and willingly did interviews, was that he's trying to distance himself from Riley. He's coming out and making harsher comments than you've ever heard about Riley. If you read between the lines of what he said, yes, it was supportive, but it was also a little bit of a shot across the bow. It was, "This needs to get better. This is embarrassing. I'm angry."
Thing is, I don't think that's possible at this point to create that distance. It's worth noting Nebraska's chancellor is not Harvey Perlman, who hired Eichorst. Ronnie Green is new in the administration, and while I don't think he has any huge differences or problems with the athletic director, Eichorst is not his guy. It's common in hiring football coaches to search for a guy who's the opposite of the coach you are getting rid of. Eichorst took that to the extreme. This was not about football as much as it was about personality and fit, and how he felt the coach related to the core values of the program. To me, that makes the two of them inseparable. If one of them succeeds, the other one succeeds. If one of them fails, the other one fails.
