What question would you like to have Mike Riley answer 100% honestly?

When Eichorst called and offered ten million dollars was it like when Michael Jackson called Paul McCartney asking if he wanted to make a hit record, and Paul said ‘“Why, yes!!” being of the hit making variety”?

 
Glendower said:
This one makes me sad... I think he did think he could win. I think he bought into the hype that was being spread: that he had never had the facilities or the backing to really put together a cracker jack team. So, he comes to UNL, has all the resources he could imagine, and still loses. This is what he's been doing his entire life, is finally given almost everything he probably ever felt he was lacking at other colleges, and still ended up .500. That has to be really just crushing. It's just a really sad story. I truly believe he thought he could win here.
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Well, probably so.  I mean, I don't know too many people who start out a new job TRYING to fail, so he probably didn't.  But I also know that at his age, most of the people I've seen just don't have the energy you probably need to run a big time football program.  You can do 'strategic direction' and 'coaching of coaches' but having the energy to get into everyone else's business down on the field just seems unlikely.  He needed a great, tireless assistant to do the details while he worked the other.. and clearly he did not have that.

 
southernoregonhusker said:
That may have been true early on, but he has looked like somebody shot his dog all season.  He just stands there with his arms crossed with zero enthusiasm.  He wasn't like that for most of his OSU career.  However, he was a lot like that over his last three years there.  Three bad years record-wise BTW.  I thought going to Nebraska would rejuvenate him.  But it turns out that he was done and should have hung them up.    
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Riley should have thought about where he was in his career and asked himself if he still had the ambition to get it done prior to taking a new job. Had he been honest with himself he would have stayed on at OSU for a couple of more years and retired unless things were becoming so unbearable at OSU then he should have just retired.  These thoughts were probably secondary since someone was stupid enough to throw him a lifeline and provide him and his buddies a nice retirement package.

 
I am a geezer, so I know.  lol  Just over 70 now, 2 years ago, was riding a mountain bike everyday, doing set ups and pushups and the rowing machine.  Could maintain a 140 heart rate for close to two hours.  But in the last 6 months, I have lost that drive.  My point is, he may have just got tired.  I still run a business and try to train, but I could not imagine doing the job Coach Riley is/was doing today.  That seems to be how fast it happens.  I know he is in good shape for his age, but when you get old, sometimes it just happens all of sudden.  I know it did for me.

 
Saunders said:
Was "toxic culture" your idea or Shawn's?

It was Shawn's.
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Ya, I'm not a Riley fan but he wouldn't come-up with that. That had Eichorst written all over it. Averts blame from his guy while casting it on Bo. Think it's funny that the "toxic" team is the only one this millennium to stay in every game til the end.

 
krc1995 said:
This question of Riley being hired to not coach makes some sense but not complete sense.  For someone to be paid to just be a figurehead, he sure did get out and try to recruit.  Or at least he made quite a show of it.  And about Diaco being the heir apparent, that makes no sense.  He was only hired this year.  Was he on someone's radar for the previous two-three years?  
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I honestly think Riley was brought in to coach 4-5 years at NU, and then hand the job over to someone else. Eichorst thought a monkey could win 8-9 games at NU every year, so he expected Riley to do that, while repairing the image of NU football. When Riley was ready to “retire”, Eichorst would hand the job over to an asssitant coach or another hire outside the team. When Eichorst and Devaney brought Diaco to the team, they fell in love with his style, so that’s who they had in mind for heir apparent. Think about Diaco, he’s handsome, smart, he teaches well in practice,and he’s a good face to put in front of the program. Eichorst must have had a total boner for him once he came on campus. 

 
skersfan said:
I am a geezer, so I know.  lol  Just over 70 now, 2 years ago, was riding a mountain bike everyday, doing set ups and pushups and the rowing machine.  Could maintain a 140 heart rate for close to two hours.  But in the last 6 months, I have lost that drive.  My point is, he may have just got tired.  I still run a business and try to train, but I could not imagine doing the job Coach Riley is/was doing today.  That seems to be how fast it happens.  I know he is in good shape for his age, but when you get old, sometimes it just happens all of sudden.  I know it did for me.
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Nothing against old people, but Mike’l Severe has said numerous times that it was foolish for Riley at age 62 to do the best work of his career and have a significant upgrade in his performance during that time. His work was DECLINING at Oregon State at the time of his hire at NU.

I have posted this before and their have been responses of Osborne and Devaney retiring at the top, but Osborne was still in his mid-late 50s when NU started the dominant run in 1993, and Devaney retired before he hit 60. I’m not saying coaches can’t be successful in their 60s (see Nick Saban, Bill Snyder), but coaches don’t IMPROVE SIGNIFICANTLY near the end of their career. Riley was expected to have his performance improve significantly. 

 
Undone said:
Exactly. As if he needed to do research at some point with other trusted head coaches and try to figure out where his "practice focus" and "practice intensity" measures up to other successful programs. 

It doesn't seem that hard to read between the lines and make a relatively fair assumption in saying that Riley probably just kept doing what he'd always done, and therefore got the same results.

We all know that our practices in the 90s under Osborne were high intensity. It's well-documented. If you play like you practice, it seems relatively obvious that either Riley or his coordinators just don't have appropriate standards of practice intensity that the average Top 25 program has. How else does Iowa knock off Ohio State? How else does Wisconsin consistently spend the vast majority of every season ranked, and even sniffing the Top 10?

 
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Boy if SF can bring that kind of 'you play like you practice' mentality into the program, we will be a long ways down the road in correcting the problems wt the program.

 
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The Dude said:
I would ask him, "do you like apples?"

Then I'd make a really witty, cutting remark.

Then I'd ask, "how do you like them apples?"
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them-apples.jpg


 
I would ask him are you disappointed, very disappointed or terribly disappointed.  

Then I would ask him to spill the beans on whose brilliant decisions sabotaged his tenure at Nebraska. 

 
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