http://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/20777039/nebraska-cornhuskers-fire-ad-shawn-eichorst
I wonder what this means for Riley, but IMO it doesn't sound good.
I wonder what this means for Riley, but IMO it doesn't sound good.
Nebraska fires AD
- Thread starter iskaboo
- Start date
The Nebraska brass is so knee-jerk about everything, it's ridiculous. They need to come to terms with the fact that the 80s/90s are long gone, and the idea that they'll ever be dominant again is laughable. In today's digital age, there's very little reason for top-notch talent to attend school in Lincoln. Except for the occasional strong season, they are destined for seasonally middle of the pack status.
They were likely in better shape in Big 12 as at least then, they were regularly seen in TX which was likely a top recruiting spot for them. Now they are just another BIG team trying to recruit there.
Nope. Hire a new AD, let him/her bring in their own head ball coach. Scott Frost, your table is ready.....
How long has Riley been NEB HC? Like two years? Hasn't even got any of his recruits to upperclass status. And new AD probably doesn't dare keep him past this year. Maybe they can use all that BTN money to pay for their buyouts.
They're probably somewhere below Wisconsin and slightly above Iowa in terms of embedded advantages and probably close to Michigan State.
They're miles and miles behind Ohio State, Penn State and Michigan in terms of embedded advantages, but just don't realize it yet.
I don't agree. Why does top-notch talent choose to attend school in Norman or Stillwater or Clemson or Tuscaloosa? Alabama had a decade plus of mediocrity before hiring Saban. Nebraska has excellent facilities and a strong fan base. With the right coach, it is possible for them to be dominant again.
I just don't see it. Not in the B1G, anyway. Like MRCat95 said, they're not OSU or Michigan by a long shot.
Please explain this comment in bold. I don't understand what you're saying here.
While the State of Nebraska is the pits for talent, I still think the right coach could win there.
The Omaha World-Herald already has its list of 5 candidates up to replace Eichorst, including Jim Phillips. I can't see him taking the job ... can I?
Having a bunch of Nebraska relatives, I think it's easy for a traditional Big 10 fan to underestimate the inherent program strengths Nebraska has. They have the budget, facilities and level of organizational commitment that is every bit as solid as PSU or Michigan, and close to that of OSU. I think that they have not done a good job of matching their coaching hires to the strengths to cure the weaknesses they have. Pellini was close, but had a temperament that kept him from truly excelling.
The points made about "why go to Lincoln?" are valid, especially on the offense side of the ball where specific skills exceed the state of Nebraska's ability to supply. When they were a national champion, their offense ran the option system, and did so with precision. They could take the best in-state athletes, build on their high school training, and build an execution juggernaut. Their offense generally had one or two very high caliber recruits and a full team of developed but not natural talent. They won based on system.
Where their "brand" could be attractive nationally is on the defensive side of the ball. The Blackshirt brand could be marketed if they brought in a defensive genius coach. Good defense can be build around good athletes, as opposed to the specialized skill set offense requires. A good defensive coach could recruit talent to Lincoln. Two of their "national" hires (Callahan and Riley) have been keyed on offensive strength and hence were poor choices. Pelini was a good pick on the defensive side but did not have the temperament (think a cross between Riley's temperament and Pelini's skill). Solich was doomed as Osborne's direct successor.
The other advantage, amazingly, is the UNL has done a good job of blending academics and football, and has given the support a good student athlete needs to become an excellent student. Nebraska can legitimately recruit a profile of student athlete that is differentiated from a Northwestern or Stanford on one side and from an Oklahoma or Mississippi on the other.
A good pick for coach really could get Nebraska right back in the thick of things, much like the hire of Harbaugh has brought Michigan back after several very bad choices.
Our last AD went on to become president of the Packers. Phillips isn't leaving for Iowa with denial syndrome.
The rule of thumb used to be that you fired your AD when/if you fired his second football coach. They're firing Eichorst during his first football coach's tenure (he didn't hire Pelini) and only in the third year of that. Their impatience is a big part of their problem.
Nebraska's glory days are far behind them. They are dismal and sad now. And this delights me tremendously. They shouldn't have fired Solich and Pelini. What coach would want to head to Lincoln for unrealistic expectations now?
Alabama's brand in college football is supreme. They occupy the region and conference that has the most rabid fan base on the planet. The population is growing. The weather is a plus for football.
Nebraska has none of these elements. I think the success seen during the Osborn era will never return.
One could say that about the entire Big Ten (and it could be true as well). It's tougher, but I think one can win at Nebraska. They have terrific facilities and fan support, and they've won several national championships in the not too distant past. The right coach can win big there.
Nebraska is not a feeder state for football talent nor is it adjacent to one...that's the difference between UNL's fortunes and the others you mentioned. I absolutely think they can be consistent winners with reliable 8-9 win seasons, but their days of being "dominant" are long gone. The sooner their fan base accepts that, the sooner they can stop paying out contracts on fired coaches and now ADs.
Their last national title pre-dates Peyton Manning's win at Tennessee...you know, the retired NFL quarterback who started playing pro ball before high school seniors were born. "Not too distant past" is relative.
I think the right coach in the right program can win and win big at a lot of places including Nebraska. However, Nebby faces the same challenges a program like Iowa does in terms of being able to dominate consistently. (Iowa was 12-0 a couple years ago by the way.) The biggest challenge is they have to go far away from home to recruit and cannot fall back to quality local recruits. Their outcomes should be lumpier year-over-year than OSU, UM or PSU (all else equal) who can fall back and recruit their local talent-rich areas and still win 9 or 10 games per year just doing that (unless they're completely incompetent coaches).
If OSU decides to take a kid outside the state of Ohio as they often do, they're telling an awfully large number of really good in-state players lining up to play for them to pound sand. That's a luxury a Nebraska doesn't have. Nebraska has to be constantly built and re-built like many other routinely good (and not so good) programs. That's fine and guy's like Tom Osborne, Barry Alvarez and even Hayden Fry have shown it can be done, but programs like OSU, UM and PSU just need a decent coach who knows how to plug and play.
Coaches at OSU, UM and PSU deserve to get fired faster and should expect to be under greater pressure.
All are good points. It would have to be a great coach, one who would draw national attention. Someone like they had in Osborne. Keep in mind, FIVE national championships in 27 years! Many others where they lost in the championship game. They were runners-up in 2001. Aside from the coaching and geographic trends, what's changed from today and 20 years ago?
Every game is on TV now, and social media, for starters. Nebraska could previously rely upon national exposure to keep standing out once they achieved success. Now everyone gets that.
I do think a great coach could do well, but look at all the power programs who've had trouble lately despite getting supposedly star coaches. I doubt they'll have the sustained level of success they used to.
Not sure that's a negative.
Haha. True enough, but it's definitely a negative to them. They care about winning, and refuse to understand the changing landscape of college football. They're stuck in time.
- Conference affiliation
- TV exposure (relative to other programs)
- Simple inevitability
- Greater overall parity
- Recruiting time table
Minnesota won 6 national championships in 26 years from 1934-1960. What changed for Minnesota from 1960 - 1980?
One advantage they have is that the kids who want a taste of the big stage will get it in Nebraska where they are THE biggest story for hundreds of miles in every direction. The whole state would view you as having celebrity status, especially in the campus community. It is a draw that doesn't compete with other schools or Pro sports teams.
For all 137 people who live within that radius.
I kid the good people of Nebraska.
I don't know what changed at Minnesota other than 1) college football went from players playing both ways to a two-platoon system during that time, and 2) weight training greatly increased the size and strength of players. Some programs were way out in front of the curve on lifting (e.g., Nebraska), while others lagged way behind (e.g., Northwestern, many others). I'd assume coaching changes were also important, with Bierman and Warmath giving way to a string of mediocre, forgettable coaches, as well as drops in overall program funding relative to programs with larger stadia and attendance.
Peyton Manning never won an NC at Tennessee. He never even beat Florida. 0-4. They won the NC the year after he left. Quarterback was Tee Martin.
There are all sorts of ways a program with the right leadership can create advantages for itself. I suspect Minnesota in 1934-1960 and Nebraska from 1970-1997 were prime examples. To a certain extent, we probably see this with Oregon, Boise State, Stanford, Wisconsin & Utah today or in recent years.
Even Alabama who had a subpar run from 1997 (After Stallings left) to 2007 (Saban's arrival) burned through 4 coaches (5 if you include Mike Price who was fired before coaching a game) during that sub-500 ten year stretch. They won 48% of their games during that stretch including forfeitures, but also won only 55% if you ignore the forfeits. Alabama has many advantages to get to 10+ wins with great consistency, but it's still probably harder there than a few other programs. Bama has just build a juggernaut program with a relentless coach who knows how to recruit and get his teams to play at a high level consistently.
Here's a link to a showing where D-1 high school football players come from.
There's never a viable reason for the following programs to be sub par as they're all the preeminent public universities in their talent-rich states (and close geographic proximity):
1) University of Texas
2) The Ohio State University
3) The University of Michigan
4) Penn State University
There's a reason for the SEC (and D-1 programs in the SEC region) to be routinely top-notch top to bottom as a conference because there's a lot of talent in their region, but there's also a lot of competition for it. Florida, Florida State, Miami, etc. Alabama, Georgia, LSU, Tennessee, etc. are all fairly geographically concentrated in a talent concentrated region.
Nebraska has a unique challenge. They are in a talent poor state surrounded by talent poor neighbors (Wyoming, South Dakota, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas and Colorado). Virtually all their players and parents have to get on an airplane to go to school or see them play. No offense to Nebraska, but all they really have to sell is tradition (which requires an inevitability of victory that is easily destroyed and hard to rebuild) and a rabid fan base. There's nothing terribly unique or attractive about Lincoln or the University itself.
In many respects, Northwestern (with the proper leadership and investment as we now seem to have) has a lot more to sell nationally than Nebraska. NU's centrally located in the B1G region next to its biggest city and much closer to talent-rich states (like Ohio). There's also a reason to cross great geographic distances (from places like Texas) to actually attend a university like NU. No offense to Iowa State, but the only reason to go there is a better program or school closer to your home didn't offer you a scholarship... Granted, Northwestern's a more niche product with a smaller recruiting base, but it could easily grow into a destination with a string of great seasons in a row blended with top notch facilities. It requires stringing together several highly successful (10+ wins with big bowls) seasons in a row with the resources at hand to create a sense of inevitable victory to get the talent flowing.
According to the link, IL produces moreD1 players than Mich? So why should Mich never be sub par? And PA about the same so why PSU?
Half of northern Ohio (including Toledo, Cleveland, etc.) is closer to Ann Arbor than Columbus (and Michigan still has a lot of good players). Penn State is close to Ohio, but also New Jersey, DC & Virginia. There's also still a lot of good players in Pennsylvania.
Flagship state public university + distance to average stud recruit = advantage. It's less about state & border. Just look at where PSU, OSU and Michigan's recruits are coming from.
Only 6 out of OSU's 21 2017 recruits are out of Ohio, but does anyone think that that's because OSU couldn't land a dozen more 4 start type guys out of the state if they wanted to? Not me.
Penn State Class:
https://bwi.rivals.com/commitments/football/2017
Ohio State Class:
https://ohiostate.rivals.com/commitments/football/2017
Michigan Class:
https://michigan.rivals.com/commitments/football/2017
The 85 scholarship limit leveled the playing field somewhat (as Gary Barnett said when he took a chance on NU). Before that, I remember Keith Byars as a 4th STRING running back as an OSU soph when they were crushing us. I recall losing at Nebraska 49-0 when it seemed like they had more than 100 players in uniform in the 70s (they had a big walk-on program) and wondering if we could ever compete. One year after we won at Pitt, Johnny Majors transformed that team with a 70-some player frosh class that included Tony Dorsett and they beat us at Dyche 28-21.
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