Biggest mistake was firing Frank Solich after many top college coaches said NO to the job and hiring Bill Callahan, a universally horrific choice even then. Even people want Solich out were like WTF. Remember, Solich was 16-12 in his last 28 games. It's easy now to second guess it, but during his tenure, unprecedented or things that hadn't happened in 40+ years occurred.
@@gynandroidhead So, if you were in Nebraska's position circa 2003-04, what would you have done? I'm also wondering if Nebraska wasn't bound to decline somewhat as their peak in the 1990s was absolutely astronomical (three undefeated seasons in 1 decade, plus God knows how many league titles). Just curious. This all new to me and very interesting.
@@aaronrider4051 I've been a Husker fan for 40 years. In 2003-04, I was in favor of replacing Frank Solich, but was appalled that he wasn't able to coach the bowl game. I would've been OK if Solich got another year or if they hired Bo Pelini without having a high quality replacement. I totally agreed with Pedersen's wallowing in mediocrity comment at the time. The way he went about it and all of the other garbage he implemented, including the ties he severed were another matter as it news got out.
Well given the fact most outsider type coaches probably didn’t want the recruiting difficulties of the nu job I’d say he was the best shot they had .. plenty of bettter coaches .. some say a Mack brown after Tom but I doubt he would’ve ever came or not for long at least
@@jdvandy8528 Nebraska's problem with getting a good quality "outside" coach to potentially succeed Tom Osborne had nothing to do with recruiting, as Nebraska was one of the top programs at recruiting in the late 1990s. Their problem was that the university had rules about pay that limited Nebraska's head coach to about $250K per year in salary, when other major college programs were paying 4-10X that amount. Nobody wanted to coach for a quarter of a million at Nebraska when they could do the same job at Texas or USC and earn 1-2 million. They ironically changed the salary rules when they fired Solich so that they could lure Callahan to Lincoln. Nebraska's recruiting went into a death spiral due to a combination of the collapse of the on-field product under Callahan and major early 2000s rule changes about walk-ons being on the team, which killed Nebraska's unique system that stacked their roster with in-state walk-ons and freed up their scholarships for top-tier out-of-state recruits. That combination led to NU recruiting becoming the dumpster fire it is now, and is why the Huskers' ceiling is roughly 9-4 in an absolute best-case scenario, and is usually much lower than that.
Whoever transferred this apparently didn't bother to adjust the tracking on the VCR. Maybe people have just forgotten how that worked? Wow, K-State really did an amazing job of shutting down Eric Crouch. Dan Alexander had a big ball game , but it wasn't enough. Weather certainly didn't help any.
