Posted by a player I went to school with.....I agree 100% with everything he says except Jerry Kill. Adam Carriker 1 hr · I spent all day thinking about Bos firing & Im conflicted. Just a warning, this isnt short nor should it be. #BoPelini won 9 games every year the past 7 years just like Nick Saban, even though Sabans trophy case is more full. #Nebraska players love him because of his passion & honesty, but at times Pelini lacked professionalism & even dared the university to fire him. Current & recent players are upset at Bos firing, up until the latest Wisconsin game I would have been too, since then Ive been on the fence. I played for Bo my freshman year & Ive never seen a coach in my entire life get players to respond the way he did back then. But, if current players love him so much why didnt they play better against good competition year after year when theyre well aware of Bos doubters? The year I played for him we responded by going from an average defense to very good. He was also the interim head coach for our bowl game after Frank Solich was fired. A game we won 17-3. Supporting Bo in post game press conferences & on social media is great, but ultimately irrelevant. I believe a lot of the current & recent players dont know anything different than Pelini or Bill Callahan. Thats all theyve experienced as far as a college coach since high school. I not only played for Nebraska but idolized the team growing up & watched them more than all the other teams on earth combined. I dreamed of one day being a #Blackshirt as a boy. I arrived to Nebraska right after the Rose Bowl year. The level of expectation when I was growing up & when I first arrived at Nebraska are completely different than they are now for the team. I had a few conversations while I was in DC with a recent former Husker (who I wont name) & he bragged to me more than a few times about how he won 9 games while he was there & he played for a conference title. Dont get me wrong, those accomplishments as a college football player are nothing to sneeze at, but I did the same exact thing & I was mad about it at the time & it still makes me angry to this day that the most amount of wins I achieved in a season at Nebraska was actually 10 & I never won a championship. When I played for the #Huskers I never won a championship but that was always our goal, not a certain amount of wins against mostly unranked teams. This former Husker was proud of the same things that infuriated me. Another recent Husker took to social media & vented his anger about Bos firing. One of his statements said Since they wanna fire Bo, ima be one of those unrealistic fans who wants to be playing for a national championship every year. My response when I read it was, yes! Exactly! Thank you! Thats what I grew up with, being in the national title conversation every year. People might say well, times are different and with the 85 scholarship limit its impossible to do that anymore. I would beg to differ. Alabama has done it every year for almost a decade. Theyve won 3 titles in the in the past 5 years and Saban has won 4 titles in just over a decade. Something a recent former Husker believes is unrealistic, is the very thing I believe should be Nebraskas yearly goal to strive for. Another thing thats gets me is, when is it Nebraskas turn? Not that the Huskers have been bad whatsoever, but a program can go through lulls & that is normal. The past 15 years of Husker football has not met the standard set by the previous 30 years of Husker football. That being said, there have been programs who have gone from great to not so great for a time, but they eventually bounce back play for & win conference & national championships again. Programs like Florida St, Stanford, Auburn & so on etc... They may have the lull but they almost always eventually get back to national prominence. When is it Nebraskas turn? There are some programs who traditionally are powers that are struggling at the moment like Texas, Michigan & Florida. The difference between those schools & Nebraska is given enough time, I have no doubt those schools will once again be title contenders. While Nebraska is not what you might call struggling, I believe that if we were given more time under Bo we would most likely experience more 9 win seasons & unfortunately more embarrassing nationally televised games & no rings. It seems every program gets their turn at being in the national title picture except Nebraska. Just take this year for example, teams like Baylor & TCU are in the picture & theyve never been in it before. Even Mississippi St was number 1 for a while. Winning 9 games consistently is good, but when is it our turn to be in the national title conversation? When is it out turn to win a conference title? It hasnt happened since 1999. The expectations of the current players are what they are because thats the tone set by the coaching staff. Bo is unapologetic after big losses, he does not accept blame & loudly states that if they dont like it they can fire him. I believe thats because in his mind he believes constant 9 win seasons regardless of what does or doesnt happen in the other 3 or 4 games played every year should be enough. In his mind if people arent happy with that then he doesnt care. Thats the impression I get. To me this indicates he doesnt plan on changing anything. If he doesnt plan on changing then were going to keep getting the same results. The definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over & over expecting different results. I believe thats the problem with Bo. Hes fine with 9 wins, no rings & the same teams that have beaten us in the past doing the same things they did to beat us in the past again this year & seemingly every year. We have gone from physically imposing our will on opponents, to at times having other teams impose their will on us. Ive been asked several times what Nebraskas biggest win is in recent memory. The best I could come up with was beating an 8-4 Georgia team last year & beating Oklahoma in 2009 (who ended up 8-5). Bo has 7 career wins vs ranked teams. The 1994 Nebraska team beat 5 ranked teams on their way to the national title. I struggle justifying a defensive head coach whose teams more often than not are better at offense than they are at defense. I dont care if announcers on national TV say that 9 wins is the new normal at Nebraska & thats all we can expect now. They dont care about Nebraska. It doesnt matter to them if we go 9-3 or 3-9. Ive heard people say & Ive said it myself, #TomOsborne struggled for a while to win big games before he finally broke through. Thats correct, but I dont ever remember watching multiple Husker games under Osborne & being embarrassed. I remember multiple frustrations, but not multiple embarrassments like I do with Pelini. There was also never any question about how Osborne conducted himself. I am not bashing Bo whatsoever. Like I said up until the last Wisconsin game I firmly had his back. I loved when I had the opportunity to play for Bo & enjoyed it immensely. He taught me a lot. However, since Wisconsin I have been on the fence about firing Bo. I am simply explaining why I think he was fired & while I did not advocate for his firing, now that its happened I do not oppose it. Bo Pelini is unquestionably a good football coach. The problem is Nebraska isnt a good football program, its a great football program. Bo Pelini at the moment is a good football coach, not a great football coach. Thats not to say he cant be one day. Is being good however keeping us from being great? The risk in firing a good football coach is he could be replaced by a not good football coach. The last time we fired a 9 win football coach (I will never speak ill of Callahan who I played for), the following era of Husker football was very tough. We just fired an extremely good football coach who struggles in big games & in exuding professionalism on a consistent basis. He was fired because Nebraska expects competitive greatness & class. Its a risky move. Its a move Im conflicted about. Its a move at one time I would not have supported. Its a move I have no problem with now. as long as they already have a few good coaches in mind. I am a conservative person, but Id rather reach for the stars than play it safe. I wish Bo Pelini all the best & I have no doubt he will be hired somewhere else quickly & will have good success there too. As far as whats next for Nebraska, Ive spent most of my day reacting to the firing of a coach I once played for. But looking ahead, Ive been asked who I think might be good for our next head coach. Without thinking about that a whole lot yet, 2 names popped right in my head with previous Nebraska ties. Nebraska ties are not imperative but should be taken into consideration. The past 2 Husker head coaches I dont believed fully understood what Nebraska has been & can be once again. First is Scott Frost, former Husker national championship winning quarterback & offensive coordinator of the dynamic Oregon offense. To play devils advocate, Im not a full believer just yet in the Oregon offense because of the way it affects the entire team. They try to run a play every 12-18 seconds, the average team takes twice that long to run a play. This forces Oregons (possibly Nebraskas) defense to be on the field 35-40 minutes a game. Thats tough if your defense is facing say, Nick Saban & Alabama for the national title. That being said, theyve proven the offense is very good in Oregon & again with Chip Kelly in Philadelphia. I just havent bought into it 100% yet. The other name in my head is Craig Bohl. I also played for Craig Bohl. He played for Nebraska in the late 70s. He was an assistant coach for the Huskers for 8 years & spent the last 3 of those years as the defensive coordinator. He was fired after the 2002 season when his defenses struggled. He took a job at North Dakota State & surprised me with the dominating dynasty he created there. He won 3 straight national championships using the good old fashioned power running game he learned in Lincoln. He is currently the head coach at Wyoming. One last name to throw out there is Jerry Krill, the Minnesota head coach. Hes beaten us 2 years in a year & had good success utilizing the power running game. He doesnt have the facilities we do & has an even tougher location to recruit to than Nebraska. I dont know much else about him, but what I do know is he turned Minnesota around & he continues to do more with less. This was lengthy because Nebraska football means so much to me. Like I said, I was born & raised bleeding Husker red. I shed blood sweat & tears in Lincoln fulfilling my life long dream of playing football for the university of Nebraska as a Blackshirt. If someday my son ever wants to play there, Id love it if he followed in his fathers foot steps. I want to make sure we honor Huskers of the past, proudly represent Nebraska in the present & set up the future generations of Huskers whether it be fans or players to proudly carry on the tradition of one of the greatest college football programs in the nation. #GBR
Posted on: Mon, 01 Dec 2014 02:41:44 +0000
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