Our Average Winning Percentage; or How You Can Hate Callahan and Riley Even More

[Goal-line]

"But I asked myself... what if we could rewrite history a bit? What if Steve Pederson had never gotten his grubby little hands on Nebraska football? What if Frank had a fair shot and we'd never hired the moron who let Jon Gruden pillage his Super Bowl playbook and make the Raiders look like the Keystone Kops? And actually, why stop there? What if Shawn Eichorst had stayed in Wisconsin and Mike Riley had coached some other AAFLIFUXXXLL league before heading back to Corvallis for the 42nd time?"

Lots of "what ifs" here, but good questions. Frank got a raw deal, for sure. When Pederson decided to change NU football from run orientated smash mouth football to a pass happy west coast offense, that was the turning point and demise of the Husker football dominance. We have not recovered, since.

 

[Pops]

That was then this is now

 

[DuckTownHusker]

Did you adjust the other teams by 7 years of their down years/bad coaches?





C

No, I did not take out their bad seasons. This is all pure speculation, but just assume that instead of Callahan or Riley that Frank & Bo got to coach a few extra years and won roughly 60% of their games. That seems fairly doable considering their track records.

 

[Hooked on Huskers]

............. Husker football dominance. We have not recovered, since.

Without Bo's nasty antics, he still in charge today? .705 winning percentage. I always remember 2009 Holiday bowl post game interview ...... Pelini: "Nebraska is back and we're here to stay!" in national telecast viewers.

 

[ToroRed]

Nice mathy stuff....

 

[jmatlock]

Scotty is 8-13 as Trump would say not good

 

[DuckTownHusker]

Two observations, and why it's becoming more clear to me that Frost needs at least 4-5 full years before people start demanding his head on a platter:

1. Pelini achieving the success he did is incredible:

• This is especially true after Callahan basically gutted the program.
• Yes, you can argue that guys like Suh were actually BC recruits and that Bo just reaped the rewards of BC's recruiting.
• The flip side is that Frank Solich didn't leave us without athletes on the roster. Callahan should have adapted his style of coaching to adjust for what he had, but he didn't. This isn't the NFL, where you can just "get" the players you want for your perfect scheme.

2. Frost's task is more difficult than Bo's task:

• Bo was able to get instant success in the wake of a bad coach. But (as noted above) BC actually did recruit. Mike Riley did not. At least not to Nebraska standards. Bo essentially had to overcome bad schemes/system but had good athletes at his disposal.
• Frost, meanwhile, has to overcome BOTH a bad scheme/system AND a lack of recruiting pipeline thanks to Riley.
• Further, while I don't have any evidence that Callahan wasn't a massive slacker, it's come to light recently that Riley's staff would give players time off from lifting or conditioning, etc., as a reward. There was a ho-hum-Mayberry attitude with Riley's staff that I just don't think Callahan's crew exhibited.
• Finally, adding insult to injury, Frost is STILL overcoming the shift to the Big Ten. This is where we saw Bo fall apart toward the end. We still won, but the losses got uglier. Bo was unable to make the defensive shifts to stop power ground games like Wisconsin. Riley did absolutely NOTHING to stem the tide here either, so Frost is basically walking into a locker room full of guys that were either recruited by Bo for a Big XII-style scheme or by Mike Riley for a Dancing-Bear-Do-Nothing scheme. He's overcoming the double scheme-recruiting failures of his predecessor as well as FINALLY making a conference shift that the last TWO coaches failed to adapt to. I hope that Frost is really reflective in the offseason and doesn't make that mistake for a third time.