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The Sobering Facts

treeplanter said:
For what it's worth, the conclusion that I have drawn is this:

We threw away 42 years of history, tradition, stability, continuity, and culture
We dumped the very identity of the program

And the impetus?

A single .500 season sandwiched in between 2 ugly losses that derailed a national championship and 3 ugly losses that accompanied yet another double digit win season

It's mind blowing that a single blip - especially one that, in retrospect, hardly seems that bad - led to such a massive over reaction
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It really is mind blowing how hard people fought to fire two different 9-10 win coaches. People actually thought that if Bo was winning 9-10 games per year, you could fire him and the next guy would immediately and seamlessly turn that into 11+ wins per year. Looking back, it all seems so surreal.

It was a delusion incubated by the success of the program in the 1990’s. Now that the program has been successfully brought to its knees, it may finally be ready for the hard work and patience required for a rebuild instead of the “fire and hope” philosophy over the last two decades.
 

Captkenny said:
It really is mind blowing how hard people fought to fire two different 9-10 win coaches. People actually thought that if Bo was winning 9-10 games per year, you could fire him and the next guy would immediately and seamlessly turn that into 11+ wins per year. Looking back, it all seems so surreal.
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I was told repeatedly a trained monkey could win at Bo’s level.
 
It certainly didn't help that the Big Ten started to get a lot better right around the time Bo was fired - remember Urban Meyer sneering at his colleague's recruiting? - but you have to wonder what was going on in Eichorst's head to fire a perennial 9-10 win coach and then hire a career .500 coach. Did he really think he'd do better? Eichorst went from being the highest paid AD in the country to someone no one will hire as an AD since.
 
BleedinHuskerRed said:
It’s a nice breakdown of data, but I don’t really think there’s a conclusion to draw. Since 2003 we haven’t done well? I feel like that’s already well established.
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It's well established sure. But I've never seen it like that. UGH!
 







Captkenny said:
It really is mind blowing how hard people fought to fire two different 9-10 win coaches. People actually thought that if Bo was winning 9-10 games per year, you could fire him and the next guy would immediately and seamlessly turn that into 11+ wins per year. Looking back, it all seems so surreal.

It was a delusion incubated by the success of the program in the 1990’s. Now that the program has been successfully brought to its knees, it may finally be ready for the hard work and patience required for a rebuild instead of the “fire and hope” philosophy over the last two decades.
Click to expand...
Let's not forget, there were a lot of records broken in Solich's 7-7 year: First time since '63 NU went unranked. First time since '68 NU had a losing record in conference play. Others I don't recall at this time. Rumors of off-the-field issues. I'm not saying here that Solich should have been fired, especially after he revamped his staff, but there was a lot of fodder for his dismissal. On top of that, he was not a great communicator. If he had been half as good as Rhule, he might have had a chance to keep his job. His worst offense was he followed a legend.

Yeah, Bo won games, but he was an on-the-field embarassment. If you're going to make donors cringe and cop a 'tude with your boss, you're going to have a tough time staying employed. Bo was his own worst enemy.
 
My question is, after Bo, or even ever since TO, who but MR had a proven track record?
Answer is none of the above. Going cheap or glitzy with BC didn't work.
Look no further than the SEC and its often merry go round of coaching hires.
A coach fits or he doesn't. Unknowns need not apply. Unless they come highly recommended, which was Frank, BC and Bo. All three had potential, but two of them weren't good fits.
MR embracing our fits is a tell into who he is, and while Bo more or less did so as well, it was a ceiling and a personality non fit.
Scoreboard, personality both are crucial
 
We were unique in the Osborne years- offensively, abitlity to recruit partial qualifiers, easier schedule in the Big 8, great coach. Things just got harder in better conferences, and we didn't adjust to recruiting efforts, nor did we try to replace a great coach with another great coach. Hell, as good as Bo was as a coach he was not a great recruiter. Throw in leadership issues at UN: and the decline was foreseeable. And of course we kept hiring unproven coaches and tried to save money.

With the hiring of Matt Rhule and spending money on the program, I am optimistic we will be back as one of the big players.
 



treeplanter said:
For what it's worth, the conclusion that I have drawn is this:

We threw away 42 years of history, tradition, stability, continuity, and culture
We dumped the very identity of the program

And the impetus?

A single .500 season sandwiched in between 2 ugly losses that derailed a national championship and 3 ugly losses that accompanied yet another double digit win season

It's mind blowing that a single blip - especially one that, in retrospect, hardly seems that bad - led to such a massive over reaction
Click to expand...
A large fraction of the fan base was significantly entitled. Turns out that after 5 years of excellence (60-3), “pretty good” (10-3) looks like it sucks. Now that we’ve experienced truly sucking, 10-3 looks really good.
 

Bigger Ed said:
Let's not forget, there were a lot of records broken in Solich's 7-7 year: First time since '63 NU went unranked. First time since '68 NU had a losing record in conference play. Others I don't recall at this time. Rumors of off-the-field issues. I'm not saying here that Solich should have been fired, especially after he revamped his staff, but there was a lot of fodder for his dismissal. On top of that, he was not a great communicator. If he had been half as good as Rhule, he might have had a chance to keep his job. His worst offense was he followed a legend.

Yeah, Bo won games, but he was an on-the-field embarassment. If you're going to make donors cringe and cop a 'tude with your boss, you're going to have a tough time staying employed. Bo was his own worst enemy.
Click to expand...
If the AD had fired Bo and simply said the program was going to go in a different direction, I could fully agree with what you are saying. However, the arguments made for his firing here on HMax and other social media were things like: any coach can win 9 games, and 9 games was not significant because we played one more game per season than during Osborne’s tenure. It was definitely a paradigm shift after many years of one or two losses per game and several national title runs. Then, when the AD explained his rationale for firing Bo, it was about wins and losses and not about moving in another direction or other euphemisms for Bo’s antics. And let’s not forget the reality, if Bo was winning all his games, he would have been characterized as a fiery coach and his negative attributes would have been spun as positives.

So, I understand your point and agree that Bo’s personality didn’t help him. But the arguments made contemporaneously for his firing was his lack of ability to win “important” games. The personality thing was just as additional motivator since it’s easier to fire someone who is acting like a jerk.

(Tom Osborne used to point out that they are ALL important games, by the way.)
 
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