[Husker] Let there be Peace on Earth, and Let it begin with me

[Alan Siporin]

On 9/14/05 5:28 PM, "Mike Jaixen" <mikejaixen at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I think the implosion is already well underway. A
> local talk show tonight was filled with Husker fans
> who are rooting for Pitt this weekend in the hope that
> it fortells the beginning of the end of this chapter
> of Nebraska football.
> 
> And before the "change backers" start pointing
> fingers, they should be reminded that they were the
> first ones to lose patience.
> 
> There is plenty of blame to go around; I'm trying to
> find out if there is any middle ground to be had here.

Let me offer some middle ground, or at least a place to gain perspective.
As a person who felt Solich should have been given another year or two, it
makes me sad to hear of people who would root against Nebraska. I'm a
Callahan fan now, though I still root for Solich, too. That doesn't seem
like a very hard proposition.

Unfortunately, this rooting against Nebraska has cut both ways. I knew a lot
of so-called fans, a few years ago, who rooted for Solich to lose in order
to speed up his firing. That always seemed so bizarre to me. If he's winning
you don't need to have him fired. But they didn't see it that way. If you
think about it, since Pederson had clearly decided to fire Solich prior to
the Colorado game that year - after all, he fired him after the Nebraska WIN
- it's reasonable (but not certain by any means) to assume that Pederson was
actually rooting for Nebraska to lose, which would have made his firing of
Solich much easier. No way of knowing what was in his head, though.

I would like people on both sides of this to consider an important
difference about patience. If you believed that Solich was ruining the
program, then you wouldn't mind a couple bad years under Callahan. In fact,
you would expect a couple bad years before the program was righted. Easy to
be patient if that's what you believe. On the other hand, if you believed
that Solich had one bad year (7-7) and maybe a couple bad recruiting years
before getting a new staff who turned it around in one year (10-3) and was
recruiting better, too, rated 14 by rivals in recruiting the day before
Solich was fired, then you don't understand why Callahan needs to get worse
for more than one year, if that, before he gets better. IN other words, you
would find it a lot more difficult to be as patient as the anti-Solich
person.

Without digressing into a rehash of which perspective is right or wrong,
just try to recognize that people who thought the program was going down the
tubes are not as bothered by losses - for now. They see it as a necessary
price to pay to right the ship. But if you are one of those folks, please
recognize that if you didn't see it that way, if you saw the Solich losses
as a blip before he got back on track, then cut those folks a little slack
if they show some impatience now as they fear the program was okay and are
nervous that it might be going down the tubes, now.

It will all work out, one way or another. Or is that won way or another? Go
Huskers. Alan Siporin