[Husker] A thought experiment on coaching changes

[Steve Reichenbach]

> Just wanted to throw this out for discussion ... I really don't have an
> agenda in asking this question.
> 
> Let's say that Callahan and staff are gone at the end of this season,
> leaving aside the mechanics that would bring that about.  The AD (whether
> Pederson or somebody new) brings in a new staff consisting of "Nebraska
> guys" (e.g., Gill, Pelini, Cotton, Marvin Sanders, Ron Brown, Scott Frost,
> etc.).  We give them 4-5 years, and we're still losing consistently to the
> Big XII elites (e.g., Oklahoma and Texas), and occasionally to the
> second-tier teams like Missouri and Kansas State.
> 
> Then what?
> 
> George

Gee, that sounds alot like Osborne's teams in the 1970s which couldn't
beat Oklahoma.  My answer is that you have to look at the possible and
be reasonable.  Nebraska is a state with a small population, which
means fewer potential in-state recruits and a smaller television and
commercial market, and with few geographical or other obvious
attractions for top out-of-state recruits.  Bluntly, it is absurd to
think that NU can be a BCS bowl team every year.  It was stupid to
attack (as fans did) and then fire (as Pederson did) a coach less than
two years from a BCS Championship game, with a 75% career winning
percentage, and a 9-3 season with a new, young, talented staff.  (It
was similarly stupid for fans to want to dump Devaney in the late 60s
or Osborne in the late 70s or early 90s, but we had wiser Athletic
Directors at those times.)

So, my answer is that if in 4-5 years we have a coaching staff (this
one or another one) that is winning consistently, but loses often to
the best teams in the country and occasionally to other teams, that
we not think it is the end of the world.  We should expect that the
coaches look hard at how beat the best teams in the country more often
and to make the changes to do that, even if they are difficult.

That said, where are we now on the scale of the possible and the
reasonable?  To me, it seems reasonable to conclude that this coaching
staff is not achieving the level of success that you describe and
moreover is not learning from their mistakes and seems unwilling to
really explore changes.  On the other hand, I think it is still
reasonable to think that they may be willing and able to make those
changes.  I think it is reasonable to think that NU can do better than
currently and that changes, perhaps big changes, are warranted to get
to the point that you ask about: losing to the best teams and
occasionally losing to second-tier teams.  Others may (and do) think
things are not as bad as all that.  The rest of the season will support
one view or the other.

To me, a reasonably high level of success, with the hope that the stars
would align (as it seemed from 1971 to 1995 and after 1997) was and
still would be a pretty good state of affairs for dear old Nebraska U.

Steve