Tuesday, October 16, 2007--Andis Kaulins [10/16/2007 11:36:00 PM] - Home - About - My Book
Quo Vadis Husker Nation and the Big Red - How to Revive the tarnished University of Nebraska Cornhusker Football Program
Football sports reports everywhere are full of the University of Nebraska football tragedy - a surely well-meaning head football coach hired by a surely well-meaning athletic director who in turn was hired by a surely well-meaning university chancellor, who now has seen no other choice but to ask for that athletic director's resignation, with the head football coach's fate equally hanging by a thread under a Damocletian sword.
We find it futile to engage in discussions of personalities. What is clear is that the Chancellor of the University of Nebraska made an error in his hiring of the AD and the Athletic Director likewise erred in his hiring of a new head football coach, whose previous head coaching track record gave no convincing indication that he had the tools to succeed in putting the Nebraska football program back on top of the collegiate football pecking order.
Prior to this forseeable disaster, our urging to the University of Nebraska administration that they hire a different athletic director candidate than the man that was hired was rejected. Our initial urging to hire Urban Meyer as head coach while he was still at Bowling Green to replace an ineffective NU head coach was ignored. Our suggestion to hire Bo Pelini while he was interim head coach was not followed. This alumnus is not to blame for the present situation.
The people at the University of Nebraska have no one to blame but themselves for the tarnished situation in which they find themselves. A great number of bad executive decisions have been made over a great number of years - directly contrary to the informed and analytic advice of NU alumni such as myself.
How is one to revive the Nebraska football program to its former greatness? if at all?
Well, you have to choose the right head coach. You have to pick a PROVEN WINNER and not just someone who has coached here and there in the NFL or has "done well" at another university or college. You have to reduce your list of candidates to people who have the proven potential of winning national championships.
Such winners are rare to find and even rarer to find among such winners will be a head coach who is now willing to enter the stressful environment which has been created at the University of Nebraska in recent years.
You have to find a head coach who can bring the kind of excellence back to the Nebraska football "family" which it had under Devaney and Osborne. Such a head coach of high integrity and talent will not likely be found at another FBS (Division I-A) school, where such a coach will have no reason to switch schools, and surely not for money alone. Rather, in our view, as was done at Stanford University in the hiring of Jim Harbaugh, a man of talent, honor and specific enthusiasm will have to be found and promoted from a lesser-ranked football division, where his switch of schools will be understood and accepted as a move forward - rather than sideways. Only such forward motion can restore dignity to the University of Nebraska football program.
Here is our list of possible new head coaches for the Huskers:
- Larry Kehres, Mount Union College (Alliance, Ohio) - Kehres, now head coach and also athletic director, has the best overall won-lost record in college football with an overall record of 246-20-3 = .920. Over the last 15 seasons Kehres teams are 148 wins and only 2 losses, at a school that awards no football scholarships and never cuts a player. Kehres football teams have won 9 Division III championships in the last 14 years, all determined by a national playoff system. In six games in 2007, the defense has allowed 3 TDs and 1 field goal while averaging 60 points a game on offense, with starters often pulled out of the game after the first quarter. In the first game of the season, the Purple Raiders scored 52 points in the first quarter, an NCAA record. MORE THAN 100 Mount Union players played in the course of that game.
Kehres is probably too established at Mount Union to go anywhere else. We do not see any advantage for him to come to Nebraska and doubt that he would, even if asked.
- Mike Van Diest, Carroll College (Helena, Montana). Van Diest coached his teams to four consecutive National NAIA Championships 2001-2005, as determined by national playoffs. In seven games in 2007, the football team has not yet allowed a touchdown, posting four shutouts and allowing one field-goal each in three other games. As written at the Carrol College website: "Van Diest is a 1970 graduate of Helena High School. His career has included stops at his alma mater, the University of Wyoming, the University of Montana, the University of Massachusetts, and Big Ten representative, Northwestern University as an assistant coach. Van Diest has won titles at Montana (Big Sky Conference Champions, 1982), Wyoming (Two Western Athletic Conference Championships and one Pacific Division Championship, 1986) and now seven Frontier Conference Championships at Carroll, as well as the 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005 NAIA National Championships."
Clearly a man whose football coaching is synonymous with championships.
- Mike Sirianni, Washington & Jefferson College (Washington, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania). Sirianni is a protege of Larry Kehres at Mount Union and had a 40-7 record in four years entering the 2007 season, in which the football team is currently undefeated at 6-0 and averaging more than 47 points a game.
Sirianni has been getting better every year, applying what he learned at Mount Union.
- Chuck Martin, Grand Valley State University (Grand Rapids, Michigan). The Lakers right now have a 34-game winning streak, the longest in NCAA football at the moment. Martin has been head coach three years and won the Division II championship, determined by national playoffs, the last two years. He has not yet coached enough games to really be counted among the winningest coaches, but he was 38-3 (.926) going into the 2007 season, in which the football team is currently 6-0. Note, however, that Martin was preceded a couple years before that in the outstanding football program at Grand Valley State by head coach Brian Kelly, now at Cincinnati, who also won back-to-back national championships at Grand Valley before moving to Central Michigan, and then to Cincinnati. If one is talking about the best coaches in the FBS division, Kelly has to be regarded as being among the top ones for sure.
Chuck Martin is 38-years old and the kind of young championship-winning coach we would seek to revive the Huskers. This would probably be our first choice. But would a man of this caliber leave Grand Valley for Lincoln? That would be the question.
- Kalen DeBoer, University of Sioux Falls (Sioux Falls, South Dakota). DeBoer was 25-2 in his first two seasons as head coach. Last year, the football team won the NAIA championship, determined by national playoffs. This year the Cougars are 7-0.
Probably still too young for the Huskers.
- Bill O'Boyle, Chadron State College (Chadron, Nebraska). O'Boyle has been head coach since 2005. In his first year the football team posted a 4-6 won-loss record. In 2006 they were 12-1, losing only in the Division II semifinal playoffs. This year the Eagles are thus far 7-0.
Probably too difficult to pick a head coach from a lower-division college in the same state.
Coaches records in lower divisions than FBS (formerly Division I-A) are of course not directly comparable with FBS coaching records. Nevertheless, one should keep in mind that very successful head coach Jim Tressel of Ohio State hails from Baldwin-Wallace College, which plays in the same league as Mount Union. Among active coaches, only Larry Kehres of Mount Union has more national championships than Jim Tressel. Coincidentally, the Mount Union Purple Raiders host the Baldwin-Wallace Yellow Jackets this coming weekend, October 20, 2007 - and the outcome is really not in doubt.
Update, October 17, 2007: Li'l Red, Welcome to the Bottom 10
Writing...
""Dazed And Confused": Over the past 45 years, the Huskers have lost only three home games by more than 15 points. Li'l Red's seen two of them this season" [emphasis added],
...ESPN's David Duffey has put the Nebraska Cornhuskers (4-3) in this week's ESPN college football "Bottom 10", along with Florida International (0-6), Utah State (0-6), Colorado State (0-6), Marshall (0-6), Idaho (1-6), Northern Illinois (1-6), Iowa State (1-6), University of Louisiana (Lafayette) and University of Louisiana (Monroe) (combined record 2-11) and Syracuse (1-6), with Duke (1-6), Minnesota (1-6), NC State (1-5), Notre Dame (1-6), Rice (1-5), SMU (1-5) and Tulane (1-5) on the waiting list.
When Steve Pederson hired Bill Callahan as head football coach this was not the company to which the Huskers were aspiring. Perhaps someone should show that list to the Husker coaches and players before each of the remaining games this 2007 season.
University of Nebraska Chancellor Harvey Perlman, a law professor by profession and a former Dean of the Nebraska Law School who served as interim Chancellor in the year 2000, was hired as the Chancellor of the University of Nebraska on April 1, 2001. It was Perlman who hired Steve Pederson as athletic director in 2002, the same man he just fired in 2007, admitting that he had previously been somewhat ill-informed about the state of affairs in that department in those last five years, but pointing out that Pederson had made some solid contributions to the University of Nebraska, especially in terms of marketing and in the expansion of athletic facilities. Perhaps some good things were done. Is Callahan the next to go? Next chapter....
In what will surely be judged a smart move, Perlman - himself now surely under much greater scrutiny than formerly and under pressure to make some informed right decisions - has now hired legendary former Husker football head coach Tom Osborne ("Ozzie", now age 70) as the Cornhuskers interim athletic director to restore calm to Huskerland. Ozzie in turn has indicated that he plans to make no head football coaching changes or decisions prior to the end of this season and is quoted as saying:
""It's worth pointing out that we're 4-3. We've won more than we've lost," he said. "There are other programs -- some pretty good programs -- that haven't won more than one game. But we'd like the intensity level to pick up to what we're accustomed to."" [emphasis added]
Now that's what one might call an understatement.
The AP writes at ESPN Sports:
Callahan was not available after the team's practice to comment on Osborne's hiring.
Permalink : Andis Kaulins : 10/16/2007 11:36:00 PM
Quo Vadis Husker Nation and the Big Red - How to Revive the tarnished University of Nebraska Cornhusker Football Program
Football sports reports everywhere are full of the University of Nebraska football tragedy - a surely well-meaning head football coach hired by a surely well-meaning athletic director who in turn was hired by a surely well-meaning university chancellor, who now has seen no other choice but to ask for that athletic director's resignation, with the head football coach's fate equally hanging by a thread under a Damocletian sword.
We find it futile to engage in discussions of personalities. What is clear is that the Chancellor of the University of Nebraska made an error in his hiring of the AD and the Athletic Director likewise erred in his hiring of a new head football coach, whose previous head coaching track record gave no convincing indication that he had the tools to succeed in putting the Nebraska football program back on top of the collegiate football pecking order.
Prior to this forseeable disaster, our urging to the University of Nebraska administration that they hire a different athletic director candidate than the man that was hired was rejected. Our initial urging to hire Urban Meyer as head coach while he was still at Bowling Green to replace an ineffective NU head coach was ignored. Our suggestion to hire Bo Pelini while he was interim head coach was not followed. This alumnus is not to blame for the present situation.
The people at the University of Nebraska have no one to blame but themselves for the tarnished situation in which they find themselves. A great number of bad executive decisions have been made over a great number of years - directly contrary to the informed and analytic advice of NU alumni such as myself.
How is one to revive the Nebraska football program to its former greatness? if at all?
Well, you have to choose the right head coach. You have to pick a PROVEN WINNER and not just someone who has coached here and there in the NFL or has "done well" at another university or college. You have to reduce your list of candidates to people who have the proven potential of winning national championships.
Such winners are rare to find and even rarer to find among such winners will be a head coach who is now willing to enter the stressful environment which has been created at the University of Nebraska in recent years.
You have to find a head coach who can bring the kind of excellence back to the Nebraska football "family" which it had under Devaney and Osborne. Such a head coach of high integrity and talent will not likely be found at another FBS (Division I-A) school, where such a coach will have no reason to switch schools, and surely not for money alone. Rather, in our view, as was done at Stanford University in the hiring of Jim Harbaugh, a man of talent, honor and specific enthusiasm will have to be found and promoted from a lesser-ranked football division, where his switch of schools will be understood and accepted as a move forward - rather than sideways. Only such forward motion can restore dignity to the University of Nebraska football program.
Here is our list of possible new head coaches for the Huskers:
- Larry Kehres, Mount Union College (Alliance, Ohio) - Kehres, now head coach and also athletic director, has the best overall won-lost record in college football with an overall record of 246-20-3 = .920. Over the last 15 seasons Kehres teams are 148 wins and only 2 losses, at a school that awards no football scholarships and never cuts a player. Kehres football teams have won 9 Division III championships in the last 14 years, all determined by a national playoff system. In six games in 2007, the defense has allowed 3 TDs and 1 field goal while averaging 60 points a game on offense, with starters often pulled out of the game after the first quarter. In the first game of the season, the Purple Raiders scored 52 points in the first quarter, an NCAA record. MORE THAN 100 Mount Union players played in the course of that game.
Kehres is probably too established at Mount Union to go anywhere else. We do not see any advantage for him to come to Nebraska and doubt that he would, even if asked.
- Mike Van Diest, Carroll College (Helena, Montana). Van Diest coached his teams to four consecutive National NAIA Championships 2001-2005, as determined by national playoffs. In seven games in 2007, the football team has not yet allowed a touchdown, posting four shutouts and allowing one field-goal each in three other games. As written at the Carrol College website: "Van Diest is a 1970 graduate of Helena High School. His career has included stops at his alma mater, the University of Wyoming, the University of Montana, the University of Massachusetts, and Big Ten representative, Northwestern University as an assistant coach. Van Diest has won titles at Montana (Big Sky Conference Champions, 1982), Wyoming (Two Western Athletic Conference Championships and one Pacific Division Championship, 1986) and now seven Frontier Conference Championships at Carroll, as well as the 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005 NAIA National Championships."
Clearly a man whose football coaching is synonymous with championships.
- Mike Sirianni, Washington & Jefferson College (Washington, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania). Sirianni is a protege of Larry Kehres at Mount Union and had a 40-7 record in four years entering the 2007 season, in which the football team is currently undefeated at 6-0 and averaging more than 47 points a game.
Sirianni has been getting better every year, applying what he learned at Mount Union.
- Chuck Martin, Grand Valley State University (Grand Rapids, Michigan). The Lakers right now have a 34-game winning streak, the longest in NCAA football at the moment. Martin has been head coach three years and won the Division II championship, determined by national playoffs, the last two years. He has not yet coached enough games to really be counted among the winningest coaches, but he was 38-3 (.926) going into the 2007 season, in which the football team is currently 6-0. Note, however, that Martin was preceded a couple years before that in the outstanding football program at Grand Valley State by head coach Brian Kelly, now at Cincinnati, who also won back-to-back national championships at Grand Valley before moving to Central Michigan, and then to Cincinnati. If one is talking about the best coaches in the FBS division, Kelly has to be regarded as being among the top ones for sure.
Chuck Martin is 38-years old and the kind of young championship-winning coach we would seek to revive the Huskers. This would probably be our first choice. But would a man of this caliber leave Grand Valley for Lincoln? That would be the question.
- Kalen DeBoer, University of Sioux Falls (Sioux Falls, South Dakota). DeBoer was 25-2 in his first two seasons as head coach. Last year, the football team won the NAIA championship, determined by national playoffs. This year the Cougars are 7-0.
Probably still too young for the Huskers.
- Bill O'Boyle, Chadron State College (Chadron, Nebraska). O'Boyle has been head coach since 2005. In his first year the football team posted a 4-6 won-loss record. In 2006 they were 12-1, losing only in the Division II semifinal playoffs. This year the Eagles are thus far 7-0.
Probably too difficult to pick a head coach from a lower-division college in the same state.
Coaches records in lower divisions than FBS (formerly Division I-A) are of course not directly comparable with FBS coaching records. Nevertheless, one should keep in mind that very successful head coach Jim Tressel of Ohio State hails from Baldwin-Wallace College, which plays in the same league as Mount Union. Among active coaches, only Larry Kehres of Mount Union has more national championships than Jim Tressel. Coincidentally, the Mount Union Purple Raiders host the Baldwin-Wallace Yellow Jackets this coming weekend, October 20, 2007 - and the outcome is really not in doubt.
Update, October 17, 2007: Li'l Red, Welcome to the Bottom 10
Writing...
""Dazed And Confused": Over the past 45 years, the Huskers have lost only three home games by more than 15 points. Li'l Red's seen two of them this season" [emphasis added],
...ESPN's David Duffey has put the Nebraska Cornhuskers (4-3) in this week's ESPN college football "Bottom 10", along with Florida International (0-6), Utah State (0-6), Colorado State (0-6), Marshall (0-6), Idaho (1-6), Northern Illinois (1-6), Iowa State (1-6), University of Louisiana (Lafayette) and University of Louisiana (Monroe) (combined record 2-11) and Syracuse (1-6), with Duke (1-6), Minnesota (1-6), NC State (1-5), Notre Dame (1-6), Rice (1-5), SMU (1-5) and Tulane (1-5) on the waiting list.
When Steve Pederson hired Bill Callahan as head football coach this was not the company to which the Huskers were aspiring. Perhaps someone should show that list to the Husker coaches and players before each of the remaining games this 2007 season.
University of Nebraska Chancellor Harvey Perlman, a law professor by profession and a former Dean of the Nebraska Law School who served as interim Chancellor in the year 2000, was hired as the Chancellor of the University of Nebraska on April 1, 2001. It was Perlman who hired Steve Pederson as athletic director in 2002, the same man he just fired in 2007, admitting that he had previously been somewhat ill-informed about the state of affairs in that department in those last five years, but pointing out that Pederson had made some solid contributions to the University of Nebraska, especially in terms of marketing and in the expansion of athletic facilities. Perhaps some good things were done. Is Callahan the next to go? Next chapter....
In what will surely be judged a smart move, Perlman - himself now surely under much greater scrutiny than formerly and under pressure to make some informed right decisions - has now hired legendary former Husker football head coach Tom Osborne ("Ozzie", now age 70) as the Cornhuskers interim athletic director to restore calm to Huskerland. Ozzie in turn has indicated that he plans to make no head football coaching changes or decisions prior to the end of this season and is quoted as saying:
""It's worth pointing out that we're 4-3. We've won more than we've lost," he said. "There are other programs -- some pretty good programs -- that haven't won more than one game. But we'd like the intensity level to pick up to what we're accustomed to."" [emphasis added]
Now that's what one might call an understatement.
The AP writes at ESPN Sports:
Callahan was not available after the team's practice to comment on Osborne's hiring.
During his weekly news conference earlier in the day, Callahan said his confidence in his own abilities hasn't been shaken.
"I know in my heart of hearts I'm doing an excellent job, a good job," Callahan said.
He said his self-evaluation was based on more than the wins and losses.
"It's everything that has to do with organization, preparation, game-planning, direction of the staff, direction of the whole, entire program. I have no hesitation about that," he said. "There are so many things we've done in a positive nature. I'm confident we've done some great things here." [emphasis added]
Permalink : Andis Kaulins : 10/16/2007 11:36:00 PM
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