So, Diaco was single-handedly destroying the program, the guy who insisted on hiring him was gone, there were more than two months left in the season, but there wasn't any point in the head coach doing anything about it? Got it.
Matt Rhule was the best available hire at the time
- Thread starter moralvictories
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I think Eichorst also made everyone read that stupid book "Energy Vampire" or "Energy Bus", something like that. You basically know you have a dude in charge that doesn't know what they are doing when they start assigning book reports.
I liked Riley, not the wins/losses, but just him as a person. But who cares about that anyway. I would rather he had been an ******* but won a lot.
I LOVED the husker fans that had no idea who he was...that was my first glimpse that a lot of fans don't really watch CFB or know anything about it.
I also loved the the Husker fans that were like "Just wait until he gets to use the resources at NU, that will change everything!"
Some fans acted like the Oregon State team worked out in an old janitors closet sharing a bowflex machine.
I liked Riley, not the wins/losses, but just him as a person. But who cares about that anyway. I would rather he had been an ******* but won a lot.
I LOVED the husker fans that had no idea who he was...that was my first glimpse that a lot of fans don't really watch CFB or know anything about it.
I also loved the the Husker fans that were like "Just wait until he gets to use the resources at NU, that will change everything!"
Some fans acted like the Oregon State team worked out in an old janitors closet sharing a bowflex machine.
Coaches can be sooooo ******* stubborn with stuff. They act like it would be impossible to make a change during the season, like the players would be totally ******* lost.
In Smilin' Mike's case, I guess he was smarter than I'm giving him credit for. When you can stand and watch your season go completely down the toilet, collect your golden parachute, and have people nearly a decade later claim it was entirely someone else's fault, that's a pretty sweet plan.
Dude was about to get canned at Oregon State and Shawn offered him a freaking winning lotto ticket. Totally amazing.
The guy has been average at his job for 30+ years and somehow (like that iowa coach) kept getting extensions and more money.
Mike Riley was likely a lame duck coach before Eichorst hired him.
Billy Devaney was still there, you under estimate the amount of meddling in the program, Diaco was a Devaney thing.
"That’s because Devaney said he spent time doing background work on potential replacements.
“It was an extremely tough decision but, once it was made, it was, OK, let’s move on this,” Devaney said. “Let’s get a list.”“I started making calls, talking to people who had touched Diaco during his career,” Devaney said. “And it was constant — the same picture kept coming back again and again. People I really trust in the business — that are in the NFL, that knew him at Notre Dame or while he was at Connecticut — it kept coming back: This guy’s really, really good.”
“We kicked around a couple of other candidates, but it quickly became apparent — this is the guy,” Devaney said. “Let’s move on and not risk losing him to someone else.”"
And Devaney didn't know college football at all when Eichorst made the Executive Director position.
"Lesson No. 1: How a team like NU puts together its recruiting board. Devaney remembered asking Riley why Nebraska didn’t just put all the top players in the nation at the top of the board, like an NFL draft board.
“And Mike goes, ‘They’re picking us. We’re not picking them. We pick them as guys we like, but, at the end of the day, we’re not drafting them,’ ” Devaney recalled. “And he’s right. The kids hold the power.”
Lesson No. 2: The NCAA rulebook: “I thought the NFL’s collective bargaining agreement was really detailed and cumbersome. That pales in comparison to these NCAA rules,” Devaney said. “It blows my mind, what you can and can’t do.”
Case in point: A parent recently sent him a nice note. He wanted to respond to the prospect and his parents, but first, he went to McShane: Can I do this?"
Mike was never going to be great here in my opinion but he never was left alone to try.
"When Shawn Eichorst took over as Nebraska’s athletic director in January 2013, he sent a gift to his 300 employees.
It was a book called “The Energy Bus.”
For those who want any real idea what path he’ll take to replace fired Husker football coach Bo Pelini, you had better check out this epistle, with the subtitle “10 Rules to Fuel Your Life, Work and Team With Positive Energy.”
The author of that book, Jon Gordon, spoke to Nebraska student-athletes and to Husker coaches and staff in January 2014 and again in September. He is scheduled to continue work with Associate A.D. Keith Zimmer’s Life Skills Program in the future.
When Gordon comes to visit Nebraska, he walks under a sign into Eichorst’s office that reads: No Energy Vampires."
Shawn Eichorst is the biggest toolbag in Nebraska history, I ******* hate that guy. I met him at the Spring Luncheon and shook hands with him, I could tell from his soulless Ginger eyes that he was a POS.
Steve Pederson has entered the chat.
Kidding (mostly). But yeah, talk about top two POS Athletic Directors.
I get what you're saying, but once Eichorst was fired, everybody knew Riley was going to be canned. Even Riley knew that.
People will say "well he should have still fought". Yeah, that would be nice, but it wasn't going to happen. Very few of us here would continue to work their butt's off if they knew they'd be fired in 2 months regardless of their efforts.
Unrelated to Riley's success or lack thereof, Eichorst ended Black Friday games and the Iowa rivalry, that's why we would have been playing Minnesota the last game of the year a couple years, he had to immediately backtrack after the severe backlash and try to reschedule the games.
Ehh, Iowa isn't a real rivalry anyway. And it really wasn't back then. He was just being realistic. The backlash was fans clinging to something they wish would exist in the B1G that never did. And still doesn't really. I hate him for a lot of things, but that's really far down the list.
Thank you!!!
I was bored one day and tweeted at that dorky author of the Energy Bus and I told him he ruined the Husker program! Haha
He started to reply to me a few times and it was clearly just me goofing on him and he didn't realize that...and tried to defend his lame book and said that he also worked with Clemson football and blah blah blah...then he deleted all the tweets when he realized that I was just ******* with him for writing a lame book about vampires.
Basically, it was just two dorks (me and him) tweeting at each other for 20 minutes.
This is probably pretty true.
I have even had seasons where we sucked and there would be 2-3 games left or 2-3 weeks left...and it is sort of just on cruise control at that point.
Iowa is only a rival for iowa fans...but then they also think they are rivals with Wisconsin and Miiny and Illinois and Indiana and so on...They are weird.
yeah, nil wore klieman's *** out. brought him to tears at the end. and he said "enough!" so would it have been different in lincoln, maybe. my personal belief is that klieman could not handle the lack of player and fan loyalty more than anything else. media down here is the shiz.
k-state runs a tight, profitable ship. it's going to be interesting to see how competitive or not the cats are going forward. lots of rumblings about mbb and wbb losing talent supposedly to support collin klein's football operations.
You can view it any way you like. It’s pretty clear that your anger paints things in only one light. I thought his statement was out of left field and poorly made. It sounds like a talking point given to him by Tom. Hell, one could say Tom fired Callahan too hastily. It’s pretty obvious that was a vindictive move.
Has nothing to do with my "anger"...it's called common sense. Of course there's some subjectivity to it and if you want to split hairs (which I know you love to do), there is probably a small argument that can be made for why we fired all of them too early. But, by and large, the vast majority of people would agree that we gave all of them more than enough time and the totality of the circumstances in each case warranted the firings.
Therefor, by and large, anyone trying to push the whole "NU fires coaches too quickly, we need to give coaches more time, blah, blah, blah" narrative is just reaching for excuses. Being homers. Being sunshine pumpers. Being Rhule apologists. That includes, and in this case, especially includes, the AD directly responsible for giving him an unwarranted extension. Which again, by and large, the vast majority of people would agree was a horrible deal.