yes I knew that. My family member knows Frank and his wife very well and they have stayed in contact with him. Frank still viewed SP as the unqualified never played sports college intern SID assistant and unfortunately Tom didn't ask Frank before he recommended SP for the AD job. You have to listen to your boss whether you like it or not. It wasn't just SP that wanted Frank gone. SP got some pretty intense pressure during and after that 7 win year and then it escalated after some of the Pelini bros. issues. Some of the boosters of substance were not in Frank's corner. Of course the ones that wanted him gone got very quiet when SP bungled the new hire.
Frank Solich
- Thread starter RealTucoSalamanca
- Start date
No No No No no no no...
Should have hired a better successor. Frank was driving recruiting, and the program, into the gutter.
Took us till now to find the right fit at HC. GBR
Frank may have been gone regardless as you say. That said, Bo made no bones about his disdain for recruiting and SP knew it. I still think Frank could have saved his job with the right hires and an increased emphasis on recruiting. SP got Tom's recommendation for AD in part because of the job he did as a recruiting coordinator for him. Recruiting was very important to SP. In part that helped lead to Callahan's failure. SP hand picked some of those defensive assistants for BC based entirely on their recruiting reputation. Frank was falling behind especially on offensive recruiting and it drove SP crazy. That is where SP got the gravitate to mediocrity comment. It was about recruiting IMO and in that idea he was right. Bo with Carl as baggage really in hindsight was not a good hire regardless.
When he was a grad assistant on Frank's staff. It ended up costing us a future NFL pro bowl d lineman if I recall correctly. Somebody on here remembers the details. It was a HuskerPoly player and IRC the player's cousin was a nationally top rated DT recruit who went elsewhere after Carl banged his cousin's wife. That was another straw on the camel's back for why SP canned Frank. It's one of the reasons I still can't believe that Tom hired Bo and allowed him to bring Carl back.
Are you sure it wasn’t a booster’s wife? I remember hearing something about that.
I am positive. The booster's wife was when he worked for Bo. Who knows, Carl probably bagged a booster's wife when he was a GA too.
I'm talking about when he was a GA on Frank's staff. The booster's (actually it was the booster's son's} wife was when he was the DC for Bo.
Carl is one ugly dude. It’s hard to believe that any woman in her right mind, let alone a young married woman, would want to sleep with him.
I suspect large amounts of alcohol at the very least were involved. Carl was at a charity fundraiser near where I lived and got obscenely drunk. He proceeded to hit on every waitress from 15 to 50 and nearly got his *** thrown out of the restaurant....at a charity dinner for a youth group......as a representative of Husker football.
Can't say that I am an expert on the matter. That's why they pay someone way more than I to play AD. However, I can see in hindsight what was painfully obvious by 2002. I get it that Callahan didn't work out. That's the risk you take when you change coaches. Would I do it again? Yes. Again, hindsight, I think that Osborne did the program a disservice by not allowing the AD do a proper coach search. I'm sure others knew right away that Solich was not the one for the job.
I think Solich could have worked but he had to accept some advice and been given more time. I don't know that Frank realized that he had to change the way he recruited. Bo wasn't the answer. I know for a fact that Tom gave him some play call suggestions from his box in at least one game and Frank wouldn't run them. I don't know if they were in Frank's playbook or not. I also know that the play call that won us that rain soaked game at Missouri (Bo's tenure?) was a suggestion from Tom as he watched what their secondary was doing.
I’ll take your word for it. He’s lucky the player didn’t kill him.
I don't think Solich was an X's and O's man like TO. He just wasn't going to out coach anyone. He had the dream machine. Maybe if '01 Crouch played on '99 and that monster D maybe Solich gets some hardware. But that's just fantasy talk. When TO's players ran out, so did Solich. It was a painful drop off from where we had been.
he definitely was not a play caller. I think any success he's had at Ohio has largely been his OC Tim Albin. Frank probably has some better assistants at Ohio than he had at NU in some cases. Frank still got some great players. Just not nearly enough of them and his offensive recruiting was just plain bad.
You mentioned frank could saved his job, don’t you think when he hired all those new assistant that frank didn’t go after the Best But more like what he was more comfortable with, such as Barney for OC? If I remember didn’t monte kiffin recommend bozo? I always got the feeling that frank didn’t want anyone that would possibly upstage him
I don't know how Frank arrived at hiring Bo as his DC. Unfortunately what Frank really needed long term was a guy who was a proven college DC AND a great recruiter. Bo was neither of those. Barney was a better play caller than Frank but we just didn't have the horses to pull the plow on offense. Think about it. Who did we have on that roster who was a threat on offense when Frank was canned? n.o.b.o.d.y. AND the O line had just deteriorated beyond recognition.
Hmmm, then how big a joke was Clownahan & Smiling Mike with their 4-5 wins? I suppose they were great leaders of men?
They’re both embarrassments to themselves, the school and our state.
They are a shitstain on all that is Big Red.
weve been lax at who weve allowed to make this claim.
didnt know much of this was going on. it oddly makes sense now - mostly thought it was just poor mgmt or peter principle, but the unsavory aspects, if true, really help put the most of these last 20 years into perspective. surprised some the results werent worse.
heres to the future...
You seem to be saying that Frank could have worked out if only he had been a lot better at every single aspect of the job.
It’s hard to argue with that.
Good post. I will say though that I think Bo getting fired had more to do with his abrasive personality & poor PR skills clashing with the sensitivities of the administration at that time. And indeed, there is something to be said for doing things with class. It should buy you an extra year. I remember that point being made after Howard Schnellenberger resigned after one year at OU. If you act like a horses ***, you get a shorter leash.
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It also didn’t help that Bo and staff had pissed off some boosters too. When your assistants bring their plane back looking like the next morning scene from The Hangover, boosters will not be too happy.
Good point. Man...Crouch was on another level and I didn’t mean to take that away from Solich. I just think that Crouch really covered up a lot of things that were issues, with recruiting being number one. If he were able to sign Carl Crawford would the train have kept rolling?
He might have stepped down anyway. Most people don't know how serious the health issue Tom had that last season was. He easily could have died. Same for Frazier. Frazier took an enormous risk by playing in that bowl game.
While it would have been great to see Carl Crawford in a Husker uniform, it's hard to envision him changing the trajectory of the program without better across-the-board offensive offensive talent and scheme which Solich would have had to prove he could develop. By the end of Frank's tenure, the offense had morphed into something a far cry from the triple option Osborne had mastered and assumably envisioned NU continuing when he handed the reins to Solich. In Frank's last 2 years, the offense basically consisted of Jammal Lord scrambling and improvising. He averaged over 230 carries per year over those 2 years - that is more than Crouch, who was a generational talent, and any of our great I-backs over the preceding 20 years had. Rozier in 82/83 was the only one with more I believe. The top RB and WR threats by 2003 were Josh Davis and Ross Pilkington, from the same Colorado high school.
Knowing how the Callahan tenure ended, it probably would have been better to see what Solich could have done to improve the offense, but that would have been a gamble as well.
Lord played with the worst RBs and worst OLine Nebraska had seen in 30 years.
You can blame solich for not recruiting those spots well...but as for riding Lord he had no choice. It was ride Lord or win 4 games.
And Tom didn't run the triple option. But I get what you're saying.
Were they bad of did frank do like Callahan and bozo and smiling mike and not make them do weight training. I always felt frank dropped the ball in that area also. Jmo but to me frank acted like it was owed to him and everything would just fall into place. Didn’t have to put much effort into it.
I think there was a lot of complacency and a lack of attention to detail. Some of the staff were more worried about chasing women other than their own wives and seeing how much they could drink than they were about football.
I have said this before and will say it again. Osborne circumventing the AD and insisting that Solich keep the staff intact were the biggest errors.
If they do the song and dance of a search, and still hire Solich, the optics would have been better. Had they let Solich keep who he wanted to keep and get rid of who he wanted to get rid of, it may have gone better from the start. But as it was, there were at least 3 coaches that were retained that were no longer in it 100%. Added to what was said earlier about the peer to supervisor change, and it was a recipe for a decline. I believe if Frank would have hired an OC and his own DC, things may have been different. I know McBride is a legend and all, but he is one of the 3 that, was what we called in the military as ROAD, retired on active duty. Then he hired Gillespie to replace him at RB coach, instead of promoting Gill to call plays or getting someone else to call plays. He wasn't a play caller.
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If they do the song and dance of a search, and still hire Solich, the optics would have been better. Had they let Solich keep who he wanted to keep and get rid of who he wanted to get rid of, it may have gone better from the start. But as it was, there were at least 3 coaches that were retained that were no longer in it 100%. Added to what was said earlier about the peer to supervisor change, and it was a recipe for a decline. I believe if Frank would have hired an OC and his own DC, things may have been different. I know McBride is a legend and all, but he is one of the 3 that, was what we called in the military as ROAD, retired on active duty. Then he hired Gillespie to replace him at RB coach, instead of promoting Gill to call plays or getting someone else to call plays. He wasn't a play caller.
off soap box
My memory is a bit fuzzy after 20 years, but at the time, I don't recall there being much public opposition or concern with the Solich hire and lack of external search. When I was a student on campus in the 80s, it was common opinion/rumor that Solich was the heir apparent, so when Osborne announced he was retiring I was much more surprised with that announcement than the one the that Solich would be the new coach. From a fan's perspective, change seemed to be the last thing needed back then, but maybe to those inside the program, i.e. Byrne, the cracks in the foundation relative to the coaching staff were becoming apparent. However, going against what Tom Osborne thought was best for NU football back in 1997 would have been very difficult and unpopular, even if it ultimately turned out that's what probably should have happened. Byrne would have faced a very tough, almost no-win decision if Osborne had not circumvented the process, right or wrong.
Of course it would have been difficult and unpopular - correct decisions are often difficult and unpopular, but still need to be made.
As for the lack of public outcry about Solich taking over: It was a done deal and people didn't want to publicly criticize Solich before he had even coached a game, but a lot of people had doubts about it being the right way to go.
And to be fair, absolutely nobody NU hired was going to keep pace with what TO had done - going 60-3 over his last five years. It's also entirely possible that Byrne might have hired someone that would have done far worse than Solich. But in the end NU got what most athletic programs get when they allow legendary coaches to hand-pick their successor - mediocre results. There are some exceptions - Judd Heathcote and Tom Izzo, for example - but they are few and far between.