The End of an Error: Nebraska Surrenders To The Rest of the Big XII

On Thanksgiving Weekend four years ago, Steve Pederson stood in front of a statewide television audience and announced that he was ending the 42 year Devaney-Osborne-Solich era, claiming that Nebraska would not surrender the Big XII conference. Since that fateful day, Steve Pederson bungled his way through a coaching search filled with names that have since been fired or are in serious danger of being fired (or both!): Al Saunders (out as the KC Chiefs offensive coordinator and now in trouble with the Redskins), Dave Wannstedt (fired from Dolphins, and struggling at Pitt), Houston Nutt (reportedly coaching his final game at Arkansas today), and reportedly Chuck Amato (fired by North Carolina State). Oh yes, and Bill Callahan, fired by the Oakland Raiders.

Today, Nebraska took the field wearing the "Surrender White" uniform (white jersey with white pants) from the 1991 Citrus Bowl and the 2002 7-7 season. And promptly surrendered to one of the worst teams in the Big XII, the Colorado Buffaloes. Colorado only beat one Big XII North team this season: Nebraska.

Today's 65-51 football loss (yes, that's not a basketball score) finalized the second losing season for the Huskers since 1962. In Bill Callahan's four seasons at Nebraska, Nebraska has gone 5-6, 8-4, 9-5, and now 5-7. Today's game featured yet more "WTF" play-calling from Bill Callahan, as Nebraska goes into a cold and snowy Boulder and plays aerial circus with a leaky defense. Just like at Kansas, Nebraska abandoned the running game, and put the game on the shoulders of Joe Ganz. And after Ganz was injured at the end of the first half, that game plan spelled disaster for the Huskers as Ganz was erratic the rest of the game, getting picked off three times down the stretch and misfiring badly at other times. Oh yes, the CozBohl "Bend and Break" defense was successful in holding Colorado (10th worst offense in the Big XII) under 525 yards and 70 points.

Now Husker fans wait for tomorrow's meeting between Bill Callahan and athletic director Tom Osborne, widely assuming that Osborne will be dismissing Callahan. As I said yesterday at CornNation, while the meeting is tomorrow, I don't expect the dismissal to occur until Monday. Osborne won't steal attention away from tomorrow's Nebraska-Creighton basketball game in Omaha and won't make the same mistakes that Pederson made four years ago. When he acts, the players will be informed before the media is called in. (Not that the rumor mill might take hold before then...)

UPDATE: Tom Osborne has scheduled a press conference has been announced for 9:30 am this moring.

Enough has been said about Bill Callahan and Kevin Cosgrove at this point that it shouldn't be necessary to discuss them further. Hopefully we won't hear anything more about threating phone calls or any other stupidness. I don't believe that these coaches intended to have things work out this way, and the families of these coaches are going to be uprooted as they move on to other jobs. There's no need to make this any rougher than it already is.

It didn't work out. Let's all agree on that, leave it at that, and move on.