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Big Red Rountable: Bo Pelini aint no weeny edition

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Loyal readers of Husker blogs know that from time to time, the Husker blogosphere get’s together to have a roundtable. Here’s the newest edition.

The 2007 season finished with a disappointing 5-7 record. Very few people expected this. What went wrong?

In a nutshell, Coaching. I hate to hang an entire season on one group, but the defense was bad pretty much from game 2 of the season, and the offense went on a 4 week hiatus in the middle of the year. These coaches lost the team somewhere around the USC game, and I don’t know why. The comments after Callahan and crew were fired was very telling. Not much hand wringing or hair pulling, mostly “yeah we knew this was going to happen.” Cornhusker recruits have been much more disapointed about the coaches leaving than current players are, and that’ s a very bad sign for a coaching staff.

Bo Pelini takes over as head coach. Good move or bad?

VERY much still up in the air. I like the hire on it’s face, though anyone who reads this blog knows he wasn’t my first or second choice. Bo Pelini has been elevated to god-like status in Nebraska thanks to one good year here. Whether or not he has the stuff to coach a team like Nebraska back to the good old days is unknown at this time. I’m not pleased he’s coaching the Tigers in the title game. He comes in saying there’s a lot of work to do, and less than a week later, is announcing he’ll be dividing his time. That doesn’t sit well with me. The staff is also not getting my heart racing, but I’ll support him until he proves he can’t handle it. Players seem to love him, and effort was a big problem this season, I don’t see that being the case in 2008

Nebraska fans were divided after the last coaching change. Do you see fans finally uniting?
If the team wins, we’ll unite. Otherwise it’s okay to have differing opinions, as long as their discussed without animus. Everyone agreeing on everything is extremely overrated. People forget that much of Husker nation was excited to see Bill Callahan come in here, that didn’t work out so well.

How would you like to see Bo Pelini fill out his coaching staff? Anybody or anything in particular you are looking to see?
I would have loved to see Phil Bennett come in as DC, but apparently that’s not going to happen. I’d like to see us get a top notch runningbacks coach, but apparently that spot might be filled by Mike Grant, who was last a wide receivers coach at Southern Miss. Quite frankly, the way the staff is filling out, I’m going to need to be won over during next spring and fall. This staff doesn’t blow me away. I’m not saying it would be hard to win me over, just need to out produce this year’s staff.

What do you think the expectations are for Bo Pelini? Do you think he needs to win x amount or do x by a certain date?

Despite the 5-7 season, we’re getting a ton of talent coming back, I don’t want to set a standard for wins, but this team certainly shouldn’t be in “rebuilding” mode. Certainly a bowl game is a must, we should have been able to manage 6 wins this year, we should be able to do it next year as well. Nine wins isn’t out of the realm of possibility. Most importantly this team needs to look more enthused, and play hard on every snap.

Now that you’ve read my take check out these other Husker Blogs for theirs:
Husker Mike’s Blasphemy

Double Extra Point

Corn Nation

Midwest Coast Bias

HuskerFaithful.com

Big Red Network

Hi-Plains Drifter

Husker Guy 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 5th, 2007 at 9:42 am and is filed under Big Red Roundtable. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.