We welcomed Matt Rhule as Nebraska’s newest head football coach earlier this week with noted pomp and circumstance.
Here’s a sobering fact.
Since late November 2003, Rhule is now NU’s seventh head football coach.
Frank Solich, Bill Callahan, Bo Pelini, Mike Riley, Scott Frost, Mickey Joseph, and now Rhule.
The firings have happened so often I’ve turned vanilla.
My attitude has evolved from optimism to tentative.
Firings no longer bother me.
My emotions are placid.
How much have those emotions changed in 19 years?
Here’s how I felt 19 years ago today, Sunday, November 30, 2003.
The following is as I shared in my book, Memory Stadium, which was published in 2008.
On Friday, November 28, 2003, Nebraska played solid football and beat Colorado in Boulder, 31-22, to claim a 9-3 regular season record. My hatred toward Colorado, its fans, and their media, plus my concern over the rumors that Solich was going to be let go if NU lost, caused me to lose my composure several times during the game. I screamed, yelled, cursed, cheered, and cursed at the television in my KCOW office the entire afternoon.
After Nebraska won the game, I reacted as I had as a 12-year-old when Nebraska beat Oklahoma in the 1971 Game of the Century.
But my exuberance crashed like the 1929 stock market 30 hours later when ESPN reported Solich was fired after winning “only” 75 percent of his games. Solich had won 58 games and lost 19 during his six years at the helm, but apparently, Steve Pederson felt Solich’s record resembled cow dung stuck to his (Pederson’s) precious red and white tuxedo.
The next day, Pederson held a press conference and delivered his now infamous “I refuse to let this program gravitate to mediocrity” speech.
The firing of Solich was more than a mere disappointment to me. The plain truth: It infuriated me.
The Pederson news conference reeked of arrogance, and Pederson showed little, if any, respect for Frank Solich’s accomplishments.
Pederson’s mediocrity comment also was a slap in the face to the assistant coaches and every player who wore the scarlet and cream between 1998 and 2003, and I resented it.
I also felt Solich’s firing was a symptom of what is generally wrong with college athletics. No longer was Nebraska football entertainment; it was officially big business. I decided then and there that I would not be making any financial contributions to the proposed North Stadium expansion project until Steve Pederson was no longer the athletic director. His handling of the Solich firing revealed what I believed to be his true colors, and I was confident Pederson would be gone within five years.
Had it really come to this? If NU failed to play in a corporate-sponsored conference championship game, would the season be considered a failure? Was NU football now on the same level as the Kansas City Chiefs or the Denver Broncos?
I wish Solich had been allowed more time to bring the program to the level he achieved in 1999. He needed at least two more years. Solich’s 2003 team included ten starters who were freshmen or sophomores. Frank had hired new defensive and offensive coordinators in Bo Pelini and Barney Cotton, and new schemes were being implemented. Now it was a matter of recruiting better personnel.
Bob Devaney’s program took a dip in 1967 and 1968 (even though the 1967 team’s four losses were only by a total of 25 points, or 5.2 points a game), and Devaney rebounded and led the Cornhuskers to two national championships.
Tom Osborne’s 1990 Cornhuskers lost three of their last four, including a 35-point loss at Oklahoma and a 24-point loss to Georgia Tech, but then Tom’s teams went on to win or tie for the conference championship six of the next seven years.
My DNA – which is loaded with nostalgia – also aided in my disappointment with Solich’s dismissal.
Solich was a great Cornhusker who dated back to 1962 when he was a member of Bob Devaney’s first freshmen team. Solich became one of Devaney’s finest players in 1963, 1964, and 1965. As a Cornhusker fullback, Solich could do it all. He caught a 45-yard TD pass from Fred Duda to spark a 26-21 come-from-behind victory at Minnesota in 1964; he returned a kickoff 89 yards for a touchdown versus Oklahoma State in 1964; he rushed for 204 yards against Air Force in 1965; he served as the team’s co-captain in 1965; and on September 20, 1965, Solich became the first Big Red player ever to be featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated.
A few months after Solich was fired, a wrecking ball began destroying Schulte Fieldhouse to make way for the new $50 million athletic complex. Schulte was a red brick building I had admired hundreds of times from Grandpa Henry Horn’s front porch at 1052 Y Street, and the building I had practiced softball in dozens of times while I was a university student.
My dad sent me a Lincoln Journal-Star color photo of the destruction.
Brick by brick, Schulte Fieldhouse, and all its’ magnificent history, was dying a slow death.
Staring at the photo for several minutes confirmed what I already knew: If my Nebraska football spirit wasn’t dying, it was certainly ailing.