You heard it hear first. Graduate of the Saban rehab school.
Billo to Nebraska.
- Thread starter Thus Spoke Mainer
- Start date
He's not the type of recruiter Nebraska needs to be relevant again.
It will be all peaches and cream between BOB and that donor/alumni group.
How long till there would be Pelini like profanity laced tapes leaked?
I don't get the sense that he has much of an appetite for rabid fanbases and demanding donors. I don't blame him; I would probably feel the same way. The problem is that the better college jobs all come complete with rabid fanbases and demanding donors. To your point, if he does decide to bite the bullet and take a college HC job, I don't think it would be Nebraska. The expectations are too be like Alabama, but the resources are nowhere near Alabama's.
Don't know about his recruiting skills, but anyone going to Nebraska will have to work hard in recruiting. Their HS football and 300 mile radius is extremely weak and their Texas pipeline - from their Big 8 days - has dried up. That's one reason Urban scumbag Meyer - and other strong recruiters won't give them a look
People forget he took the PSU job as a last resort when NE made a super bowl run and no NFL HC jobs were available. Joyner and Ira had conducted their magical mystery tour of "home run" college coaches and came up empty. Jaws put Ira on the trail of NFL coordinators. It was a marriage of convenience and desperation.
Without partial qualifiers, Nebraska recruiting has and will be difficult. Had they maintained a semblance of dominance, recruiting would have been better. They should not have fired Solich
Exactly. Recruiting was not his strong suit and that will be critical at Nebraska.
As I have said here before, O’Brien was using PSU as a stepping stone for an NFL head coaching job from the minute he stepped on campus. I never begrudged him for that but never quite understood the love affair many who post on here have for him. The fact of the matter is that O’Brien had better players to work with during his 2 years here (Paterno holdovers) than Franklin did his first 2 years because years 3 and 4 were always going to be the toughest since Paterno’s players would be gone and the full brunt of the scholarship limitations would be felt. Having said that if Nebraska or any other college wants to give him a head coaching job, I genuinely wish him well.
Because he came here not even knowing how bad sanctions would be. Because he came here when no one else of any stature would. Because he was able to keep most of the recruits in a good class committed. Because he was able to weather a tsunami of bad press and constant attacks and keep himself, the staff, and the team focused on the job at hand. Because he managed to keep most guys from leaving after the insane sanctions were announced. Because he worked with the seniors to rally the team to a record far better than any one ....ANY ONE.....though possible. Because he limited damage enough that the program was able to quickly rebound. Because he did all this in spite a shitpile of a board of trustees that not only did not support the program but attacked it.
And that’s not enough for you?
Well, I think you are over exaggerating a lot of what BOB did relative to the players in keeping the team together, but whatever. But once the season started and with the roster we had, I don’t think expecting a decent W-L records was anything surprising. Honestly, if anything I feel like we underperformed relative to our talent and it could have been a 9-3 or 10-2 team but given the external factors and difficulty I wouldn’t quibble.
but the idea that 8-4 was somehow some massive unexpected triumph seems absolutely bizarre to me.
Yet now we think 11-11 the past 2 years was fine? Where's the consistency?
O'Brien was good for us and we were good for O'Brien. It was a perfect scenario for a brief period time. Both parties got what they wanted out of it.
We had twelve kids leave the team. Including returning starters at running back, wide receiver, punter. A few recruits decomitted. How many scholarship players did we have that season? And in first half of first game we lost two more running backs, leaving us with the fourth string back.
i agree with both...BOB had both his up and down sides...things could have gone much worse without someone of his composure. For the most part, he held his own under pressure and rallied the team. He brought in NFL-level coaches..might have been a little better if he paid attention to the defensive side, and not chased away some good coaches on that side of the ball in favor of others with neither the track record or results. Hiring his former college coach as a 'quality consultant' was a head scratcher. His tenure began the arms race of regular pleas that 'we need better facilities to compete'...I'm so glad we moved away from the football-first philosophy of the JoePa era...ha ha. One last positive, under BOB and Franklin, the players have been pretty much model students and citizens....Again, a mixed bag, If we ever figure out the offensive line, and the defense trends how it seems, we should be pretty good.
Bo Bellini never won less than 8 games a year. The guy who fired him is a genuine spit head. Fans have gotten what they deserve for forcing Bo out.
I don't know if was a last resort, but I suspect he viewed it as a no lose situation and stepping stone. If the team didn't perform nobody would have been surprised given the crap going on here at the time. If the team did ok, O'Brien would look like a genius. Look at the credit he receives for going 8-4 and 7-5. By most PSU standards that's relatively pedestrian. People here want Franklin fired with performance like that. O'Brien parlayed it into an NFL head coaching job. I think that was his plan all along and there was very little risk for him because he could always blame the Sandusky fallout if the team did poorly, and everyone would have given him a pass.
How so with recruiting? He only recruited at PSU when the most highly talked about sports scandal in human history occurred and most people basically blacklisted PSU and there was a genuine hatred of PSU across much of the country. His recruiting considering the circumstances was incredible. This whole thing about BOB not recruiting well and hating recruiting grew a life of it's own which is just not true.
I don’t know if he liked recruiting or not, but to imply he wasn’t good at it is not true . He had a top 10 class lined up until the actual sanctions were announced
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I don't think that BOB liked the recruiting part of the job and with the portal I think he would hate it. And he absolutely didn't like hearing from the alumni.
Not liking something and not being good at it are two different things. In addition, there are aspects of my job that I don't like, doesn't mean I quit and find another job. Most people have parts of their job they don't like. He was also working at a job after Paterno left which was a crazy difficult position to be in combine with the scandal. So if he goes to a more stable situation, some of those issues go away. Then take into account NIL which means you can sort of buy transfers and recruits which is something I could see BOB thinking is good as he can go out and get some high end transfers every year through a combination of being able to coach guys up and NIL money.
He lost 2 games he had no business losing. He finished 8-4 then 7-5 for a total of 15-9 and that is the very definition of mediocre. Franklin has struggled lately going just 13-11 but overall at 70-33 Franklin has been a massive upgrade over O'Brien
PSU search committee turned to NFL Coordinators as candidates (as last resort). Ira and Judas promised a "home run" hire. No brand college coach was interested. Jaws advised Ira to look to the NFL. BOB was out of work as McDaniel was rehired as NE offensive coordinator. BOB used PSU and it took Ira and Judas off the hook.
BOB did a pretty good job. But he never planned to make PSU more than a pit stop.
He let his players and the University down, leaving the program high and dry still under the cloak of sanctions, and he set the offensive line position back at least 5 or 6 years bt completely ignoring the recruitment of such players. Frankly it is somewhat surprising that Franklin was able to do what HE HAS done so far.
It is surprising that both did do well under the circumstances.
you are just wrong. BOB had 15 schoolies total to give, you remember the largest sanctions every handed down by the NCAA had something to do with recruiting. most high schools kids wouldn't stiff psu as the narrative was that PSU harbored child molestors. the facilities were in disrepair or don't you remember the nautilus machines they called a weight room, no modern AV equipment, practice facilities in disrepair. so BOB made a strategic decision to recruit a big time QB (he got one) and some skill players and hoped that he could get some decent preferred walk-ons and have Fitz S&C them up along with him game planning as best he could around them. It was as good of strategy as any.
I view him as a satisfactory placeholder between JVP (who I consider the greatest educator coach of all time) and CJF who I respect and support.
21, 16, 25 are the number of kids that came in classes BOB recruited.
The biggest head scratcher is taking 2 QBs in '13 with limited schollys.
in 2012, the sanctions came down in mid July, so that class was completely destroyed when those sanctions came out.
21, 16, 25 are the number of kids that came in classes BOB recruited.
The biggest head scratcher is taking 2 QBs in '13 with limited schollys.
in 2013, One of them was a Juco as besides a freshman Hack, what else did they have? But look at the 2013 class under horrible sanctions, bowl bans, heart of scandal and the hit rate, incredible class for the circumstances. 5 star QB, Brenman, Sickels, Mahon, Hamilton, Nelson, Bell, Cothran, Cothren, Smith. Only 15 players enrolled (Nieko Robinson never set foot on campus). So 10 out of 15 guys were hits, that ratio is incredible.
2014 was when sanctions got lifted and the back 2/3 of the class was by JFF.
Just curious, how do you define hit? Neither Jordan nor Anthony Smith ever became staters or even top back-ups. Brenman was a highly regarded recruit, but unfortunate injuries prevented him from ever contributing much at PSU. IMO, BOB's biggest shortcoming in recruiting was at the OL. Some of the 2012 class was on JoePa, but two recruiting classes produced 1 OT (Parker Cothren was never used there) and OGs that required conversion of DT recruits to address quality issues. At the time he left for Houston, BOB had commitments from two OTs and no OGs for 2014 class.
Has Matt Rhule's name came up yet for the Nebraska job? He almost makes too much sense for it to happen...
Nebraska has a terrible recruiting area (this has always been true), but they have the second best NIL set up in the Big Ten. Only Ohio State is ahead of the Huskers on that front. That will help level the playing field a bit.
