What was it?
Would you believe 7-6?
...and a loss to Louisiana Monroe.
Sanctions later vacated five of the wins.
Would you believe 7-6?
...and a loss to Louisiana Monroe.
Sanctions later vacated five of the wins.
Alabama record in Nick Saban's first year?
- Thread starter rez dog 70
- Start date
I understand your point and it's a valid one but he had already one a championship while at LSU. Because of that, I think fans were willing to give him a pass for a subpar season. I do feel we will struggle some this year but have a much better 2016 season.
Not only that but Alabama was a dumpster fire before Saban got there. Going 7-6 was an actual improvement. Nebraska needed a change and had stagnated with a coach who had long since hit his ceiling, but 9-4 was not really a dumpster fire.
If Riley goes 7-5 he won't be awarded the same kind of patience Saban had.
If Riley goes 7-5 he won't be awarded the same kind of patience Saban had.
Would you believe that Mike Shula went 4-9 in his first year in Alabama? There are a lot more guys who didn't do well and flamed out than guys who lost big the first year and went on to win multiple national championships.
I really hope we're not comparing Saban to Riley or Ala vs Neb. Different stratospheres. Too much parity in recruiting. It's been 15 years. Unless kids are under the age of 15 they don't care about the past or history. The milenials care about themselves. TV time, winning, flash, oceans, girls, etc. our facilities are good but not the best. Everyone's are all pretty equal. The A&Ms and Oregons are sick!!
I get your point, and Riley deserves the chance to recruit players to his system. But he doesn't have half the track record Saban did as a college head coach. One had a national championship ring and multiple SEC championship rings, the other is coming off a 5-7 season and had a sub-.500 record in conference play.
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anon_umk0ifu6vj6zi
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Riley is going to probably max out at 9 wins a year. Better for the program, but I am not confident he will do any better than Pelini. He is a career .500 coach. I am not just seeing it or drinking the kool aid.
I don't think Riley is going to be the next "anointed one" or anything like that, but I think the lesson of they story is "if the coach of the century, along with Les Miles and several other high profile coaches (Strong, Harbaugh etc) didn't just waltz in the door and insta-magically run the table, then it seems likely that our coach won't either".
NU isn't a "dumpster fire", but we are attempting to play defense with almost no DE's (kind of a thorn for any quality of coach) and very inexperienced OL and a host of other depth issues.
I think its fair assessment to withold judgment until we see a body of work. We should have a pretty good feeling by the end of the season, whether the boys are progressing along, or if things just like kind of like a Pelini fire drill to start year 2.
NU isn't a "dumpster fire", but we are attempting to play defense with almost no DE's (kind of a thorn for any quality of coach) and very inexperienced OL and a host of other depth issues.
I think its fair assessment to withold judgment until we see a body of work. We should have a pretty good feeling by the end of the season, whether the boys are progressing along, or if things just like kind of like a Pelini fire drill to start year 2.
Even with all our issues we can win the West THIS YEAR. The younger talented players will slowly begin to rise as the season progresses. Some faster then others but it will happen.
Hiring names, doesn't always work out. Harbaugh was the biggest name available, and he's 0-1 as well at a school that has more talent than we do. Strong might already be on his way out the door at a school that again, has Rivals scoreboard on us.
I believe so too. I just don't think there are too many coaches who were going to walk in here and win the Big after a couple of years. Saban and Urban probably it and neither of them was coming.
So I had reasoned that the next guy was going to take some time to get it going whether it was Frost or Riley it Hudspeth. The other two probably among the best of the young guns
I wonder how many of them wins came against teams with losing records??? Compare that with Mark Pelini???
This is my point. They had a coach for 4 years who was BARELY above .500 in that span. They hired a coach who had won a national championship. We fired a coach who won almost 10 games a year and replaced him with a coach who was BARELY above .500 at his previous job.
This is a huge difference and makes this entire argument irrelevant. Bo was a good coach, but he had to go. He wasn't doing enough to get us where we deserve to be. A change was needed.
I do not think Riley will do any better then Bo ever did. I am not ragging on Mike Riley at all. But regardless of whatever anyone thinks, in order to be great again we need recruit far better then we are right now. This is our worst class in years so far. Maybe our worst recruiting class since Frank Solich.
One thing I am truly sick of hearing is how Nebraska can't recruit good recruiting classes. Because everyone is on TV now so ever school now has national exposure. We have cold weather and nobody want to play in a cold state. We have no oceans so kids can't go swimming and surfing. All that is BS.
I am going to quote Michigan States radio announcer.
"Saying you can't recruit to Nebraska is like saying you can't get calories in a donut".
Bill Calahan recruited top classes with the best of them. His problem was he hired terrible coaches and forced a extremely complicated system on kids fresh out of HS. He appointed a terrible defensive coordinator to run the defense. It just didn't work.
I am not giving up on this team or staff though. We can still have a good year. I think Riley has done a fantastic job of installing his offense and run it according to his players ability rather then run the players according to his offense. We moved the ball really well at times. So hopefully we get better, hopefully our recruiting gets better and hopefully our defense improves.
9-4 turns into 6-7 or worse without the cupcakes Mark feasted on. No wonder he was out running all the time.
But keep on trying.
But keep on trying.
I love it when someone is typing their little heart out just to have their world crushed in two sentences.
When I was a little kid, I HATED my parents spanking me and then telling me it was for my own good. We don't know how the head coach or coaching staff hire is going to turn out. We're into the season, playing games now. We'll have an opportunity to make comparisons based on results rather than what-ifs.
Maybe AFTER we've won conference titles or 11/12/13 games, that might be the better time to be making these types of comparisons. Especially considering that we just lost our home opener. Some people think we lost a game we shouldn't have (myself included), some people thought BYU was the favored team, and there's some that think if we run the ball we lose and if we throw the ball we lose/we're losing no matter what.
We just need more time to see how we're gonna do, and it could be multiple years.
Maybe AFTER we've won conference titles or 11/12/13 games, that might be the better time to be making these types of comparisons. Especially considering that we just lost our home opener. Some people think we lost a game we shouldn't have (myself included), some people thought BYU was the favored team, and there's some that think if we run the ball we lose and if we throw the ball we lose/we're losing no matter what.
We just need more time to see how we're gonna do, and it could be multiple years.
Uh huh. So who were the world beaters OSU had to go up against while Riley was there? You can't possibly be so naive to think if Nebraska had played in the PAC that our records over the past few years would mimick that of Oregon State. Come on fella.
So now you're comparing Oregon State to Nebraska? You can't be serious Shirley???
I'm still rolling over the "Bo is a good coach, but he had to go" comment. I had to wipe the tears from my eyes with that one. Please go on.
You continue to fail to make a lick of sense. Alabama wasn't able to beat cupcakes. Bo's best team would have faired better then Mike Shula teams easily. In fact, Bo beat one of the best SEC teams had to offer with a brand new inexperienced QB. You just buy into the propaganda that ESPN is selling claiming SEC is NFL caliber.
Either way you want to try and spin it; Alabama greatly upgraded head coaches. We did a lateral move at best..... If we are lucky.
If you want to harp on the record, which is fine, you have that right, how do you get that Riley will win 9 or 10 games? It doesn't make sense... shouldn't he go 6-6, 7-5, 5-7? He won't magically transform into a regular 9 or 10 wins a season coach, will he? Just help me understand, cuz there are a fair amount of people looking solely at his record... So why should we expect 9 wins this year or any year?
So, are you claiming that because Riley has a positive perception, he will be a better recruiter?
If that is the case, we would see instant results in our current class and we don't see any signs of us having better recruits then Bo. One could easily argue it is worse by quite a bit.
You are basically saying it is ok to make a lateral move because now we have a nice guy as a head coach. So you are ok if the results on the field are the same as they were with Bo, because Riley doesn't lose his temper? That is a weak argument.
I have three questions for you...
1st Where did Tom Osborne do his daily jogging?
2nd Who was the color guy on Big Red Wrap Up before Adrian?
3rd When Nebraska won it's first National Title what did Nancy and Tom do to celebrate?
This is my Nebraska fan test. I'm just curious if your a Bobot or a Nebraska fan. You can't google this answers easily... either you know them or you don't.
Go...
Not solely directed at you, but look at your first paragraph… You were very clear in pointing out Mike Riley is barely above.500. What are you implying with that? Maybe I read into this, and if so I apologize.
Not how I read his post at all... The positive perception is NATIONAL perception, which definitely makes Nebraska more appealing.
The fact that Riley is positive doesn't make him a better recruiter. But the fact that the national perception of Nebraska under Riley is much improved sure won't hurt recruiting.
Go ahead and argue that recruiting is worse than under Bo... But it would be nice to let him complete his first class and see how next year's class begins to unfold before flunking him.
Why would one's previous records and performance history be a good determinate of future performance? (Sarcasm)
Simple. We hired a coach that is statistically worse than what we had. I am not saying Riley can't be successful, but at best he will only do as good as what we had. That doesn't fly here.
Our positive "national perception" has no baring on how our team performes on the football field. That is irrelevant. I would hate to think that the only reason we fired Bo was because he was an ____hole, and hired Riley because he would improve the our national perception.
I am not advocating for Pelini. He had his chance, we gave him plenty of time and resources to get us back to national prominence and competitiveness. He failed. He wasn't getting the job done.
But I do know we have a pretty good idea on how Riley's first class will do. And it will not be anywhere near the top 25. Look at Franklin last year. His class started out great, and ended great. Michigan under Jim Harbaugh is starting out great and I bet will end great.
I am not saying this to sound rude, ours is not good. Not even close. It needs to be better. Period. Regardless of our national perception our recruiting must improve or we will have to hope our next coach can get it done.
That is a stupid argument. It blows me away that we can share example after example of .500 coaches that win when they change scenery. Using your logic why in the hell did hawkens suck so bad at Colorado after winning 80+% in previous stops? Can also share about .500 coaches who won big elsewhere... But hat has been done dozens of times here.