Nebraska hires Pelini's alter ego

Bo Pelini was the head coach of the Nebraska Cornhuskers for seven years and for all of those years, I've been writing and saying that he was the wrong man for the job. So I'm certainly not disheartened by his dismissal. But some are. I tracked a poll taken this past Wednesday that had over six thousand respondents and it showed those in favor of Pelini's firing at 50.1 percent and those opposed at 49.9 percent. Even though this was an unscientific poll without a random sample, other polls showed similar results. Just about as many people wanted to keep him as get rid of him.

And that seems strange to me because Bo Pelini wasn't the kind of coach that Nebraskans were used to. He was fiery, confrontive and undisciplined. He would chase down game officials and berate his players on national television, sometimes following them all the way to the bench to continue his tirade. I never thought a sweatshirt was suitable dress for a head coach at a major university but that's what he always wore, looking much more like Bill Belichick than Paul 'Bear' Bryant. He would berate Nebraska fans during post-game comments after a loss and dare the administration to fire him. Sort of like the aggressor in a domestic abuse situation who blames his wife for what he just did to her and challenges her or anyone else to do something about it.

In the past, this hasn't been typical Nebraska behavior. I remember when I was in graduate school at Oklahoma State University back in the '80s and was walking back to married student housing from a class when I heard a loud noise from the football stadium. It was three o'clock in the afternoon on a weekday so I went in through the end zone entrance to see what was going on. When I saw players on the field, I remembered it was a JV game and immediately looked to the home field side and saw two to three hundred people scattered throughout the stands. But they weren't the ones who had made the noise I heard. It was the five thousand red clad Husker fans on the other side that were celebrating because Nebraska was dominating the game as it dominated most games in that era.

But, as Bob Dylan used to sing, the times they are a changin'. Nebraska fans are more argumentative and confrontive than they used to be. I remember a few years ago when my boys lived in Lincoln, I would go to Nebraska football games with them and I decided to wear the cap of the opponent to see what the reaction would be. I was surprised that the reaction was the same in Lincoln as it would have been in Boulder; pushes, shoves, verbal assaults and the occasional knocking of the cap off my head.

So in supporting Pelini, fans are saying they approve of his behavior. He was 66 and 27 during his tenure at Nebraska for a winning percentage of 71 percent. But he won no conference championships and seldom won the big game either. I read reports of how all his players embraced and supported him at an off-campus gathering between them and him this past week but you have to remember that college football players are kids who are likely to embrace anything. They lost more than twice as many games to ranked teams as they won while Bo was here so maybe their perspective isn't as valuable as it used to be.

I called this column hiring Pelini's alter ego because it sure looks like that's what Athletic Director Shawn Eichorst did. He was a one man search committee with the intent to hire a new coach and the guy he hired is a mirror opposite of Pelini. He's calm, cordial and friendly regardless of the score. He's well respected by his peers. He wins big games, even though he loses many games he should have won. He's 61 years old. That means he'll be eligible to draw his social security check before he coaches his first game at Nebraska. His overall record at Oregon State is 93 and 80, far below Pelini's 71 percent win rate. Last year Riley's Oregon State team was 5-7 overall and 2-7 in the PAC 12 Conference, losing six of their last seven. The only team they beat during their last seven games was Arizona State, the number seven team in the nation at the time.

So I don't know if Riley's the right guy or not. This is obviously going to be his last stop in the coaching ranks because of his age and I wish him well. It will be inspiring to see a coach encouraging his kids instead of chewing them out because that's in the Nebraska tradition.

But winning is, too, and that part remains to be seen.