Fired Coach Walking

Nebraska Athletic Director Steve Pederson was fired Monday in the wake of two embarrassing losses in a row for the Nebraska football team. A 45-14 loss at home to a 4-3 Oklahoma State team preceded by a 41-6 loss at Missouri the previous week spelled the end for the Nebraska AD.

This is the wrong Steve Pederson

Ironically, when Pederson fired Frank Solich in 2003, he was quoted as saying “I refuse to let this program gravitate toward to a level of mediocrity”. Well congratulations Steve, Nebraska’s mediocrity has become its’ own center of gravity and other programs are gravitating toward you (see “Notre Dame”, “Miami”, “Florida State”). Well done.

Nebraska Chancellor Harvey Perlman was quoted as saying “Steve has done many positive things for Husker athletics during his tenure, but I think only new leadership can objectively assess the state of our program and make the decisions necessary to move us forward.” The translation to that quote is “We’re going to get Tom Osborne in here as AD and his first order of business is going to be fire Bill Callahan’s ass faster than Les Miles can say “go for it” on 4th down.

The boys over at www.edsbs.com hit it right on the head referencing Callahan and his link to the flood of coaches that fled the NFL for college in hopes of easier, and greener pastures- Callahan, the Wannstache (Dave Wannstedt), and Chan Gailey (and I’m including Charlie Weis in that group also). Athletic Directors in 2002 & 2003 were gleefully quick to pull the trigger on NFL retreads in hopes that the experiment would work out to the level that Pete Carroll has at USC.

Bill Callahan- you’re a fired coach walking.