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Callahan out as NU's head coach
BY BRIAN CHRISTOPHERSON / Lincoln Journal Star
Saturday, Nov 24, 2007 - 05:11:54 pm CST
The Bill Callahan chapter at Nebraska has met its ending.
In this season where Nebraska gave up 76 points in a game and lost five straight for the first time in 49 years, interim athletic director Tom Osborne’s decision came with minimal surprise.
The official announcement came prior to a 9:30 a.m. news conference Saturday at Memorial Stadium, where Callahan and Osborne were together for only 10 minutes earlier in the day. The contracts of all nine of Nebraska's assistant coaches were also terminated.
"I have evaluated the program diligently over the past several weeks, and I feel compelled to take action at this time," Osborne said in a statement released by the university. "Our five-game losing streak was certainly a factor, but even more important was the number of games where we were not competitive. At Nebraska, we always expect to compete at a very high level, and those expectations have not changed."
Already Saturday morning, indications were that a search for Callahan's successor was moving full speed ahead.
Three sources told the Journal Star on Saturday morning that Bo Pelini, a former defensive coordinator at Nebraska, was contacted by the Atlanta-based search firm of Baker-Parker and Associates.There was no word on a possible meeting.
Callahan drove away from the stadium in his black Lexus SUV at 7:35 a.m., waving to reporters who were gathered near a restricted area next to the football team’s practice facilities.
At 7:45 a.m., “There is no Place Like Nebraska” played from the Mueller Tower.
The 51-year-old Callahan lasted just four years at Nebraska, the shortest time a coach has spent here since Pete Elliott’s one season as coach in 1956.
Optimism was easy to find when Callahan came to Nebraska after being fired as coach of the Oakland Raiders.
Though the Raiders had just finished a 4-12 season under his direction, Callahan was also only a year removed from coaching in the Super Bowl. He hadn’t coached college football since being an assistant at Wisconsin in 1994, but he was brimming with hope nonetheless.
Wearing a red tie and a big smile on Jan. 10, 2004, the day of his hiring, Callahan said: “To take a team and lead it to the national championship is my main objective for myself and the staff.”
It was what Nebraskans wanted to hear. But his teams never gave Nebraskans what they wanted to see.
In a place where winning every week is just part of the deal, a 27-22 record over four years left the fans restless.
The highest-ranked team Callahan defeated at Nebraska was No. 20 Michigan in the 2005 Alamo Bowl, arguably the coach’s finest moment.
Callahan struggled from the beginning to connect with Nebraskans. He changed Nebraska’s offense, talked often in interviews about his days in the NFL, cut back on the walk-on program in his first years and made several other significant public-relations blunders along the way.
Among his PR flaps: A “hillbillies” comment about Oklahoma fans, an alleged throat-slash gesture at referees, the occasional bold proclamation (“We take what we want!”), and a supposed remark that grouped together the words “crusty” and “Tom Osborne.”
Of course, such sins can be pushed aside if the wins are rolling in. They were not.
The Huskers went 5-6 in Callahan’s first season, the team’s first losing season since 1961. Nebraska suffered its worst loss in school history (70-10 to Texas Tech) and did not play in a bowl game for the first time in 36 years.
Many fans shrugged and forgave. After all, Callahan was bringing in a whole new offense — the West Coast offense — and needed some time to get the proper players to make it work.
In fact, a good plenty of Husker backers were initially quite enamored with Callahan’s offense. For years, they had grown conditioned to run-oriented football.
On the first play of Callahan’s first Spring Game as Nebraska coach, the offense shifted several players, then ran a long pass play. An incompletion was met with a standing ovation. This looked like it might be fun.
Plus, Callahan was seemingly a standout recruiter. His highly-rated recruiting classes appeared to offer promises of better tomorrows.
The end of the 2005 season seemed to be proof of that. After starting 5-4 and losing to Kansas for the first time in 36 years, the Huskers rallied for three straight wins, whipping Colorado and taking down proud Michigan.
After the 30-3 regular-season finale victory over a Colorado team favored by 16 points, Husker players paraded off the field wearing shirts with the words “RESTORE THE ORDER” printed on them.
Steve Pederson, the athletic director who had hired Callahan, couldn’t stop smiling as he did every requested interview after the game.
“At Nebraska, the benchmark for success has been to win championships, not to win games. There are schools that say if we win so many games that’s a good thing, but we want to be a school that wins championships,” Pederson said. “They’ve been doing that for 40 years here.”
Callahan often seemed to pay for the brash words and actions of Pederson.
Before hiring Callahan, Pederson fired Frank Solich after a 9-3 regular season, dramatically announcing that the Nebraska football program would not surrender itself to mediocrity.
When Callahan’s teams could not win more than nine games in a season, and sometimes looked the definition of mediocre, ridicule came heavier to Callahan than it might have had Pederson not been so audacious before his arrival.
Still, there was no sign of the wheels falling off last fall.
The Huskers came back from the strong 2005 finish to win the Big 12 North, losing close games to talented Texas and Auburn teams.
For all the criticism Callahan has recently received, it wasn’t but a few months ago when many fans seemed to think the program was about to take the next step, back into college football’s elite.
Days after a season-opening win, it was announced that Callahan had signed a $1.75 million-a-year contract through 2011.
This was not a coach on the hot seat.
The climate started to change on Sept. 15. USC came to town and manhandled Nebraska before a national television audience.
The next week, the Huskers’ defense gave up a near-record amount of yards to Ball State, an average team out of the Mid-American Conference.
Callahan, an offensive minded coach, was being undone by his defense. After beating Iowa State, the Huskers lost five straight to fall to 4-6. The coach began to get compared to another Bill — Bill Jennings, who went 15-34-1 in the five years before Bob Devaney arrived to save the day.
Perhaps the lowest point for Callahan came on Oct. 13, when Nebraska was embarrassed by Oklahoma State in Memorial Stadium. The Cowboys led 38-0 at halftime. Many of the fans left early. Some wore bags over their heads. Callahan drew angry shouts from some Husker fans as he left the field.
After the game, for the first time, he was asked if he was concerned about keeping his job.
He was asked repeatedly about resigning in the weeks that followed.
“That term resignation is not in our vocabulary,” he said.
Two days after the Oklahoma State game, Pederson was fired by Chancellor Harvey Perlman. Osborne, the former coach and forever a hero to Nebraskans, took over.
Osborne immediately announced that Callahan and his staff would be evaluated at season’s end.
Three losses followed. By the time Callahan’s team rebounded to beat Kansas State 73-31, the damage had already been done.
“The one thing I learned about football is anything can happen. Anything,” Callahan said near the end. “When you think it’s all going to go right, it can go the other way. When you think it’s going to go the other way, it goes right.”
