BOss of the Plains

William Jennings Bryan's title is safe. Bo Pelini, while certainly young for his position, will likely never inspire any title as grandiose as the "Boy Orator of the Platte" but I think that's sort of the point.

We had a guy not too long ago who had perfected the art of saying something without saying anything at all. A smooth, slick and ultimately meaningless answer was always at the ready. Few men can talk football better than Bill Callahan, which made Pelini's press conference, where he was visibly nervous and even bought himself some time on a few questions with a "how do you mean" or two, that much more refreshing.

This isn't a coach who likes talking about football, this is a coach who loves coaching football. It's possible that this worried a few Nebraskan's as they tuned in Sunday and it's possible that it will worry a few more down the road but if I had to characterize Pelini's persona today there's a word that comes immediately to mind: Nebraskan.

Chuck Klosterman wrote perhaps my favorite passage regarding the Midwestern ethos while describing his upbringing in North Dakota in Fargo Rock City:

"...what this culture lacked (and still lacks) is an emphasis on ideas--especially ideas that don't serve a practical, tangible purpose. In North Dakota, life is about work. Everything is based on working hard, regardless of what it earns you. If you're spending a lot of time mulling over the state of the universe (or even the state of your own life), you're obviously not working. You probably need to get back to work."

Swap Nebraska for North Dakota in that passage and you have the perfect description of where I grew up and I couldn't help but think of it while watching Pelini undergo his first Q&A session as Nebraska's head coach. For some people, most of the people I knew back in Nebraska, talking about working is a lot more difficult than actually working. Pelini seems to be one of those people and those people are typically the ones you want working beside you.

In my mind, Bo left that press conference, immediately removed his tie like a young boy after Christmas Eve mass, put on a grey sweatshirt and started calling recruits. More likely, he probably had a nice dinner with his family, watched to see where LSU would land and then went to bed but the important thing here is perception and in the end it came down to this: Pelini may not be polished behind a mike but he already feels like one of us.

My favorite part of the press conference came after it was officially over. Dr. Tom had already stepped in and delivered the "one more question" decree and then there was Pelini, sort of looking around wondering if it was actually over. Somebody suggested a family photo and then a employee of the athletic department walked in front of the podium and asked Bo if he'd like a hat.

"Yeah, the white one," the 28th head football coach at Nebraska said before exiting stage left.

Good choice. The good guys always wear white hats.

ESPN Knows it's Bo?

The Worldwide Leader is reporting that Bo Pelini will be the next head coach at Nebraska.

According to their source "close to the situation," Pelini could be in Lincoln on Monday for an announcement.

Interesting timing considering it's the eve of the SEC title game but this does seem to jibe with both the timeline of the past week and everything we've been hearing thus far.

Personally, I've vacillated on Pelini. During this past season he represented the antithesis of Callahan, I would've loved to have had him then but once the coaching search was officially on, I wondered if he was "the best available".

Now I think Pelini's biggest knock--no head coaching experience--might be his biggest asset. Bo will have a lot to prove and a lot of support. Nothing bad about that. Somebody was going to take a shot with the guy and now that somebody is reportedly going to be Nebraska. Whenever I daydreamed about Callahan's successor the one thing I kept coming back to was the desire for a passionate individual who was looking to make a splash.

That description fits Pelini and let's face it, nobody knows how any coach will pan out two or three years down the road. There's only faith.

I can have faith in Pelini.

More to come as there's more the be said...

The Sound, and Danger, of Silence

Silence was indeed deafening yesterday. I checked HuskerExtra.com yesterday afternoon approximately 30 times searching for the next rumor or update on Decision 07 only to see the same three blog posts staring back at me for most of the day.

Brian Kelly was supposed to be in the mix but then he said he wasn't. Tom Osborne then, at least in my mind, gave a leg up to co-favorites Gill & Pelini over Grobe in a radio interview delineating two different schools of thought regarding staff. Essentially, nothing happened at all yesterday and that is a very dangerous thing in deed.

Prior to Wednesday I was nearly indifferent to Osborne's ultimate choice for head coach. Each candidate seemed to have his marks on both sides of the ledger and none of the reported names leapt out at me as better or worse than the other.

But then Joe Schad had to go and mention Lane Kiffin's name on ESPN in association with the Arkansas job.

I hadn't really considered Kiffin the Younger because I didn't think leaving Oakland after one year was really a possibility but if he's going to flirt with the Hogs--and he says he hasn't--I'd be severely disappointed if Nebraska didn't at least give him a call to gauge his interest.

If I recall correctly, Kiffin is on record as saying he probably would've taken the Nebraska OC job had Bo Pelini been hired after the 2003 season and, as we all know, his father was a Cornhusker. There you have the ties that Osborne reportedly loves and they're a lot better than the paternal/assistant coaching connection he has with Arkansas. (Growing up as an athletic young boy, where would you put more stock: where you live at age three or where your father played the game?)

The intriguing thing about Kiffin is twofold: a) he's young and Nebraska represents an opportunity to make not just a name but a career, and b) he comes from a history of college football success, a history that, at least tenuously, has a Nebraska connection.

This may be a difficult notion for Cornhusker fans to swallow but I don't think you can overestimate the relevancy that the USC connection has with today's high school football player. Marlon Lucky changed his number coming in to '07 because of Reggie Bush, a player who was just finishing up his college career when Lucky was a senior in high school. I don't really give a damn about recruiting but even I can't deny the value of having a coach who can claim that he's coached Bush, Palmer, Leinart and White. (Not to mention that Orgeron would immediately be a front runner for a defensive coaching job and all the NFL talent he's coached.) That sort of resume resonates with the top talent in the country.

Thus far we've sort of separated the Nebraska job from the the recruiting challenges it inherently presents. Callahan proved that recruiting alone isn't a cure all, but the known candidates thus far all seem a little suspect when it comes to wooing 17-year-old boys. The one rumored name that seems to address both questions is Lane Kiffin.

I didn't think there was a home run hire out there but now that Kiffin's name has "emerged" I'm officially smitten. Smitten with Kiffin.

Other Decision 07 thoughts and rumors...

I'm not big on rumor and I wouldn't be ignorant enough to purport anything with any certainty, but here are rumors I've heard and all I'll say is that they didn't randomly show up in my inbox...

1) Mark Richt has at least been contacted about the job.
2) Will Muschamp is at least on the list.
3) Gary Patterson is further down the list than you might think. (Or maybe not. His name doesn't seem very hot at the moment.)
4) Lane Kiffin might not be so far fetched.
5) Tom Osborne isn't just recruiting players later this week.

What are those worth? About as much as anything else you're probably reading or hearing but after spending all of Wednesday going through rumor withdrawal I thought I'd just fix it on my own.

How Good is the Nebraska Job?

Part of the beauty of a national coaching search is the opportunity to see what the rest of the country thinks about your football program. The national columnists all chime in and one point or another and who your school is able to talk to is essentially credibility currency.

As we've seen, Nebraska can get a sit-down with just about any coach in the country. While the purse strings aren't nearly as loose as they are in the SEC, if money is an issue Nebraska always seems to get it. In terms of the current coaching carousel, I'd classify Nebraska as a retired mob boss. There's a history of dominance and respect and, while the knees are a little week at the time and eyesight ain't so good, there's still enough there to strike a little fear into the younger and flashier usurpers.

But that's my view as a Nebraska fan. What do the others think? If you read ESPN.com yesterday, there were two different front page stories that tackled the topic and they seem to hold a slightly dimmer view.

Gene Wojciechowski explored the "myth" that Nebraska is an elite coaching job. Quoth Wojo, "now Pederson and Callahan are gone, and so is Nebraska's one longtime advantage: an identity," and later, "Elite high school recruits...don't remember much, if anything, about Mike Rozier." Both fair and accurate points.

Pat Forde was even more direct in this week's Dash when answering the titular question:

Not as good as Nebraska thinks it is. Fan support is unrivaled, but the recruiting base is unreliable and the days of raiding New Jersey for talent might be a thing of the past. Unless the Cornhuskers do some work in Texas and California, this probably won't get turned around very fast.

OK, these are the typical negatives we've been hearing tossed at Nebraska since before Callahan was hired. I'm not going to refute them point by point because there's some truth there but, silly reality blind fan that I am, I'm still going to maintain that Nebraska's a great job for the right guy for one simple reasons: it is ideally located.

Now, I'm not talking about from a recruiting standpoint. (God, no, Nebraska is totally barren! We all know that, but if Callahan accomplished anything during his tenure it was a slight rebuke to the notion that national players aren't interested.) I'm talking about from a winning standpoint, and that's the one thing that has changed very little from the Osborne era. Nebraska still has a relatively easy path to the top of the polls.

Let's face it, even at its best, Nebraska was a perennial preseason Top 5 team due in large part to the Big 8. There were two schools spending national championship money back in the day, OU and NU, and Nebraska racked up a lot of wins against overmatched conference foes.

Even in an era that's seen a record number of teams claim the top spot in the polls this year and a season that featured Missouri-Kansas as the biggest game of the year, Nebraska still has that advantageous position when it comes to contending for BCS bowl games.

When Stewart Mandel got down to ranking each and every football program in terms on national cache, he awarded "King" status to three Big 12 programs--NU, OU and Texas. Of course, the Red River rivals will always cancel each other out when it comes to the Big 12 Championship, leaving Nebraska as the lone Northern heavyweight. Keep in mind, this ranking was based largely on resources and expectations. Sure the Big 12 North has improved rapidly almost across the board this year with Nebraska being the lone exception, but we've spent an entire season attributing that to leadership rather than a talent deficiency.

The very expectations that make Nebraska a "tough job" are probably more of an asset than detriment overall. Whoever ends up with the job will be expected, but also put in a position, to win football games. No other school in the North can claim that on a year to year basis with the certainty that Nebraska can.

Nebraska probably trails behind at least Missouri and Kansas at the moment, but unless the Florida State or Miami jobs open up any time soon, there isn't another King school out there with a history of national title expectations year in and year out, that has an easier path to immediate national relevance.

Look at where Oklahoma is at this year. The Sooners have two losses to unranked teams and they won't play for a national title, but beat Missouri on Saturday and win their BCS bowl game and the Sooners finish up in the Top 5. Given the failures of the past four years how much time would a BCS bowl buy you at Nebraska right now?

In the end, the Nebraska job breaks down like this: it's marginally more difficult to recruit there but it's marginally easier to win there. That's it.

How are coaches ultimately assessed? Wins and losses. For a coach who is fully cognizant of that, I'd call it a dream job.