Last week we had some tweets going back and forth about this prediction:
Let me just start with how weird this is. It’s very rare for former coaches to start doing a radio show less than a year after they are coaching, let alone doing one in the very town that they just got fired from. I don’t blame Busch for going on the radio, but it’s just weird it’s nearly everyday because things like this come about as you just have to talk for hours at a time.
My main hangup is what’s the upside of giving what you think they should win? So now we have a former coach that was with the team giving “8 or 9 wins” and Husker fans on social media platforms everywhere are coming with “he would know best, he was with the team all of last year!” It doesn’t help Rhule nor our team to have a former coach say this. Heck, Alberts, Osborne, Moos, and other people directly related to the program never even put a win total on things for Frost. They would say “need to get to a bowl” but they never put him in a position for those type of expectations.
Let’s look at it another way… Take the fact that it’s Bill Busch out of it. What if I told you that Shawn Slocum who served as Arizona State’s Special Teams Coordinator last year before getting fired due to going 3-9 in 2022 says the team in 2023 “should win 8 or 9 games due to (fill in the blank)”. We would all call him a moron. Go one step further, what if Trent Bray after getting fired from Nebraska in 2017 hosted a radio show where he said that Frost needed to win 8 or 9 in 2018 due to the schedule he inherited? I’ve just never seen a former coach give a win total for the following year for the team they were just let go from. And I went deeper into it for this tweet:
9 out of our 12 opponents next year, we have 8 wins total in 5 seasons (2018-2022)… yet we have someone predicting 8 or 9 for the year? Let’s say that we go 3-0 against the teams not mentioned (Northern Illinois, Louisiana Tech, and Maryland) which seems more than fair. We now have to win 5 games against those 8 from the tweet when we are averaging less than 2 wins a season against them. I’m just trying to set expectations here. Getting to a bowl game should be the goal. We haven’t done that since 2016. But when I say that, I get some of these responses:
For me… I don’t think being happy if we get to a bowl game this year is throwing in the towel, it’s just acknowledging what we are as a program right now. Again, 2016 is the last time we’ve been to one. We have a new coach with a new offensive and defensive coordinator/scheme. New starting QB. Quite frankly if we get to 8 or 9 wins Matt Rhule probably is in line for coach of the year in the B1G.
Let’s land the plane here… I get that there is so many people reporting on Nebraska football that everyone is looking for new content, so I don’t blame Sipple for getting Busch on his radio show. But the coaching fraternity is small, and I don’t know if i’ve ever seen a former coach give a season win total prediction unless they have an axe to grind or are setting things up for failure. I don’t think Busch was trying to do any of that, I just think that’s a byproduct of what happens when you go on the air for multiple hours a week.
Funny USC Story
We will just continue with what I think Busch was really getting at. I think he knew that things were so terrible under Frost that any competent coach could get this team clicking. We saw some of that with Joseph and Busch once they took over. Finally beat Iowa, competitive, etc. That’s really what I think was trying to be relayed.
Scott Frost reminds me a lot of Lane Kiffin at USC. Nebraska ties with the “young up and comer” theory behind them. But Bill Busch reminds me of Ed Orgeron a bit at USC with Kiffin. You see, Orgeron knew that Kiffin struggled with certain aspects of being a head coach, and actually had some immaturity he needed to get over much like what we saw. At one point, USC was invited to the Sun Bowl which was in shitty El Paso, TX and the coaches are hammered the night before the game (not Orgeron, as he didn’t drink). The head coach falls up or down some stairs and gives himself a massive blackeye. Ends up dressing up in just some weird sideline outfit so no one could tell, even put womens makeup on.
The next year Kiffin gets fired on the tarmac and Orgeron (like Busch) takes over and turns things around.
Again, just a funny little story about the similarities going on there. Kiffin ends up being a pretty good coach after he figures some things out and I think that’s exactly what will end up happening with Frost. He will have some success elsewhere now that he’s away from Nebraska and some bad influences. But I really think Busch is/was just getting at “it never should have been as bad as it was.”
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I’m not going to go so far to say he’s trying to lead us to failure, but playing armchair psychologist, it’s kind of like “well, if I was there another year, I probably could’ve gotten us to 8 or 9 wins”, so you set the bar high for the next regime to match what no one could prove you would’ve done if you were there.
I probably would go that route too, because I’d rather make that prediction as a former staff, then say “Well, they’ll probably struggle this year”, and then if they do win a bunch of games, I’d probably feel more dumb in my prediction and a coach of the prior regime.
I think it’s kind of a hedging bets statement.
But regardless, I’ve been thinking we should’ve won a lot more games than we have for a while, so I really hope everyone can chill out for a season or two
I think you and I are on the same page. Trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, but part of me thinks he’s doing that to say that’s what he felt they could win this year so if that doesn’t happen they would have done better. Trying to speculate what someones intentions were is tough. And he loves Nebraska so I don’t think he wanted to be a negative for the team.
it just doesn’t make much sense to me to do that. It also is pretty unprecedented for a fired coach to just get hired on a local radio show and start talking every day so a little bit of uncharted waters.
“Heck, Alberts, Osborne, Moos, and other people directly related to the program never even put a win total on things for Frost. They would say “need to get to a bowl” but they never put him in a position for those type of expectations.”
Is this whole article some tongue-in-cheek joke that I’m not getting?
Sure!
Outside of win total, what signs of progress are you looking for during the season that would make you confident things are heading in the right direction and in a way that would lead to a 9 win season in the near future?
That’s a really good question. I would like some sort of identity which is tough to quantify, but I feel like we had none of that the last five years. I think another thing was it seemed Frost and staff always came out firing in games, but once adjustments started happening they had no counter punches of their own. I’d like to see us not get destroyed in second halfs.