What if Nebraska would have hired Campbell instead of ISU? There’s no way Iowa would have come back like they did and beat them and there’s no way bowl eligibility would be their ceiling. They would be playing Michigan right now instead of Iowa with a much better shot of beating them compared to Iowa’s little to no chance. In football, the coaching hire is a huge deal and Nebraska just seems to not get that right.
All FB coaching rumors and speculation
- Thread starter Beach_Tornado
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I'll add that the timing of their rise was pretty opportune.
When Devaney showed up, there wasn't a ton of competition in the Midwest/Big 8. ISU sucked, Iowa sucked, Kansas schools sucked, Colorado wasn't anything special yet, Minnesota was coming down to earth from their glory days, Wisconsin wasn't the program we know today, and so on.
That allowed them to build their program and establish that big rivalry with OU, and put them on TV regularly back when that was a huge advantage. Now, everyone's on TV, and most of those schools I listed have had runs of success in one form or another.
It's kind of funny looking back at their long run of success and seeing when they faltered:
- After their 70s titles they got bested by Switzer and OU quite a few times over the next decade.
- Had trouble with Colorado's best teams in the late 80s/early 90s.
- Their 90s titles came during a down period for OU.
- Faltered after their last NC thanks to losses to Texas and Snyder's great K-State teams.
- Didn't do well in the 2000s facing off against those upstart B12 South teams like TT and OSU.
Seems like they didn't handle things well when the playing field leveled out and other programs stepped up their game, unlike Oklahoma did.
Doubtful his tenure is much different than at ISU's, and NU fans are still wondering how many more years they give their coach.
Good points. Keep in mind the amount of wealth in the Omaha-Lincoln area - The Buffett Effect. Something Iowa simply does not have & if leveraged could set up an advantage with the NIL system(s) in place or coming down the pike. Hadn't thought of that much myself.
"Do I expect people to come [after] me? Yeah, I do, it happens every single year," Cristobal said. (with all the humility I can muster.)
Another oft overlooked advantage is Nebraska was really lax on the prop 48 rule, where all the other Big 12 schools (KState had a few) would not admit them. A large proportion of their good players were prop 48.
As they say; “Nebraska is a year away from being a year away” hope that stays true in perpetuity.
You think a CMC team would get up 21-9 on Iowa?
If Nebraska would be playing Michigan, why isn't ISU playing right now?
Don't get me wrong--love what CMC has done but the opportunity was laid out pretty plainly.
Btw KU is dropping ACT requirement for all students. Random Fan plz weigh in
Yes, it’s becoming a trend. They feel there’s bias involved with the ACT. I hope other schools don’t follow that. I also hope KU realizes it’s a bad decision. You can’t just go by gpa. It encourages HS students to take easy courses.
I agree that it could be a poor trend. I finished behind 3 of my classmates when measuring GPA, but my but I took far more advanced classes than any of them. I also had an ACT score ranging from 2 to 4 points higher than each of them.
GPA is more predictive of college completion than ACT, the only studies that say the ACT is useful that I can find cited a study done by ACT.
Being the only P5 school in a state can be impactful if the state is populated. Wisconsin has 5.9M residents and Minnesota 5.7M residents.
Nebraska has 1.9M residents. West Virginia is the only state smaller in population with a P5 school.
Compared to the state of Iowa with 3.2M residents. Fan support, between Iowa and ISU home game attendance is 130k. So Nebraska putting 85k per home game is slightly ahead of attendance vs.population in Iowa.
Not just KU. An NCAA committee recommended dropping ACT/SAT requirement for student athletes.
Have mixed feelings on this since HS GPA vs academic prowess can vary greatly. I think all ISU students have seen first hand kids with near 4.0 HS GPA's struggle in college academically.
The best solution may be requiring standardized tests for incoming HS student who wish to enroll in a completive degree program that weed out students (aka Engineering College at ISU).
It’s a good choice. My wife did ooorly on it, she gets nervous over large tests. Graduated with a 3.7 gpa. My daughter did poorly for the same reason. Deans list at ISU usually. ACT doesn’t really mean jack.
So OU must be waiting on someone coaching a conference championship game or playoff contender or they would have announced already. Fickell? Aranda?
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Also a lot of college degree programs don't require strong acumen in math, science, etc.
Had a college friend who had 2.6 HS gpa, but graduated with close to 3.5 GPA from ISU in Landscape Architecture.
