Change Causes Culture Clash
By John R. Wunder
UNL professor of history
President of the UNL Academic Senate
Editor's note: Believing alumni would be interested in reading about the great upheaval surrounding the firing of one UNL head football coach and the hiring of another, we invited John Wunder to give the story some historical perspective.
What Nebraskans read in their papers in 2003 was definitely not all good news: West Nile virus, drought, a disgraced state treasurer. But the story that generated the most reactions and was named the Associated Press's top story of the year was the firing of the University of Nebraska's football coach, Frank Solich.
The whole process created a clash of cultures unlike most anything Nebraska had ever seen.
On Saturday, Nov. 29, recently hired UNL Athletic Director Steve Pederson gave Solich his walking papers. It was the first time since 1961 that a head football coach had been dismissed at UNL.
But it wasn't just the firing itself that sent the story to the top of the AP's list and to Nebraska's front burner. On Nov. 23, the Lincoln Journal Star published a story indicating Pederson was poised to fire Solich.
The story was based on conversations reporter Matthew Hansen had had with athletic department boosters who said Pederson and others in the Athletic Department had told them Solich might be fired. The sources asked to remain anonymous; the paper honored their request.
In response to the story, Pederson denied talking with boosters. Chancellor Harvey Perlman backed his athletic director. Solich declined to comment. Sports writers at the state's two largest papers, The Omaha World-Herald and the Lincoln Journal Star, seemed to be caught unawares.
Fans were nervous. It had been a so-so football season. True enough, Nebraska had won eight games by the time the Journal Star story appeared, but the three losses seemed to be more memorable than the victories.
Furthermore, many fans remembered the humiliating 7-7 campaign only a year before and the devastating defeats in the last two games the previous year. After the gloomy 2002-03 season, Solich had hired a number of new assistant coaches, and fans saw some obvious improvements.
Nebraskans especially liked what Bo Pelini, a former defensive coordinator for the Green Bay Packers, had done with the defense. And most seemed to approve of longtime quarterbacks coach Turner Gill's elevation to associate head coach.
Looming ahead during the week after the Nov. 23 story was a tough game at Colorado. Solich said he would ignore the flurry of speculation surrounding him and concentrate on preparing his team to meet the Buffalos the day after Thanksgiving.
The Huskers pulled out a 31-22 win at Boulder. Players were emotional. They seemed to think they had saved their coach's job.
Some observers noticed the AD did not go onto the field or greet the players or coach after the victory. Instead, he told Solich he wanted to see him the next morning. At that Saturday morning meeting, Pederson told Solich he was through at UNL - immediately.
Radio and TV stations interrupted their scheduled programming to cover the emergency press conference that ensued.
Pederson explained he had fired Solich because he believed Nebraska's program was falling behind those of Oklahoma and Texas. He implied he had known since he took the AD job at UNL that he would have to fire the head coach. He told Husker fans UNL was no longer competitive in recruitment and that its current talent wasn't competitive enough.
Several football players in the room asked hostile questions. Coach Solich made no public comment.
But still more bombs were to fall on Husker Nation, a term Pederson had brought to Lincoln for the 2003 season. The immediate question was who would be the interim head coach for the bowl game Nebraska expected to play. Many thought Turner Gill, former All-American when he played quarterback for the Huskers and the No. 2 man in UNL's football hierarchy, would be asked to take over.
nstead, Pederson chose defensive coordinator Bo Pelini, one of the new men at Memorial Stadium. Pelini had a reputation as a no-nonsense coach, someone who thrived on confrontation. He had inspired fanatical play and loyalty from the defensive unit throughout the season, but some fans thought he had disgraced the Husker Nation when he charged across the field at Bill Snyder, Kansas State's head coach, after UNL's lopsided loss to the Wildcats.
Even so, many fans liked Pelini's take-no-prisoners approach, and they told themselves Pelini just might be the man to lead Nebraska back to prominence.
What Pederson apparently did not anticipate was the cult following that sprang up around Pelini. Fans seemed to love him: plain spoken, all business, focused, tough and gruff. Some fans wanted to believe in this new interim head coach and hoped he'd be the new permanent coach.
As he prepared his team to win the Alamo Bowl against Big Ten opponent Michigan State, Pelini said he was ready to be a head coach. The players seemed to have recovered from the shock of losing Solich, and they and several assistant coaches promptly and publicly supported Pelini.
Meanwhile, Pederson said he would conduct a one-person national search for the best person to lead Nebraska football. And, yes, he would consider Pelini and Gill among the others. He also said he would not comment on the search until he was ready to announce a new coach.
The Alamo Bowl came and went. The offense sputtered, but the defense prevailed as Pelini led the Huskers to a 17-3 spanking of the unranked Spartans.
At one point when the game was still close, Pelini lost it on the sidelines. He stormed onto the field, challenged a referee's call and cost his team a 15-yard penalty and a first down. It wasn't a pretty sight, and it reinforced the suspicions of those who suspected Pelini couldn't control his emotions well enough to be a respected leader.
The euphoria of a bowl victory seemed to make Pelini the odds-on favorite to be the new head coach. Players continued to voice their approval; many fans publicly urged Pederson to ratify the inevitable; sportswriters began to criticize Pederson's silence and what looked like foot-dragging.
At this point, a true culture clash seemed to be in the offing.
Nebraskans were torn by their desire to win and their tradition of "doing things right." They didn't like the corporate sheen that seemed to be everywhere: game sponsorship, scoreboards and, particularly, what some called slick decision-making. Yet they recognized that money was essential if the Huskers were to be competitive in today's sports world.
The culture clash extended to the state's major newspapers. Before the explosion that began on Nov. 23, most sports writers seemed content to extol the virtues of Solich, his staff and his players. Rarely did they probe deeply into Husker football. They seemed to be caught in a journalistic dilemma: Should they settle for being the public voice of the University Athletic Department or should they risk being denied access to coaches and players? It had happened: A reporter who wrote something a coach didn't like might be cut off from contact with the team. And so when the story broke about Solich's potential firing, it came from the newsroom, not the sports staff.
As the days wore on and the world shifted into the holiday season, no white smoke announcing a new coach appeared over Husker headquarters in South Stadium. The eerie silence continued, and many began to realize that fan favorite Bo Pelini was most likely not Pederson's favorite.
Pelini himself visited the Oklahoma sidelines during the Sugar Bowl, which didn't exactly win favor with Husker fans. Later, Pederson did talk with Pelini about the head coaching job, but Pelini refused to call the brief hearing an interview.
Throughout the whole culture clash, fans took to the newspapers, offering their opinions about the original story and its anonymous sources, about Solich's firing, about the long delay in naming a new coach, about Pederson's qualifications in general.
Nebraskans poured out their feelings. Sister Mary Hlas of Omaha wrote: "Sincere thanks to all the coaches during the Bob Devaney, Tom Osborne and Frank Solich years of wonderful football. You made Nebraska football competitive but fun."
She added: "Athletic Director Steve Pederson and Chancellor Harvey Perlman want the football program to go in a different direction. It seems the spirit now is win at all costs. We will never win the Big 12 championship every year nor have a Heisman Trophy winner every year nor win a bowl game every year.
She concluded, "Maybe we need to re-read what Coach Osborne wrote in his book, More than Winning."
Tom Dolly, also of Omaha, charged that neither Perlman nor Pederson "understands, as Tom Osborne wrote and many of us believe, that football is about "more than winning' a game. It's about honesty and fair play and all that this philosophy implies."
Nebraska newspapers and TV stations took to placing reporters at airports to check on Pederson's secretive comings and goings as he searched for a head coach. Several professional coaches were apparently contacted about the job.
ESPN reported that Pederson tried to hire Houston Nutt, the football coach at the University of Arkansas. But the Razorbacks' shrewd AD Frank Broyles took care of that attempt. Broyles allowed he had heard Nebraska was offering Nutt a hefty salary increase and began raising money to sweeten Nutt's contract with Arkansas.
At this point, more than a month into the football crisis, AD Pederson broke his silence and called a press conference. He said he hadn't made an offer to Nutt or anyone else but that he was trying to wrap up his one-man search.
The explanation didn't do much for Nebraska fans who were searching for an end to what was becoming their worst Husker nightmare. Wrote Max Moore from Bellevue:" I'm wondering if anyone else saw Steve Pederson's Saturday press conference as one of a man in desperation. His pleas for unity, patience and understanding were almost pathetic."
Moore went on to say Pederson "complains that there is too much speculation and too many rumors regarding the search for a coach. Well, whose fault is that? Communication is the key. Pederson chose this path."
Finally, the day came. On Sunday, Jan. 11, some 41 days after he fired Solich, Pederson announced the new head coach: Bill Callahan, the man who led the Oakland Raiders to the Super Bowl in 2003 but followed that with a miserable regular season - and had been fired.
Some fans were delighted with the choice of a pro coach. Others thought Pelini or Gill should have been chosen. Still others saw serious problems with Callahan when he announced he would install his version of the West Coast offense, which stresses passing over running. On the other hand, some players welcomed the change.
No one, though, predicted what would happen the next day.
Pederson had said the new coach would hire his own staff. At the Jan. 11 press conference, Callahan said he wanted to treat the assistants with respect and dignity in recognition of the work they had done.
"I will make a decision as we move along in time here. The decision will be quick and swift as we move forward," Callahan said.
Quick and swift it was. Seven assistant coaches were fired in the Monday Massacre on Jan. 12. Several had been at UNL only a year. Others, like Ron Brown, had been coaching for the Huskers since 1987.
Only the recruiting coordinator, Scott Downing, was told he could keep his job. Turner Gill was offered a demotion from associate head coach and quarterbacks coach to receivers coach, a job he eventually decided to take.
Players were stunned. Some talked of transferring.
Sports writers seemed astounded. The headline in the Daily Nebraskan succinctly summarized reaction: "Callahan's decisions fuel media circus."
Wrote student staffer Mike Bruntz, "Solich supporters wondered how Athletic Director Steve Pederson possibly could fire a coach who had given so much to the program when all signs pointed to the team creeping in the right direction."
That was Storm I in the saga of the culture clash.
Then, "Criticism was muted when Bill Callahan finally became the warm body in the head coach's office, giving morning coffee drinkers in McCool Junction something to argue about," Bruntz wrote.
That was Lull I.
And then, "This move should raise more eyebrows than Solich's firing."
A new storm - Storm II.
Others seemed stoic. The Omaha World-Herald's Tom Shatel wrote, "Change is scary. Blindfold, anyone?"
Wrote the Journal Star's John Mabry, "It's kind of a blur how we ended up with Bill Callahan as NU's new football coach. It's kind of wild. It's kind of weird. I'm not sure if it's really all that "Wow!'"
Said AD Pederson, "I don't think Nebraskans will hold a grudge. I think they'll get over it."
What can we make of this clash of cultures? Nebraskans take pride in their football, and they like to win and, if they must lose, to lose in the "right way." They do not like the win-at-all-costs mentality they see at other universities. It's why they applaud the players of the opposing team at the end of each game and why they don't like to see their players or coaches misbehave.
Nebraskans are also conservative by nature. They are suspicious of change. But, above all, they don't like to be part of treating others unfairly.
Whether that will translate into a lingering hostility toward the athletic director and his programs remains to be seen. The letters to the editor continue, albeit at a slower pace.
Perhaps next fall's season will make it clear what will eventually win Nebraska fans' hearts.
