For some college football programs, the first year for a new coach is usually a rough one.
Most programs that hire new coaches are coming off a string of bad seasons with talent that is not competitive enough to be part of a quick turnaround. While some coaches have engineered worst-to-first scenarios in the past, the odds are generally not good for such a thing to happen.
At Nebraska, the hiring of Bo Pelini means there have been only five head coaching changes in the last 46 years. And with one notable exception, the first year has actually been a positive one in terms of wins and losses.
When Bob Devaney came on board in 1962, he took over for Bill Jennings, who could not put together a winning season in five years (15-34-1) and had the worst year in school history when his 1957 team went an unthinkable 1-9. Nebraska, in fact, had gone seven straight years without a winning season before Devaney assumed the mantle.
That first year under Devaney, the Huskers came out red hot, winning their six games. They lost their first game against Missouri (the game which, coincidentally, started their current string of home sellouts), but won three of their last four, including an exciting 36-34 win over Miami (Fla.) in the Gotham Bowl.
Devaney retired after the 1972 season, one year after the Huskers won back-to-back national championships. The 1972 team went 9-2-1 and won the Orange Bowl (led by Heisman Trophy-winning wingback Johnny Rodgers), and Devaney’s hand-picked successor, Tom Osborne, took over the following year.
While Osborne wasn’t taking over a losing football program, he was taking over one that had lost a ton of talent from a program that had finished in the top four in each of the three previous seasons. All things considered, going 9-2-1 in 1973 and finishing in the top 10 in the Associated Press poll wasn’t a bad start.
Like Devaney, Osborne lost his first matchup with Missouri and Oklahoma (the Sooners’ 27-0 shutout was one of only two Osborne experienced in his 25-year, 307-game career). Before all was said and done, though, Osborne finished as one of the greatest coaches of all time and closed out his career by winning 60 of 63 games in his last five years and leading the Huskers to three national titles in four years.
Such was the situation when Osborne hand-picked his successor, a former fullback for Devaney and long-time assistant coach Frank Solich. Solich practically matched the first-year effort of his predecessor, going 9-4 in 1998. Three of the Huskers’ four losses that year were by a touchdown or less, with the fourth a 10-point loss to Kansas State that marked the Wildcats’ first win over Nebraska in three decades.
Solich had a chance to win a national title in 2001, but fell out of favor and was eventually fired in a controversial move, replaced by Bill Callahan. Unfortunately, Callahan was unable to continue the run of first-year success when he came on board for the 2004 season. The Huskers actually lost four of their last five games that year and finished the year 5-6, marking the first time since the pre-Devaney era that the Huskers ended the year with a losing record.
Like Devaney, new coach Bo Pelini will have a chance to turn around a program coming off a losing record. In 2007, the Huskers suffered through one of the worst years in the past five decades, and Pelini will have a chance to take over a team that went 5-7 and, like Devaney, turn them into a winning program once again.
Husker fans will get their first opportunity to see the Pelini-led Huskers in action with the annual Red-White Spring Game on Saturday, April 19 at Memorial Stadium. Get your tickets for the annual Husker scrimmage now at Ticket Express –- where no Husker home game is ever sold out.
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