There used to be a time when a coach needed a losing season to warrant a pink slip.
There used to be a time when university officials had to get permission to talk to a coach under contract with a different program.
There used to be a time when collegiate athletics had an innocence about it, a time when the games were more important than the politics that are currently being bandied about.
Welcome to the real world. Welcome to the NCAA, circa 2003.
Frank Solich was canned by Nebraska over the weekend, just days after a convincing defeat of Colorado. The firing came after a 9-3 record and a potential trip to the Holiday Bowl for the Cornhuskers.
The reasoning? Oh, the program wasn’t going in the right direction, just two years after Nebraska battled for the national championship at the Rose Bowl.
“We’re not a win-at-all costs program,” Nebraska athletics director Steve Pederson told The Washington Post Monday. “But the by-product of excellence in every facet of your program is winning. I don’t apologize for having high expectations. I think high expectations are a part of a great university. The most disappointing thing you can every deal with are no expectations.”
What does Pederson want? Does he expect the program to win 10 games every year, especially playing in an outdated offense — the option — that proves to be less and less successful every year? That’s not Solich’s fault. It’s the 1980s any more. No team can dominate like Nebraska once did.
Anyone who thinks that is either too jaded or has been sitting under a rock for the past 10 years.
The collegiate game is adding parity every season. How else can anyone explain that only a handful of teams can escape every season with less than two losses?
The bar in Nebraska has been set too high for the modern game, a time where a nine-win season is an accomplishment.
It’s too bad Solich paid with his livelihood for a program that seems to think much too highly of itself.
Note to new Nebraska head coach: Get rid of the option offense and don’t read the newspapers in Lincoln.
Then there’s the Tommy Tuberville situation, the one at Auburn that seems so laughable, so embarrassing, that Tiger officials were probably wishing by now that it were just a bad nightmare.
The skinny of the situation is that school president William Walker and athletics director David Housel met with Louisville coach Bobby Petrino secretly, telling no one, including Louisville’s brass. Their intention: Bring Petrino into the fold, replacing Tuberville.
Naturally, word got out of the secret rendezvous, and suffice to say, Walker and Housel were apologetic. Apologetic, though, to the point that either could lose his job? Probably not, but both should step down and in the process, acknowledge their mishap.
Tuberville stayed, but a coach with less of a mental makeup would have taken off in a heartbeat. Trust is certainly an issue now and the black eye the school has received from it probably doesn’t help either.
What’s most concerning about Auburn’s screw up is the message it will send to the rest of the nation. No, not that coaches are necessarily replaceable, but that respect has shriveled so much to the point coaches are lower than players.
Fortunately, it seems as though the Pacific-10 Conference is on an island all its own. Oregon’s Mike Bellotti, USC’s Pete Carroll and California’s Jeff Tedford all are revered for the jobs they’ve done at their respective programs. Karl Dorrell is still learning but is showing the dignity that’s deserved at UCLA, while Bill Doba has been around at Washington State long enough to show he is a man of strong will.
Last and certainly the newest, Mike Stoops’ hiring at Arizona reflects highly on the conference and the jobs that schools have done to ensure personnel of the highest caliber.
After all, it’s not easy being a college coach these days.