You might’ve reached the conclusion that Mike Riley was going to get fired as Nebraska’s football coach in September, when the Huskers lost to a MAC team (NIU) for the first time in program history, at home. You might have realized it when they struggled with Rutgers the next week, or during subsequent blowout losses to Ohio State and Wisconsin, actual good teams. You probably reached it by the time Nebraska gave up 54 points to Minnesota in a loss last week, when the Huskers became the first FBS team to allow the Gophers that many points since 2006.
Basically fired Mike Riley loses at Penn State, clinches second losing season in three years at Nebraska
Riley’s firing appears to be a formality.
You’ve almost certainly reached it now. The Huskers are 4-7 after getting disemboweled at Penn State on Saturday, 56-44. That doesn’t sound like a blowout, and on margin alone, it isn’t. But the score was 42-10 at halftime, so you get the idea.
Riley has now clinched a losing record to go on top of his 5-7 regular season in 2015, his first year. Last year’s nine-win campaign was fine, but Nebraska fired Bo Pelini when he averaged exactly that many wins. It’ll be the shock of the year if Riley is not fired shortly after the Huskers’ meaningless finale against Iowa, which the Huskers should lose.
For one thing, Nebraska’s just really bad.
It’s barely watchable. The offense entered the day 90th in the country in scoring, and the defense was 104th. The team has a few good players, like receiver Stanley Morgan Jr., and those guys deserve better than the team’s results this year.
But in the aggregate, 2017 Nebraska has no redeeming qualities. You can get away with underachieving for a while if you offer a fun style of play and appear to be getting better, but the Huskers don’t. They’ve stalled out.
Nebraska blog Corn Nation wrote three weeks ago:
Very few people argue anymore that Bill Callahan was the right guy to lead Nebraska football. And it seems that very few people are still trying to make the case for Mike Riley. In fact, nobody is buying into his version of the Huskers. Two weeks ago, the secondary ticket market for Nebraska football tickets collapsed. $135 tickets to the Ohio State game fell to under $20. The same thing happened this week for Northwestern tickets. The sellout streak isn’t at risk for this season; the tickets for this season were already sold.
Here’s how bad things are on one side of the ball:
For another thing, Scott Frost is out there, and fans are impatient.
Earlier this season, the Huskers fired athletic director Shawn Eichorst, the man who hired Riley. They replaced him with Washington State’s Bill Moos, who’s been publicly complimentary of UCF coach and former Nebraska quarterback Frost.
Relatedly, on Saturday at a UCF game in Philadelphia:
Nebraska isn’t the program it used to be, and I think most of its fans understand that even as they yearn for a return to glory. But this is not a program that should finish sub-.500 twice in three years ever, for any reason, and Riley’s now done that .
This remains a good job. Being Nebraska’s coach means a solid recruiting foundation, plenty of money, and a chance to compete in a winnable Big Ten West. Nebraska will fill it with someone good once it moves on from Riley, whether that’s Frost or not.
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