Friday, June 09, 2006

More Kernels of Corn From Nebraska

No, we're not quite done talking about Nebraska. The Kansas City Star's excellent series on the 10-year anniversary of the Big 12 Conference rolls along with a look at Cornhusker fans who have aimed their wrath at athletic director Steve Pederson. He's the guy who made the difficult decision to fire Frank Solich as coach after the team went 9-3 in 2003. It took 40 days to find Solich's replacement and tensions escalated each day until Bill Callahan arrived in Lincoln. Despite his glossy record, Solich's firing was not surprising because the creation of the superconference has upped the stakes, with veteran coaches Larry Smith (Missouri) and R.C. Slocum (Texas A&M) among those who have been fired. While Callahan seems to have won over the fans for the moment, he lost one of his stellar recruits in offensive lineman Rodney Picou, who is academically ineligible (some registration).

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Nice story, poorly edied albeit.

Oh, and pretty old news. This might have been a good story say the week after the Kansas loss, and it's pretty well known across the conference that a lot of fans have no love for Pederson.