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Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Nebraska Coaching Search Update

A few "updates" on the circus that is Nebraska Football right now:

**EDIT: It is now being reported that Tom Osborne is going out on the recruiting trail. This would seem to jive with what we are reporting here. I don't see why T.O. would be stopping his interviewing to go out and recruit if he doesn't already feel comfortable with who he has found. Perhaps it will be announced after the SEC Title Game. This would seem to make sense.

1. It is being reported by several places now that they are not, in fact, going to announce anything at the players meeting today at 4:00pm.

2. A contact for Heavy Soul is reporting that he has two very "plugged in" sources saying that Pelini is indeed the guy that will be the head coach at the University of Nebraska. However, working out the contract has been more of a challenge than they originally thought. So the reports that we have been hearing about knowing who the coach is by tomorrow may not, in fact, be true. We might not hear anything official on this until Monday.

3. The Sporting News is reporting that Jim Grobe from Wake Forest was indeed interviewed by Tom Osborne and Harvey Pearlman in Atlanta.

3. All that said, and as I elluded to in the phantom post about the Parker Executive Search firm, all this could be for naught. This is the firm that Minnesota used when searching for a basketball coach this past spring. Needless to say, NO ONE--including Kentucky--knew that Tubby Smith would end up at Minnesota. In fact, Tubby got on a plane (if memory serves correctly) the day after UK lost in the second round of the NCAA (AGAIN) and was announced that afternoon as the Gopher's new coach. The media found out maybe two hours before he was officially announced. An even more extreme example was at Iowa State last year. When ISU called a press conference to announce the new football coach, no one knew who the hell the hired. This search firm is very good, and very professional. There is a hell of a chance T.O. interviewed people in Atlanta that not only no one knows about, and we'll never know about.

Parker specializes in finding candidates that are available, and no one knows about it yet. I'm sure that if people would have known that Tubby Smith was interested in leaving Kentucky, a lot more schools would have called about him. Instead, Minnesota got him LITERALLY without even interviewing him.

And that is the other thing Parker specializes in: they find out everything a candidate wants out of a contract and how much the school looking is willing to put in it, background checks, checking on references, etc. They do all the annoying (and time-consuming) busy work for their clients. So even if they don't have the magic candidate that no one knows about, Osborne and NU could just be using their firm to free up time on their end to be getting other things done. Which makes sense. I have heard a lot of people on the radio and on message boards wondering "why the hell would Nebraska hire this search firm if Pelini is their guy and he wants to come here?" They provide a lot more services than just finding people to interview.

So there's our update...at this point, if you were to ask Heavy Soul, it would say that due to some VERY good inside information, Bo Pelini will be striking fear into Big XII offenses and officials come this time next year.

Stay tuned...

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Comments:
This is some quality, #58 reporting we have here...possibly even #57ish.

-Tha Brotha
 
And the thing is, this isn't a "guess," or a "hunch." This real deal shit here.

I think it vaults us into the 40's.
 
I just got an email with the following attachment, it's an interesting insight into search firms, and totally supports what GA said about Tubby Smith:

From an email sent to the World Herald:

I've already given my two-cents worth on whom I'd like to see hired as the next Head Coach of the Cornhuskers, that being Bill Cowher. But I want to add one other piece to this puzzle. And it will be one very few people have likely thought about.

Oddly enough, I'm a professional recruiter… meaning, that I make my living doing EXACTLY what they do at Parker Executive Search (PES), there in Atlanta. I can say without much hesitation that IF Perlman and Osborne were going to hire either Gill or Pelini, they wouldn't be using a firm like this. They'd be doing everything on their own, without any outside help. They'd be able to have the University's Attorneys draw the contracts and it would be a done deal… simple and quick. Firms like PES are brought into the picture ONLY when you need a bit of 'stealth' work done because you have your sights set on a much bigger fish, but DON'T want the rest of the world to know about it. In other words, everything we do in regards to the search and everything we know about candidate is highly confidential… clear down to who's picking whom up at the airport and at what time, or even what type of latte a candidate likes.

So as a 'recruiter' my guess is that we as Cornhusker faithful are being 'played' a bit here, and that at the end of the day a lot of what's happening -now- will be a total smoke-screen for something far more major that's going to happen in the next few days. (And quite frankly, if I were in Dr. Tom's shoes… it's exactly how I'd be doing it.) Bottom line… don't be at all surprised if out of the blue a HUGE name just 'sort of appears' and they've suddenly been hired… and my guess is it WON'T be ANY of the names that are being bantered about right now. As I said, firms like PES aren't used UNLESS somebody is trying their hardest to hire a person that don't want anybody to know they actually have their sights set on.

So folks… just stay tuned. I'd say things are just beginning to get interesting.

Richard Walthers
Shelby, N.C.
 
The same thing happened the last time the huskers' hired a coach. Everyone immediately pointed to Pelini, then there was the Houston Nutt soap opera, which if I remeber right involved planes and secret meetings, and in the end Bill C. is named head coach.

Also, is there any chance that Les Miles would go to Michigan and that Pelini (if he really is highly coveted) would remain at LSU as head coach?
 
There is a big difference to now and before though, napa. Pederson was a (famously) "one-man search committee." That's why all that stuff with Nutt was so public. And I don't think for one second that Pederson actually considered Pelini for the job. I think he interviewed Gill and Pelini strictly for public perception and to make the fans happy (which he obviously didn't since no one was happy with that search in any way imaginable). But you're totally right that I think that 60 or 70% of Husker fans wanted Bo hired after Frankie was let go.

And I disagree with what the guy who wrote to the OWH. I mean, he is right to an extent that they can help come up with total stealth names and keep it stealth with the media/public. However, they really do get used to do all the crap that T.O./Nebraska doesn't want to do.

Case in point, again, was Kentucky. While the media and public focused on the Billy Donovan saga and dance, Parker Executive Search was doing all the background checks and such on Billy Clyde Gillespie. So when Donovan publically said he wasn't coming, Mitch Barnhardt made one phone call to Gillespie (he doesn't have an agent), and he was on the next plane to Lexington.

I'm personally not still sold on Pelini all the way, but I stand by what our sources are telling us. Pelini is the guy, and has been for a while now.
 
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