Four years ago, Cal's Jeff Tedford was a bit of a hot name. The Detroit Free Press' Michael Rosenberg thinks he's a very viable candidate for the opening in Ann Arbor. Why not here?

And for the love of technology, would someone teach me how to link this properly. I'm trying to add a little professionalism here.

EDIT: There you go, big cat.

Labels: Bo Pelini, Coaching Search, Nebraska Football Coaching Search, Suck it Creighton

EDIT: From ESPN.com:

According to a source with knowledge of the search, Nebraska has whittled its candidate pool to two people and is close to announcing a new coach. Speculation centers on Buffalo coach Turner Gill as the leading candidate to replace Bill Callahan. A source close to Wake Forest indicated that coach Jim Grobe interviewed with Nebraska in Atlanta on Nov. 26. The source thinks Grobe has a good shot at the job. Apparently, LSU defensive coordinator Bo Pelini didn't knock A.D. Tom Osborne's socks off during the interview and doesn't feel good about it. The school will also interview Brian Kelly from Cincinnati and perhaps TCU's Gary Patterson.

This is not vibing with what we're hearing, obviously. We trust our contact quite a bit, so it means (obviously) one of two things: our contact is being misled, which we doubt, or ESPN is purposely being misled. Although I have personally always thought Turner Gill would get the nod, Heavy Soul is sticking with our source on this one.

Got an update today...sounds like nothing really has changed, although it is within the realm of possibility things could:

"Unless there are contractual snags Pelini will be hired. Therefore I won't say it's 100% because that could happen (although I believe that's already been taken care of and we will know Sunday or Monday once the SEC game is over and Bo can hop on a plane to Lincoln)."

"I will say this...TO is keeping quiet on any final decision he has made...even to those who have helped him in big ways with this search."

So there you have it. We're sticking with our source, although there is still a slight--SLIGHT--chance things could change between today and next week.

Stay tuned to Heavy Soul for the latest, and most up-to-date Husker info ANYWHERE!

Labels: Bo Pelini, Coaching Search, Nebraska Football, Tom Osborne, Who Needs Rivals Message Boards When You Get The Heavy Soul Free?

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...

Labels: Bo Pelini, Coaching Search, Jim Grobe, Nebraska Football, Parker Executive Search, Tom Osborne, Turner Gill