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Nebraska football fires head coach Mike Riley

By Leigh Oleszczak

MINNEAPOLIS, MN - NOVEMBER 11: Nebraska Cornhuskers head coach Mike Riley walks off the field after the Big Ten Conference game between the Nebraska Cornhuskers and the Minnesota Golden Gophers on November 11, 2017 at TCF Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Gophers defeated the Cornhuskers 54-21. (Photo by David Berding/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
MINNEAPOLIS, MN - NOVEMBER 11: Nebraska Cornhuskers head coach Mike Riley walks off the field after the Big Ten Conference game between the Nebraska Cornhuskers and the Minnesota Golden Gophers on November 11, 2017 at TCF Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Gophers defeated the Cornhuskers 54-21. (Photo by David Berding/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images) /
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Mike Riley, the head coach of Nebraska football beginning in 2015, has been relieved of his coaching duties. The news broke on Saturday morning.

Nebraska football had just been walloped by the Iowa Hawkeyes by a score of 56-14 in Lincoln. While Mike Riley seemed like a really nice guy, “nice guys” aren’t always the answer at head coach, especially for a program that demands success.

The hiring of Mike Riley back in 2015 seemed a bit strange, as he really wasn’t a big name coach. He had spent the previous 14 years at Oregon State as their head coach.

In Riley’s first season as Nebraska’s head coach, the Cornhuskers couldn’t close out games. They lost their first season opener in 29 years on a Hail Mary by BYU and continued to find ways to lose throughout that season.

Things looked like they might be turning themselves around when the Huskers beat UCLA in the Foster Farms Bowl that season, even with a 5-7 record. The first year of the Mike Riley experiment wasn’t great, but fans were willing to give him another year, as not many coaches have a ton of success in their first year.

The 2016 season was a good one for Nebraska football, as they jumped out to a 7-0 record. They hit a bump in the road down the stretch to finish 2-4 and got pummeled in the Holiday Bowl by Tennessee.

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From the start, the 2017 season looked bad. Nebraska almost got defeated by Arkansas State in the very first week. Two weeks later, they got beaten by Northern Illinois, a Mid-American Conference school.

In their final three games of the season, it was clear that Riley’s team had quit on him. The defense surrendered 166 points during that span and the offense only mustered up 79 points (with most of that coming in garbage time of the Penn State game).

So to sum up, the Mike Riley era of Nebraska football was a bad one. He could go down as the worst head coach the program has ever had and now the Cornhuskers have to get this next hire right.

Obviously the biggest name out there that Huskers fans want is current UCF head coach Scott Frost. Frost quarterbacked the Huskers in 1996 and 1997 and would be a tremendous hire. He’d get the fan base fired up again and that’s been hard to do during this Riley era.

Nebraska fans aren’t used to watching bad football in Lincoln and that’s what they were “treated” to during Mike Riley’s tenure. It’s crucial that Bill Moos get this next hire right because the Huskers need to go back to being a football powerhouse.

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