Nebraska Football: Mike Riley Seventh Best Big Ten Coach In Athlon Preseason Rankings
Mike Riley and his Nebraska Cornhuskers football team have a ways to go to get some national respect, if a preseason rankings list by Athlon is any indication.
It’s that time of year when Athlon Sports starts publishing their preseason rankings for all kinds of different positions around the college football world and late last week; the publication listed it’s ranking of the Big Ten’s coaches. Not surprisingly, Ohio State’s Urban Meyer and Michigan State’s Mark Dantonio are ranked first and third in the conference.
Those two coaches have had the most success of anyone in the Big Ten over the last few years. Jim Harbaugh being ranked second makes some sense, considering the success he’s had elsewhere and the turnaround he had at Michigan a year ago. The argument could be made he took over a talented team and got them to execute, but that’s neither here nor there.
Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz being ranked fourth isn’t shocking either considering he’s the longest tenured head coach in the conference and is coming off one of the best seasons in the Hawkeyes’ history. Where the list starts to go off the rails is Pat Fitzgerald ranked fifth, and James Franklin ranked sixth both ahead of Nebraska football’s Mike Riley.
Fitzgerald gets a buffer because Northwestern is a hard place to recruit to, but it needs to be pointed out the Wildcats haven’t exactly been the most consistent team in the Big Ten. While the 10-3 season in 2015 was certainly a big positive, Northwestern has suffered through losing seasons in three of the last five years. The Wildcats have had two 10 win seasons under the tutelage of Fitzgerald.
The selection of Penn State’s Franklin over Nebraska football’s Riley is even harder to defend. Athlon points to his record at Vanderbilt and then gives the affable coach a pass because of the sanctions put on the school before he got there. Still, the Nittany Lions are just 14-12 since Franklin took over. It should be pointed out Bill O’Brien who was coaching when these sanctions took the most toll, posted a 15-9 record in his two seasons at the school.
And that brings us to Nebraska football coach, Mike Riley, who ranks seventh out of 14 coaches in the league. Yes, Riley’s first year was disappointing to the extreme, as he posted a 6-7 record but even Athlon admits the Nebraska football team wasn’t “a team stocked with depth.”
The Nebraska football program also had to recover after Bo Pelini decided to undertake a “scorched earth” policy on his way out the door, poisoning the well by undermining the new coaching staff with his players and talking negatively about the environment around Nebraska football whenever possible.
There’s also the fact that before Riley became the Nebraska football coach he was helming one of the toughest jobs in college football in Oregon State. If Fitzgerald is getting a pass for Northwestern, then Mike Riley’s 93-80 record in Corvallis should get the same consideration. At least Northwestern has it’s proximity to Chicago going for it.
It’s interesting that Riley was ranked ahead of just two established Big Ten coaches in Indiana’s Kevin Wilson and Wisconsin’s Paul Chryst. The rest of the rankings, from 10 to 14 are all head men who are brand new to the conference. While it can seem as though we’re arguing semantics when talking about being ranked 5th or 7th in the head coach rankings, this list does seem to indicate Nebraska football is not back just yet.
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We’ve all known the Huskers need to have a better season than last, but it looks like Mike Riley needs to have a substantially better season if he wants to get respect from the national media. This is just one more way in which the Nebraska Cornhuskers’ football team will need to prove itself in 2016.