Nebraska Football Coaching Candidates: The good, bad and dark horses

Now that the Nebraska football team has fired former head coach Scott Frost, the search is officially on for his replacement. While Mickey Joseph has been named the interim head coach and has been said that he’ll have a chance to compete for the permanent role, it appears most people around the country believe the Huskers will look outside for the next head man.

While the rumor mill has been firing up quickly, it’s a safe bet that just who the Cornhuskers will pick is still a pretty big mystery. That’s even taking into account that Coastal Carolina AD Joe Moglia claimed that Chaunticleer’s head coach Jamey Chadwell was a top target.

Nebraska football going dark horse out of the gate?

Chadwell would definitely count as a darkhorse on this list. He’s had a ton of success in a short period of time with the Sun Belt squad. His career with Coastal Carolina has been an interesting one, as he took over from his now boss, Joe Moglia for one season in 2017 and posted just a 3-9 record.

Moglia then took the head coaching job back in 2018 but retired for good and handed the job back to Heyward in 2019 where he went just 5-7. However, that’s where things apparently started to click for the mullet-sporting head coach.

He went 11-1 in 2020 and actually got the Chanticleers ranked as high as number nine in the country. The following year, he went 11-2 and again had his squad in the Top 25 for most of the year, getting as high as 14th. He’s already got them off to a 2-0 start this year.

If there’s one big reason why Chadwell shouldn’t be the guy, it’s that he’s never been a head coach or even a coordinator in a Power 5 conference. It feels like if the Huskers are really looking at Chadwell, he’d be a backup plan more than anything else.

Good: Matt Campbell

There’s a reason why Matt Campbell’s name emerged so quickly for the Nebraska football opening. It’s widely believed that he’s been on Albert’s shortlist to replace Frost since last year.

In fact, it’s thought that Alberts was ready to go hard after the Iowa State head coach before he was talked off the ledge by Tom Osborne and some prominent boosters. It makes sense that he’d reapply take his spot at the top of the list.

There are obviously going to be some people who aren’t all that excited about a coach who has never won more than 9 games, and only hit that mark once with the Cyclones, but when it comes to the program in Ames, Iowa it’s about more than wins and losses in any given year.

Campbell took over the helm of one of the most historically moribund programs in all of college sports and could be on the cusp of doing something never done before at the school. His five straight winning seasons marks the first time ISU has managed to do that since 1923-1927. Should he get to seven wins this year, it would be the first time in the program’s history that it has had six straight winning campaigns.

And he didn’t just do it at Iowa State. He also went 35-15 at Toledo. Hardly a school that has a long history of championships.

He’s also someone who has routinely gotten Iowa State into the Top 25 and even the Top 10. It’s a safe bet he’d have an easier job recruiting for the Nebraska football program and those 7 and 8 win seasons could be transformed to 10, 11 or 12-win campaigns.

Bad: Ed Orgeron

It’s normal to start talking about someone like Ed Orgeron in some circles when a job like the Nebraska football team’s comes open. After all, the former LSU coach won a National Title just three years ago.

At the same time, it says something that he was fired by the Bayou Bengals just two years after that. There’s just something about Orgeron that tends to make him a darling for a half second, before people get very tired of him.

It’s also not like he’s boasted a sterling, consistent head coaching record. His first stint as a major college head coach was at Ole Miss where he went a positively Frostian 10-25 and 3-21 in the SEC in three years before being fired.

He then had a successful run as the interim head coach at USC, going 6-2 in 2013 but … was not kept on in a permanent role. It wasn’t until 2016 that he finally got another chance at a head job, catching on with LSU. His first few years were quite good, including 15-0 in 2019. However, he went just 11-11 in his final two seasons before being fired.

It wasn’t just the on-field performance that convinced LSU to move on and bring in Brian Kelly of all people. Kelly, it should be pointed out appears to be the polar opposite of Orgeron, which should tell anyone hoping he could take Nebraska football to the highest heights following Scot Frost’s departure.

Orgeron has spent a good deal of his career surrounded by whispers and sometimes loud declarative statements about recruiting violations. No thanks.

Dark Horse: Matt Rhule

When it comes to the darkest of dark horses for the Nebraska football team, the biggest name out there might be Carolina Panthers’ head coach Matt Rhule. Things have not gone particularly well for Rhule since he took over a struggling Panthers franchise, but that might be a good thing for Husker faithful who are wanting an offensive-minded coach who knows how to turn around bad programs.

Rhule is best know for turning around Baylor where he went 1-11 in his first year to 7-6 his second and then 11-3 in his final year in Waco, but that’ not the only place where he’s had success where few other head coaches have managed.

He was hired by the Bears after first doing quite the job at Temple. He went just 2-10 in his first season with the Owls, but then went 6-6 before posting two straight 10 wins seasons. Much like Campbell at Iowa State, it’s not even about the record but what he did and where he did it.

When Rhule posted his first 10-win season in 2015, it was the first time the Owls won that many games in a season since 1979. When he posted his second straight 10-win season, it was the first time they’d accomplished that in Temple history.

The big question here is whether or not the Panthers are done with Rhule or might give him at least one more season. There’s also obviously the question as to whether he’d want to return to the college ranks or look for a coordinator job in the NFL if he’s fired by Carolina.

Whether he’d even consider the Nebraska football program is a big question, making him a big dark horse.

Good: Dave Aranda

Ask a lot of people who is currently right at the top of their wish list for the Nebraska football program’s new opening, and Dave Aranda will get mentioned over and over and over again.

It certainly makes sense. The Baylor Bears’ head coach has built himself a career that has seen far more success than failure. And as his stint in Waco has shown, even when his charges struggle, they pick themselves up and dust themselves off in impressive fashion.

In his first season at Baylor, succeeding none other than Matt Rhule, he posted just a 2-7 record in the COVID year. However, in 2021 he really showed what he could do by leading the Bears to a 12-2 record and a Big 12 title. That run included a 27-14 victory over Oklahoma.

Aranda is also enticing because his background is as a defensive coordinator, which would be a nice change from the supposed offensive leanings of Scott Frost. Interestingly enough, his arrival could also mean that Mickey Joseph would stick around as the two coached together at LSU including the year the team won it’s most recent national title under Orgeron.

Aranda was the DC for LSU from 2016 to 2019 where his units never ranked worse than 32nd in the country in total defense. His numbers were even better when he was the defensive coordinator at Wisconsin – Big Ten experience – from 2013 to 2015. Wisconsin was ranked 9th, 9th and second in those three years in the country in total defense.

If there is a question mark about Aranda, it his lack of experience as a head coach. To some, he’ll seem quite a bit like Frost in that regard. However, his level of success and where he’s managed to do it shouldn’t be dismissed by Nebraska football fans.

Good: Chris Petersen

While most of the candidates I think have the best shot at landing the Nebraska football head coaching job have a decent amount but not a ton of experience as a head coach, (though Campbell has more experience than people realize) there is one man on this list that qualifies as a grizzled veteran.

It just so happens that Chris Petersen is the one guy on this list who has basically never had to struggle through the dark days of a 2 or 3 win season before getting his squads moving towards the promised land.

In fact, Peterson finished his first season as head coach of the Boise State Broncos with a 13-0 record, a Fiesta Bowl upset of Oklahoma and a Top 5 ranking. He followed up that debut season with records of 10-3, 12-1, 14-0, 12-1, 12-1, 11-2 and then a slip to “just” 8-4 in his final year in Boise.

In 2014, he took the helm of the Washington Huskies and – by his standards – struggled to 8-6 and 7-6 records. However, things then took off as he posted three straight 10 win seasons and three straight Pac-12 division titles.

If there are any strikes against Chris Peterson it is these:

He’s never really had to build a program up from the ground up. While it can be argued that he took Boise State to new heights, the Broncos were coming off eight straight winning seasons when he got the job because Dan Hawkins left for Colorado. Washington too might not have had massive success in the years directly proceeding Petersen, but they had posted four straight winning seasons and a 9-4 campaign right before he arrived.

The other big strike is that he “retired” from coaching after the 2019 season. After 30 years in coaching overall, whether he has the fire to get back into the grind could be a question that would trouble some Nebraska football fans.

Dark Horse: Lance Leipold

If the Nebraska football program hired Kansas Jayhawks second-year head coach Lance Leipold it would certainly be an interesting story.

Leipold, like Peterson has been around the coaching ranks for decades, starting out as a quarterbacks coach at Wisconsin-Whitewater the same year that Petersen started coaching QBs for UC-Davis (1987).

From there, the two men’s careers diverge quite widely. Leipold has spent the majority of his coaching career in the lower ranks of college football. For NCAA Division III Whitewater, the same place he started his career, he amassed an incredible 109-6 record over the course of eight seasons. He won six Division III championships in that span.

One reason he might be attractive to some Nebraska football fans is that he’s spent some time coaching in the state and for the Huskers. He was an assistant at Nebraska-Omaha from 1994 to 2000 and then for the Cornhuskers from 2001 to 2003. He then moved back to UNO for two years before taking the head job at Whitewater.

It wasn’t unti 2015 that he got his first head coaching job at the FBS level, taking over the Buffalo Bulls. After two straight losing seasons, he posted .500 or better records in the next four and was hired away by Kansas in 2021.

While he went just 2-10 with the Jayhawks last year, there was a noticeable improvement in the quality of play by his team compared to the last few decades in Lawrence. This year, he has KU out to a 2-0 start, including an upset win over West Virginia last week.

Obviously the biggest reason why Leopold would be an incredible long shot for the Nebraska football program is that it would be hard to argue for a man who right now, has just four wins as a Power 5 head coach.

Good: Dave Doeren

When it comes to Nebraska football fans who might not be hard core college football fans, the answer when Dave Doeren is brought up might be “who?” most often. That might also be something in favor of the Huskers, as the North Carolina State has largely toiled in relative obscurity in the ACC.

It’s actually quite surprising that he isn’t a bit more of a household name considering that he’s been at North Carolina State since 2013 and over that time has posted just two losing season. While the Wolfpack aren’t as downtrodden programs as Baylor, or Iowa State or Kansas, the school has never really been College Football Royalty and a record of 66-49 in the ACC school is certainly enough to get him on this list as the best potential Husker hires.

On the other hand, Doeren has never won more than nine games and has only done that three times, with the most recent occurrence being in 2021.

It’s possible that Doeren has hit his head on the ceiling of just how far he can take the Wolfpack in a conference that is largely dominated these days by the likes of Clemson. It’s also worth noting that North Carolina doesn’t have the financial resources that Nebraska is about to have once the massive new television contract goes into effect next season.

Still, Doeren has been at North Carolina State longer than Matt Campbell has been at Iowa State and has arguably been less consistently successful there. It feels like Doeren would be a safety valve more than someone at the top of the list, but he certainly wouldn’t be an awful hire.

Bad: Urban Meyer

There is not another coach on this list that has had more success than Urban Meyer. There is also not another coach on this list I want farther away from the Nebraska football program than this College Football Hall of Fame coach.

Urban Meyer has posted an incredible 187-32 record including an unheard of 83-9 record at Ohio State. However, there’s also the fact that the man is just a walking drama play.

Whether its real health problems that may or may not have forced him to “retire” from Florida, or what some believed were propped-up health excuses when he’s departed other jobs, Meyer isn’t someone that exudes a personality people can trust.

There’s also the baggage of his horrendous stint in Jacksonville, where it became apparent he was going to be fired well before the season was over. Then there was the weird stories about how he treated his players and coaches.

Granted, it’s possible Meyer just isn’t a fit for the NFL. I’m making the case that the Rhule could be good for the Nebraska football program. But there’s more with Meyer.

There’s also the rather bad taste that he left in people’s mouths in his final years with Ohio State when it came out that he might have been covering for an abusive position coach even after being told by the coach’s wife what was going on.

Meyer has built programs wherever he’s gone. That’s not debatable. I simply do not wand all the drama that comes with him. And I’m not convinced he’d have the patience to build Nebraska up from its current state. Hiring him and watching him leave two years later, job undone, would be a massive blow.

Dark Horse: Mark Stoops

Fun fact that might confuse many a Nebraska football fan. Mark Stoops never coached at Oklahoma. It’s natural to think that all three Stoops brothers, Bob, Mike and Mark walked the Sooners’ sidelines but it turns out that Mark has forged a very different path than his famous bros.

That doesn’t mean that this Stoops brother doesn’t deserve some mention as the possible Huskers head coach.

Like so many other coaches on this list, Mark has proven that he knows what it takes to build a program. Unlike most of the other guys on the list, he’s been a head coach at exactly one school and that is Power 5 school at that.

That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have plenty of assistant coaching experience at other big time programs. He’s been a defensive assistant at Miami, Arizona and Florida state before being named the man in charge of turning around a Kentucky Wildcats program that has largely been the laughingstock of the SEC for decades.

In fact, the paths that Stoops and Campbell have taken at their schools are very similar for a number of reasons, not the least of which that it’s not all that easy to recruit to UK when you’re going up against the likes of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and even most recently Texas A&M and Ole Miss.

Still, Stoops has posted a winning record in five of his last six seasons coming into 2022. He’s also off to a 2-0 start this year and just posted a big upset of Florida.

The biggest reason he’s a dark horse on this list is because it’s hard for me to see him wanting to start all over with the Nebraska football program. He’s got things rolling in Lexington and that’s become “his” program. He might prefer that to walking in the shadows of guys like Devaney and Osbrorne.