Nebraska fires Callahan
Published 12:06 am Sunday, November 25, 2007
Under coach Tom Osborne, Nebraska was one of the bullies of college football, a program to be feared.
Under coach Bill Callahan, the Cornhuskers were too often the ones getting pushed around.
After watching Callahan’s Huskers for five games, Osborne, in his new role as interim athletic director, decided it was time for change.
He fired Callahan during a five-minute meeting Saturday. The move was expected after the Huskers finished 5-7 with Friday’s 65-51 loss at Colorado, a game in which they squandered an 11-point halftime lead by allowing 34 consecutive points.
“We used to be a team people hated to play,” Osborne said during a news conference, “because they felt it for two or three weeks.”
It will cost the university more than $3.1 million to buy out Callahan’s contract, which was to run through the 2011 season. The new contract was signed in September before the firing of athletic director Steve Pederson, who hired Callahan.
Callahan left the football complex without speaking to reporters. His four-year record was 27-22, with three of those wins coming against opponents in the division formerly known as I-AA. He was 15-18 against the Big 12, 0-7 against top 10 opponents and 3-10 against the Top 25. He was 0-17 in games in which the Huskers trailed at halftime.
The Huskers lost three home games for the first time since 1968 and allowed 40 points or more in six games for the first time, leading to heavy criticism of defensive coordinator Kevin Cosgrove.
Osborne said he had told Callahan in late October that the coach would lose his job if he didn’t have a winning record this season. The Huskers kept losing, and losing big, with five defeats by at least 18 points. That included a 76-39 embarrassment at Kansas, the most points ever allowed by Nebraska.
LSU defensive coordinator Bo Pelini and Buffalo coach Turner Gill are the names mentioned most often to lead a program that was once one of college football’s most prestigious.
Ole Miss dumps Orgeron
A dreadful final month on and off the field cost Mississippi’s Ed Orgeron his job, even though his bosses had said his future was secure.
Orgeron was fired Saturday, a day after the Rebels lost 17-14 to rival Mississippi State to finish 3-9 and winless in the Southeastern Conference for the first time since 1982. Off the field, Ole Miss was embarrassed by the disciplining of 20 players who stole from hotels the Rebels were staying in on Friday nights.
“I told him that the chasm had grown too deep to go forward into next year,” Ole Miss athletic director Pete Boone said Saturday.
Orgeron is the second SEC coach in the past two seasons to be fired after just three years, joining Mike Shula who was let go by Alabama last year.
Orgeron, who finished 10-25 at Ole Miss, was a promising choice when Chancellor Robert Khayat and Boone hired him to replace David Cutcliffe in 2004. Cutcliffe went 4-7 in his last season, his only losing year in six with the Rebels.
Orgeron came to Oxford from Southern California, where he was defensive line coach for two national championship teams and had built a reputation as one of the best recruiters in the country.
Darnell takes over Aggies
Texas A&M defensive coordinator Gary Darnell was named interim coach Saturday, a day after Dennis Franchione resigned.
Darnell joined Franchione’s staff in 2006 after serving eight seasons as coach at Western Michigan. He had been out of coaching a year when Franchione hired him.
Franchione stepped down after the Aggies defeated Texas 38-30 at Kyle Field on Friday. A&M (7-5, 4-4 Big 12) went 32-28 in Franchione’s five seasons, but went 19-21 in Big 12 games. The Aggies won their first three games in 2007, but the season began to spiral downward in a 34-17 loss to Miami. A week later, a newspaper reported that Franchione’s personal assistant had been sending out e-mails with inside information about the program to boosters for a fee. Byrne admonished Franchione and ordered him to shut down his personal Web site.
