There has been a lot of comments about a new head coach. The head coach needs to have a good pedigree learning under a winner but smart enough to know people and how motivate them= both players and assistant coaches. This team has some good players- better than the forums comments sometimes say. I remember Bill Jennings appearing on the Sunday football show with Bob Zenner- saying we were losing because we just don't have the players.
Then a guy named Devaney came to town. He won that year, 1962, with the mostly the same players that Jennings ran down. Devaney kept two of Jenning's assistants and brought in four new coaches. Incidentally, the Huskers had some players that became greast NFL stars from that era.
From Wikipedia, maybe some insight about coaching prospects at Lincoln.
Wyoming[
edit]
Devaney's first college head coaching job was at the
University of Wyoming, where he went 35–10–5 (.750) in five seasons between 1957 and 1961. The
Cowboys won the
Sun Bowl in his second season and won or shared the
Skyline Conference title in his final four seasons in
Laramie. Following the 1961 season, he was hired at the
University of Nebraska–Lincoln at an annual salary of
$17,000.
[1]
Nebraska[
edit]
Devaney was the fourth choice of Nebraska's athletic director,
Tippy Dye.
Utah's
Ray Nagel and
Utah State's
John Ralston had turned down the job. Michigan State coach
Duffy Daugherty also turned down Dye, but recommended Devaney, his former assistant, for the Cornhuskers. When Devaney balked at leaving Wyoming for Nebraska, it was Daugherty who convinced him to accept the position because he could potentially win a national title at Nebraska, a goal that Wyoming was very unlikely to obtain. Devaney joined
Nebraska in 1962 and immediately reestablished the program as a force in the
Big Eight Conference. Prior to Devaney's arrival, Nebraska football had fallen on hard times with seven consecutive losing seasons. The
1961 team under
Bill Jennings went 3–6–1 overall and 2–5 in conference. After a winning tradition up until the early 1940s, Nebraska had only two winning seasons in the two decades preceding Devaney's arrival.
[2]
Devaney engineered an immediate turnaround with a 9–2 record in
1962 that included a victory in the
Gotham Bowl at
Yankee Stadium over the
Miami Hurricanes.