He must be getting pressure from the administration or boosters and that's why he released this statement, if it was just pressure from the fans I can't imagine him caring enough to have one of his assistants type a letter.
He's trying to defend his hire (which he has to lest he lose his own job) and keep the fans in the stands. I think that's all this really boils down to.
Ya, I don't get it. Rebuild?? Why the hell are we rebuilding? There was plenty of talent here to win 7-10 games this year
This is the most shocking part of it all. I think most people, myself included, believed this was not a rebuild hire. Many of us felt that Nebraska had hit a ceiling and just needed the last push to get over the edge.
I expected growing pains. I believed a 6-7 win season was possible but that we wouldn't sink much lower than that. I believe even the coaches didn't foresee this, particularly when Riley said around the time of the BYU game that this was the most "talented" team he ever coached. If that's the case, why have they performed so poorly?
The other side to this is that completely changing coaching staffs and a culture does not always work as fast as you want it to. In hindsight, any expectations of winning 9 or 10 games was probably wrong.
I think what we're seeing right now is a confluence of everything we all chose to ignore - the possibility that the talent, coaching, culture and expectations were not going to be even remotely on the same page.