November 25, 2007

Callahan fired at Nebraska, LSU's Pelini contacted

Interim AD Tom Osborne fired Nebraska head coach Bill Callahan during a five-minute meeting on Saturday.

"You have to play with intensity. These coaches tried very hard to have that happen. Yet sometimes you didn't see the effort and intensity you like to see in a football game," Osborne said.

After being named interim AD, Osborne met with Callahan and told him that he was ulitimately responsible for the team's and coaches performance and that he would be fired if the Huskers had a losing record.

Callahan's four-year record was 27-22 (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.

Under the terms of his contract, Callahan will be paid more than $3.1 million. The Nebraska assistant coaches will be paid out through January 2009 and have been asked to stay on to assist with recruiting until a new head coach makes decision on the Huskers staff.

Anticipating this move, Osborne hired coaching search firm Baker-Parker and Associates several weeks ago to assist in finding candidate to coach NU. The Lincoln-Journal reports that LSU defensive coordinator Bo Pelini has already been contacted about the Huskers' position, but Osborne wouldn't put a timeline on the search other than to say it would be conducted as quickly as possible.

In the next few days, I’ll probably talk to four or five people. I’d like to move it along as fast as I can because recruiting is really critical at this time, but I can’t guarantee anything. It’s going to take two parties to do this thing. And then of course that coach whoever it may be will interview people here. He will probably have some ideas of his own as to what he wants and we’ll get settled as quickly as we can.

Posted by Kevin Donahue