Tom Osborne wanted Frank Solich, his longtime assistant and former Huskers' fullback, to inherit his football dynasty after the 1997 season. And if Nebraska didn't want Solich, Osborne wouldn't retire.
Nebraska's power brokers did want Solich, though the love didn't last long. After Solich's promotion, the Huskers barely missed a beat. They weren't reeling off national championships but they won 42 games in his first four seasons, a four-year win total Osborne didn't achieve until his sixth through ninth seasons.
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Two years later, Solich was gone. The Godfather's hand-picked successor was gone after winning only seven games in 2002 and nine games in 2003. Nebraska fired Frank Solich so they could hire Bill Callahan, who was fired by the Oakland Raiders days earlier and became the first Nebraska head coach without direct ties to the university in more than 40 years. And he was the first Nebraska head coach to suck at his job in more than 40 years.
What were the worst college football firings of the last 20 years?
Unlike my best college football and college basketball hires since 2000, I didn't rank the dumbest college football firings. Dumb is dumb and ranking different levels of dumb seemed…dumb.
Jeff Jagodzinski
Entering the 2008 season, Jeff Jagodzinski would become the 14th Boston College head coach to coach at least two seasons. The 13 multi-year coaches before him averaged 10.5 total wins in their first two seasons.
Jagodzinski won 20 games in his first two seasons…and then was fired because athletics director Gene DeFilippo acted like an insecure child.
After 2008, Jagodzinski interviewed for the New York Jets head-coaching vacancy, which DeFilippo warned would result in his dismissal as Boston College head coach. DeFilippo kept his word, firing his highly successful head coach the next day.
Boston College's most wins over a two-year period since then: Fifteen.
Phillip Fulmer
Only five FBS teams won more games than Tennessee from 1993-2008. Sixty-four FBS teams won more games than Tennessee from 2009-19.
In the 11 years since Phillip Fulmer "stepped down" with 151 career wins and the program's only national championship since 'Nam, the Vols have burned through four coaches and become a national punchline.
Fulmer's successor, a 33-year-old who coached Reggie Bush and Matt Leinart and had six total years of college experience, won seven total games in one season, the first of six straight seasons with seven or fewer wins for the Vols. Fulmer failed to win eight games only twice in 16 years.
Glen Mason
Minnesota fired a four-decade college coaching veteran with 123 career wins so they could hire an NFL tight ends coach with zero college football coordinator or head-coaching experience.
Glen Mason cleaned up Jim Wacker's mess and, for the first time since a blip of success in the 1960s, brought national college football relevance to Minneapolis. He won 33 games from 2002-05, the most of any coach in program history over four years, and was a quick-trigger dismissal after blowing a 31-point lead in the 2006 Insight Bowl.
Minnesota didn't fire Mason to hire Jerry Kill, P.J. Fleck, or another real coach. They fired Mason to hire Brewster, who spectacularly flopped in four seasons.
Ruffin McNeill
East Carolina players were "furious" and demanded "an explanation" for the "bad decision" to fire Ruffin McNeill after a five-win 2015 season.
Two years after leading ECU to their second-ever 10-win season (part of 26 wins from 2012-2014, tying the most for any head coach over a three-year period in program history), McNeill was fired. He was fired for a five-win season, which his replacement, Duke offensive coordinator Scott Montgomery, couldn't achieve in any of his three years.
Ralph Friedgen
Maryland sucked for a long time. From 1986, the year after the second of two straight nine-win seasons, through 2000, Maryland won 60 total games.
Sixty wins in 16 years, the 86th-most in college football over that time.
Maryland didn't suck once Ralph Friedgen returned to his alma mater as head coach in 2001. He led the Terps to 31 wins in his first three seasons and 75 over 10 years. That wasn't good enough for athletics director Kevin Anderson, who announced on Nov. 10, 2010, Friedgen would return for the 2011 season. One month later, Anderson fired Friedgen despite an eight-win regular season
Maryland sucks again now.
Dave Wannstedt
I believe Todd Graham and Paul Chryst would've won at Pittsburgh. Losing both to other Power Five jobs in less than three years is garbage luck and set back the program. Still, neither should've been hired.
Dave Wannstedt won just 16 total games in his first three seasons as head coach (2005-07) before turning the corner with nine, 10, and seven wins over the next three years, respectively. That wasn't enough for Pitt, who fired Wannstedt after the seven-win 2010 regular season.
The Panthers haven't won more than eight games since.
Mark Mangino
Kansas' implosion began during Mark Mangino final season. It began on Oct. 17, 2009, the first of 97 losses in 115 games for a program that won the Orange Bowl 22 months earlier. However, that loss to Colorado wasn't the cause of death, which almost certainly would've been avoided if Kansas retained Mark Mangino amidst player mistreatment reports, which Mangino and players have questioned.
Mangino's inclusion on this list comes with the assumption he didn't cross the line with players. If he did, it was a smart firing, not a dumb one. If he didn't cross the line, firing him to hire Turner Gill (and then Charlie Weis and David Beaty) was one of the most disastrous decisions in college football history.
Mike Leach
Similarly to Mangino, if Mike Leach abused Adam James, he deserved to be fired. If he didn't, which Leach has repeatedly claimed in legal filings over the last decade, Leach's dismissal and Texas Tech's subsequent hiring of Tommy Tuberville shoved the program from an annual Big 12 contender into a pit of mediocrity from which they still haven't escaped.