Welcome, Husker Nation, to the Carriker Chronicles, and you’ve probably noticed I look even sexier than normal! I know, right? I didn’t even know that was possible. The beard is gone: my wife won the war. Let’s be honest – it was inevitable. I was just holding on as long as I could. But I looked in the mirror and I look like I’m 22 again! So I’m kinda diggin’ it. Full disclosure: I do feel a little naked, but I think I’ll get used to it; I hope you guys at home do as well.

I want to talk about some rankings that have been released lately. I want to talk about the ESPN College Football Power Index poll, and I want to talk about this 247Sports ranking that they put out. They actually ranked all the power college football coaching jobs across America. They ranked every college football coaching job in America. I want to talk about these two polls.

I also want to talk about this possible recruiting department that Mike Riley has been talking about, and I’m personally excited about it if it comes to fruition.

Let’s start with the College Football Power Index poll. This is a preseason poll. What this is, it’s an automated ranking system to measure the strength of a team going forward. What it is not: it is not a projection of how many wins a team will have, because that’s largely dictated by strength of schedule. It is also not a projection of who will make the playoff.

It has four major components: the last four seasons’ performance on offense, defense, and special teams, with the most amount of emphasis being put on the most recent season; the returning starters at those same offense, defense, and special teams; they take the four-year average of your recruiting rankings according to the four major recruiting services across America; and head coaching tenure as well. This produces a predicted value on offense, defense, and special teams which represents the number of points each unit would be expected to contribute to the team scoring margin versus an average FBS team on a neutral field. They ranked all the teams across the country and I’m going to talk about the Big Ten teams. I’m going to skip the first six teams on this list, the bottom six: you’ve got Purdue, Rutgers. You know, the usual suspects.

I’m going to start at number 8, which is Michigan State. I was surprised. This is a team with multiple recent Big Ten championships, and it’s also a team that has been to a college football playoff recently, a Rose Bowl championship recently, but they had a rough year last year and a rough end to their season two years ago, so they’re at number 8. Gotta be honest: I’m surprised, but I don’t really care beyond that.

Number 7 is Nebraska. We’re a little bit lower on this than I’d hoped we would be and even thought we would be. We’re 57th in the country – they ranked everyone across the country – so we’re 57th in the country, which 128 teams in America were just below that median line and we’re 7th out of 14 teams in the BIG10 as well, so we’re right about in that middle ground. I honestly thought we’d be about 5th or 6th; I didn’t know if we’d be ahead or behind Iowa, but there’s a surprise team here ahead of Nebraska.

Immediately ahead of Nebraska is Iowa, they did beat us out. Number 5 is a surprise team: Northwestern. I did not see Northwestern being ahead of us, Iowa, or some of these other teams.

Number 4 is Michigan in the Big Ten, number 3 is Wisconsin (they’re also 10th nationally), second is Penn State (who’s also 8th nationally). Penn State: this shows you how far a program can come, because they had to overcome so much. They were set so far back with everything that happened with the Joe Paterno thing and all the sanctions and penalties, and then all of a sudden: it shows you how far you can come when things are done the right way by the right people. Nebraska doesn’t have to go that far, so it’s got to get us Husker fans excited because we’ve only got a portion of that way to go.

Number 1 in the Big Ten, and the country, the entire country, is Ohio State. I was surprised that they were number 1 and not Alabama, but I guess Ohio State has a better resume than Alabama. Going forward that’s the projection anyway. So I was a little bit surprised/disappointed and hoped we’d be higher there.

Now I want to talk about this 247 rankings of all the coaching jobs across America. We came in at number 30. The head coaching position at Nebraska came in at number 30 in the entire country, which is about where I thought we would be.

I had a conversation with a friend and a fan not long ago, and he said, “Nebraska is the worst coaching job, as far as appeal, to prospective coaches across the country. You’ve got high expectations, it’s hard to recruit here, yadda yadda yadda,” and I said, “OK, you want to go by it’s hard to recruit to a certain location, you got high expectations; I’d go with Notre Dame.” I mean, what’s so special about South Bend, Indiana? No disrespect or anything like that, but their expectations are pretty ridiculous. When’s the last time they had a coach stay around? And as far as recruiting, they got Michigan, Ohio State, and Michigan State, in recent memory, right there in their backyard to battle it out for recruiting. So, you want to go that route, I’d say Notre Dame. No disrespect to Notre Dame – I don’t love/hate, I’m indifferent towards the Irish; I just thought that conversation was interesting. Nebraska is nowhere near the bottom of this list. One of my friends - he’s honest – and that’s the conversation I had with him. We are ranked number 30, which is about where I thought people would put us.

I want to talk about the pros and cons of the Nebraska coaching job to a prospective head coach. I’m hoping Riley stays here for a very, very long time; it’s just according to this ranking that 247Sports put out. I have three columns, three pros. The first column I have is “firing nine-win coaches.” Now I see this as high expectations. Let’s be honest: there is more to firing a nine-win coach than just the wins themselves. I’m not going to get into all that again; I’ve spoken in the past how I felt about letting go of Pelini, I was fine with it. Solich – to this day I still wonder if that was the right move, but it’s so far gone at this point, it does not matter. I don’t see it as unrealistic expectations, which is how I’ve heard it phrased, which is what some of my other friends have said to me as well. I have lots of conversations with people, as you can tell. I don’t think they’re unrealistic. I think they’re high expectations, which is right where they should be. That’s how you get back to being great, is by having high expectations.

Now another pro is “top-notch facilities.” I’ve been to facilities all across the country, and the two facilities that stick out in my mind are Oregon (the team right down the street from Nike), and Nebraska. We have some of the best facilities in the entire country, almost bar none, but it’s right up there with every other college that there is. In my mind, I would only compare it to Oregon.

This next one is kind of a pro and it’s kind of a con at the same time. Basically that is “brand and program prestige and recognition.” It’s a pro because at Nebraska we’ve had all this success: five National Championships, 46 conference championships, three Heisman Trophy winners, 54 consensus All-Americans, number one in Academic All-Americans (second place ain’t even close), and we’re one of the tops all-times in most wins as a program as well. The problem is, and what people use against us is, it’s been awhile since we’ve won National Championships or a conference championship and things of that nature. It’s a valid point. If we’re being honest, it’s a valid point. But it wouldn’t take much to remind people of who Nebraska is, and who we’re going to be again. We start winning some games, and some big games, and I think people would be reminded really, really quick there is no place like Nebraska.

The next con that I have is there are some challenges to recruiting to the state of Nebraska. If you’ve been to Nebraska, you know it’s awesome. I love the state of Nebraska. If you’ve never been there, it’s hard to convey that sometimes, but I would say Riley is doing a pretty good job, especially with this “Calibraska” movement. There are challenges, but it can definitely be done, as Coach Riley is showing.

The next pro is “support from within.” The fans, the boosters; I mean, we’ve sold out every game since November 3, 1962. I can only think of one other program where the players come back as much as they do, and that’s the University of Miami. I’ll give ‘em credit there, not a ‘Canes fan, but I’ll give ‘em credit there. But Nebraska and Miami – the only two programs in the country. So you’ve got Nebraska and Oregon, as far as facilities; as far as players coming back, you’ve got Nebraska and Miami. I mean, the support from the fans and the boosters and the entire state of Nebraska is unparalleled against any other team across the entire country in college football. We just need to remind people: there is no place like Nebraska. We are battling a war of perception and respect. How do you win that war? Win football games, like I said, especially the big ones.

Now I want to talk about this special recruiting department that Coach Riley has talked about, because right now the football program is divided up into three different departments. You’ve got the football, you’ve got the operations, and you’ve got the personnel. He’s talking about adding a fourth department dedicated especially to recruiting and I think he wants to put a little bit of focus on social media. I hope it’s more than just social media, as important as that is, but I love this idea and I’ll tell you why. If you’re in the NFL, it’s all about your scouting, because you draft guys and you’ve got to entice free agents but as long as you’ve got money and some wins, it’s not that complicated. But you find those diamonds in the rough, those sixth, seventh-rounders, those undrafted guys that give you the edge, that your scouting can give you, versus other teams. The Patriots have more guys, more undrafted guys, who’ve started for them than any other team in the entire NFL over the past ten years. I think it’s worked out pretty well for them. It’s all about convincing those guys to come play for you rather than finding them and drafting them, whether it be late or getting them to come to you as undrafted free agents; in college, it’s all about getting those potential first-round guys to come play for you, as many as you can. I love this: dedicating a department especially to recruiting.

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