Now that Week 6 has come and gone, the list of prospective candidates for the head football coach job at Nebraska continues to evolve. It’s important to remember that Athletic Director Trev Alberts has clarified that this will be a national search and that he intends to “reach out to a lot of people.”
When asked for the qualities Alberts will look for in someone to run the program, he stated,
“I don’t know if there is anything specific to how magnified the role is. I certainly think it has to be someone who has a servant leadership mentality that is here to serve young people. Perhaps sees a picture that is bigger than themselves. But I don’t think anything specific. Every single job in college football has challenges. This job has advantages to other jobs and it has some disadvantages. It is the same thing with every job in college football. We have 1.8 million people in this state. That is not going to change. But we have some built in advantages here so if we play to our strengths and build on those. The right type of coach sees this as an opportunity to rebuild and build something special here.”
When asked for a timeline when a hire would be made, Alberts said,
“I do think there’s some benefits in terms of making the decision when we made it. I think this gives us an opportunity to really do the necessary work. We need to dive into a real process, and a detail-oriented process that talks to a lot of people. That’s why I mentioned earlier, you’re gonna hear about a lot of names. That’s good. That means we’re going to talk to a lot of people, because we’re going to clearly define what our values are. And we’re not going to hire coaches who don’t believe in what we believe in. We need to take as long as it takes to find the right leader. So is there an ideal timeline? Sure. You could naturally look at some of these timelines – early signing date – and say it would be really nice to be able to get the person in place by then, because it would allow us to do that. We won’t make decisions or rush things just to get a coach hired. We’re also not going to try to win the press conference. At the end of the day, we need to hire the right leader and the right fit, and that’s a really important thing here, as well.”
Below is a list of the active college football coaches who have been rumored around the head coaching search and then one wildcard who I think should be given a serious look.