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If we truly want to honor our history, the secret scrimmage every year should be in Mabel Lee with towels on the windows.

Perhaps a towel could be confused with a rag.

I get the point of this thread, which is one of the better ones to pass time before real basketball news begins. However, BD and TO bring so much positive karma with them that it is virtually impossible to objectively rate their performances as ADs. It is sort of like rating JC's skills as a furniture builder, to make a suitable Sunday analogy.

That's easily the best move T.O. was able to attain. He gave Perlman's Nebraska credibility. Without T.O. NU is likely a lame-duck Big 12 member that hates every day, left in that league.

It wasn't that Byrne was bad with financials it was how he allocated resources. Chasing the directors cup and funneling resources to Olympic/non-revenue generating sports to the detriment of football and basketball. A good example is comparing his basketball vs baseball hires. Van Horn is a program defining hire. Barry Collier not so much. While he did put in a good effort to get Self, save for not paying him back for dinner, he still fell short.

Come to think of it, It would also be 'perfect' for a "Secret Scrimmage!"

Is Mabel Lee still a thing?

Devaney 1, Moos 2, TO 3. Each one of them have done, are doing, good things. Devaney was forward thinking enough to hire TO and took a chance on Nee and it paid off. He was also very fiscally sound. He kept the AD in the black and devoted the most resources to the most important things. Think of the weight room and the building named after him that is still in use today. He also contributed important intangibles. He will always be #1 in my book no matter what anybody who follows him does. Moos is at 2 because the book is still out on his hires although from purely a perception and fan base unification standpoint they are important. Our fan base has been extremely divided for a very long time. His hires had to be home runs. They had to check all of the boxes and for Football and Basketball they have certainly done that. He has taken a page out of the BD model and allocated the most resources to where they need to be allocated. Despite what people think he is not ego driven. If he was he would not have made the hires that made knowing that some people would view those hires as a no-brainer, that anybody could have made. I can promise you that neither Frost nor Hoiberg would have come here if we had a typical empty suit as an AD i.e Byrne, Pedersen, Eichorst. TO is very important, because from a financial perspective he brought us back into the black. Pedersen had cooked the books and we were in a financial mess when TO took over. Many people don't realize how bad it was. Most importantly, his name, and his name alone got us into the BIG. If as the AD, he was't involved, we would not have been asked into the BIG, which has set us up financially for a long time into the future. Don't think there is a PBA without TO either. He made some very strategic moves along with his backing of the PBA being financed with public/private money, and in Lincoln people know how difficult it is to convince people to do something like that. His hires, while not program changing set us up well for what we have now. Pelini, like him or hate won games. Miles got us to an NCAA tournament which somewhat reinvigorated interest in the program. Nothing that follows would be possible if not for TO, similar to if we don't have The Bob nothing that follows is possible.

A game in the coliseum would be incredible.

"Keep the tip."

A guy is out drinking with a friend and spills on his shirt. He's afraid of his wife's response. His friend says, don't worry, stick $10 in your pocket and say that some guy spilled on you and gave you that for dry cleaning. He goes home and tells the story to his wife. She asks, so why is there $20 in your pocket. He says, that guy also crapped in my pants.

I don't mind the bees buzzing around my head or the chicken pecking at my feet, but doesn't that damn calf have a mother?

"I didn't ask the genie for a 10-inch pianist."

I thought you were asking what a hooker costs @ Casey’s on 13th & F...

Looks like it'd be easier just to bring Italy here.

Keep in mind Osborne was instrumental in getting Nebraska into the Big Ten. That move alone (in my mind) is enough to elevate him into 3rd place. At least for now.

Frost was a no-brainer. Homegrown Nebraska kid who played here and was one of the hottest young coaches in the game at the time. Even I would have gone after him if I'd been AD. The real coup was Hoiberg. We've never hired a basketball coach before who already had an established name and won at the P5 level before coming here. Yeah, we had some family connections. Maybe without that Jerry Bush connection and him being born in Lincoln, he might have held out for a different job. So, maybe we kind of lucked into the fact that there was an appeal to him to come to Lincoln. Add to that TO offering him a football scholarship. But, still, we've never pulled that off before. And we've been shunned by Dana Altman a couple of times, so just being from here isn't enough to get a coach to come here.

Right now I’d have Byrne 1, Devaney a close 2nd and then Moos. I think it is a big drop after that. Osborne’s hires were meh at best. Moos could end up #1 but it will be a few years minimum before we know that answer.

Don't forget Devaney hired Danny Nee too.

The jury's still WAY out on Moos if you ask me. Sure, on the surface, the hires he's made so far look pretty decent. But at the time we were all pretty happy with Pelini, Miles and Erstad too. It'll take a few years at least to know what we have in the UNL AD. If I had to rank them right now I'd have Devaney and Byrne #1 and #1a then probably Osborne and then Moos. Eichorst and Pederson would be a pretty stiff contest for last. The only thing those two did for NU was give us crappy football and obnoxious signs outside each gate at Memorial Stadium.

Devaney hired Osborne, Francis Allen, Gary Pepin and most importantly Terry Petit. If the Bill Moos hires pan out that well then an argument for #1 could be made.

Our last 5 A.D.s before Moos: Devaney, Byrne, Pederson, Osborne, Eichorst. Where would you rank him among them? I can make an argument for number 1.

I presume we're talking about Shawn Eichorst. He fits in perfectly at the University of Texas, all things considered.

Then it was more of a “free fall” under Eichorst...

The ship started gravitating toward mediocrity about the time we hired Steve Pederson as AD.

I'd say the timing on when that blew up was odd....it was a fairly old rumor here. Was that about basketball or was there some other reason. No idea. Otherwise you run a fine line at times when you potentially give people more leeway because of how well they do their job. If there is nothing there with Moos, there is nothing there. If there is something there and it gets buried because he's doing a good job....that's the sort of thing that makes the Jerry Sanduskys of the world possible.

The Hoiberg hire put my foot entirely in my mouth regarding his handling of TM. I still think speaking out when he did was stupid, but now I think he’ll go down as our greatest AD ever after the hiring show he put on this year. Hats off to the guy.

Not only that, but the jackwads who wanted to spread the drunken stories. Shame on them.