Mike Riley won't let mild temperament temper optimism at Nebraska
CHICAGO — As it always does, the whole “nice guy” thing came up with Mike Riley on Friday — this time with a barb. Someone asked if he needed to cultivate “a bit of an edge to compete at this level.” He didn’t bite, of course. Nice guys don’t.
But Nebraska’s new coach understood the meaning, because he’s been asked that question multiple times through his career. It didn’t just begin Friday at Big Ten Media Days. And there’s an undertone to it, people wondering about whether and how this experiment will work.
Can a 62-year-old grandfather who was 93-80 in 14 seasons at Oregon State — and 5-7 in 2014 — lift Nebraska back to the elite perch where the Huskers think the program belongs?
Especially if he’s not the nicest college football coach you could ever hope to meet, but one of the nicest people you could ever want to know?
In every interview session Friday, Riley wore that familiar grin, as though there was no place he’d rather have been. Which only meant the Big Ten is beginning to learn what the Huskers are figuring out and the Pac-12 already knew:
Riley might occasionally be corny — see “Hip! Hip! Hooray!” in the locker room and taking the whole team to In-N-Out after big wins in California — but there’s nothing contrived about him. Here’s a sampling from his interviews:
►On the transition from Oregon State: “I say ‘wow’ every day. … Nebraska is a ‘wow’ place.”
►On Wisconsin running back Corey Clement’s contention that “Nebraska is a flip phone and Wisconsin is an iPhone”: “Some of those who knew me well would say I’m a flip-phone guy.”
►And on that question about needing an edge:
“I always tell people, I hope they see a guy that loves what he does.”
That’s not in question. What everyone wonders — and no one will know for a while yet — is whether Riley’s approach, which worked as he built Oregon State from a hapless outfit into a competitive program in two stints in his hometown, can take Nebraska from good to great again.
Bo Pelini won at least nine games in all seven seasons he spent in Lincoln, and it wasn’t good enough. Maybe no one realistically expects anyone to rebuild a championship dynasty like Tom Osborne’s of the mid-1990s. But the Huskers yearn to return to the rare air they once occupied as one of college football’s elite programs. When Riley refers to the Nebraska as the opportunity “for one more big adventure” with his wife Dee, it can come off a little bit too aw-shucks.
But he also knows: “We have to win.”
We’re about to find out if coaching competence coupled with irrepressible buoyancy will be enough. Which brings us back to the recurring question: Can nice guys win big? Does Riley have an edge?
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know. I think our edge has to be how we work. I would hope our theme is that we teach these kids like crazy — and that they want to be taught.”
But here was Riley a few minutes later, asked again by someone else in a slightly different way:
“If we’ve won, I can relate (to players) and I’m a good guy, and all that,” he said. “If we’ve lost, I’m too soft. So … Might as well let it fly and go from there.”
He shrugged. And of course, he smiled. But hidden in there somewhere was the evidence. Yeah, Riley has an edge. Everyone does.
But it’s that other stuff, about working hard and teaching like crazy, that he’ll hang his hat on. He’s had the edge there, too. Among peers and sometime rivals who know the difficulty of coaching at Oregon State, Riley’s reputation is of a coach who understands how to do more with much less, how to identify overlooked recruits, then develop them.
“Mike is the type of guy that coaches enjoy coaching for and players enjoy playing for,” said Fox Sports analyst Dave Wannstedt, who coached against Riley’s teams when he was with the Miami Dolphins and Riley was the San Diego Chargers’ head coach and at Pittburgh while Riley was at Oregon State. “And you know when you leave his program you’re gonna be a better player and a better person.”
And Riley’s demeanor?
“There’s a lot of different ways to win, scheme-wise,” Wannstedt said. “And there’s a lot of different coaching personalities that win. You don’t have to be a rant-and-raver, a screamer. Tom Osborne was a similar personality as Mike Riley would be.”
That last part is debatable — Osborne was gentlemanly, but probably never as personable as Riley — but the point holds.
College football programs often swing like pendulums when they go from one coach to another. If the previous guy was a hot defensive coordinator when he was hired, this time the search focuses on people with great offensive minds. If last time you hired a hot coordinator, now you go for an established head coach.
In Riley, Nebraska got the polar opposite of Pelini, in experience as well as demeanor.
Nebraska players were as surprised as anyone else when Riley’s hiring was announced. Junior receiver Jordan Westerkamp is among several players who admitted to Googling their new coach, then wondering what it would be like to go from the mercurial, sometimes abrasive Pelini — who often rubbed administrators and fans the wrong way, but was well-liked by the players — to “a nice, laidback guy.”
“That’s kind of a big difference,” Westerkamp said. “So I was kind of looking forward to meeting him. And then I met him and I was like, ‘This guy’s awesome, can’t wait to play for him.’ ”
The Huskers joke that they’re still waiting for Riley to get angry. The one time during the offseason that he got really exorcised, it was because of a fight between players — and as it turned out, it was staged.
“I think they fooled me,” he said, laughing.
And quarterback Tommy Armstrong Jr. said Riley’s yelling “is more like loud talking.”
“When he’s mad,” Armstrong continued, “it’s like, ‘I told you to stop, oh my gosh.’ ”
But will a change in demeanor change the Huskers’ fortunes?
At least this season, it’s hard to know what to expect. Defensively, the Huskers seem to have plenty of talent. And with the notable loss of running back Ameer Abdullah, Nebraska returns the key pieces of last season’s offense. There’s uncertainty, though, about how those will fit. Armstrong, for example, is not exactly the prototype passer for Riley’s preferred pro-style attack; the new coaching staff has studied spread offenses in hopes of building around the players’ strengths.
Riley said of spring practice, when they experimented with implementing different things: “Some of it looked like football.”
That was fine in the offseason, during the transition from one coach to another.
But it might be a warning sign for this fall. The Huskers could be competitive in the Big Ten West, but it might be wise not to expect too much.
For now at least, it might be enough that Riley is not Pelini. That he’s relentlessly upbeat. That he’s, well, such a nice guy. But sometime soon, fans will expect something that looks like football — no, make that like the football they used to see from the Huskers way back when.
Whether that’s achievable — by any coach — is an open question. College football’s landscape has radically shifted since Osborne’s day. Back then, part of the allure for recruits to relocate to Lincoln was the opportunity to play on TV every week, and the Huskers’ facilities. These days, everybody’s always on TV, and most programs have fantastic facilities. A Texas kid can go to Baylor and win big.
Recruiting was a very sore subject for Pelini, who complained often that Husker fans didn’t understand the difficulty in luring top talent to Nebraska. Though Riley acknowledges the challenges, he’s bullish on the subject – but is that a surprise? His glass isn't just half-full, it's overflowing. He always seems happy to be here, accentuating the positives. At Nebraska, at least right now, there are plenty.
“We’re in a good place now,” Riley said. “We’re undefeated and just starting our history at Nebraska.”
For the nicest guy in college football, the honeymoon continues for a little longer. We’ll learn soon enough if he has the edge.
GALLERY: Highlights from Big Ten Media Days
