In last year’s regular season finale, a 38-17 loss to Iowa, Nebraska Cornhuskers Coach Bo Pelini went rogue in his post-game press conference. He basically did a Coach Petey Bell at the end of “Blue Chips” moment.
Or you could say he did a more subtle version of Jim Breuer’s character in “Half Baked” saying goodbye to his record store coworkers.
Bo Pelini used the word chickenshit, he provoked officials, he accused the opposing coach, the Hawkeyes Kirk Ferentz of behaving worse than himself and he blamed the media for his troubles. Bo Pelini wasn’t done. Bo Pelini appeared to be saying goodbye to the NU program and the Big Ten by telling everybody off; in his own usual ornery way.
He was one year early:
Nebraska fired head coach Bo Pelini on Sunday morning. https://t.co/WvNivOGzx8 pic.twitter.com/vOtpmYjP4S
— Dr. Saturday (@YahooDrSaturday) November 30, 2014
There is no official word out of Nebraska or from the Pelini camp, but FauxPelini tweeted this, which is much closer to the truth and a thousand times more interesting that what the PR sanitized statements about this situation will say once they are released.
LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT YOU ARE PAYING ME NOT TO LIVE IN LINCOLN NEBRASKA AND I AM SUPPOSED TO BE SAD
— Fake Bo Pelini (@FauxPelini) November 30, 2014
Pelini lost four games every year. That means he wasn’t good enough to leave to take a better gig. It also means he wasn’t he wasn’t bad enough to get fired in Lincoln. However, the relationship between Bo Pelini and Nebraska was always “strained” at best. Last year at this time, Bo Pelini did a sort of mic drop to close his final regular season media session by saying “if they wanna fire me, the can go right ahead.” And remember this was just a couple months after the Bo Pelini expletive laden audio tape released in September (the one where he cursed out both the media and the fans)
Pelini acted like that because he knew he was too expensive to be fired in 2013. Now in 2014, his buyout is an amount that Nebraska is willing to pay. Per the Omaha World-Herald, Bo Pelini is owed just over $7.6 million on the terms of his buyout. His assistants had contracts through 2016. So imagine how high is buyout was last year.
Paul M. Banks owns, operates and writes The Sports Bank.net ,which is partners with Fox Sports. Read his feature stories in the Chicago Tribune RedEye edition. Listen to him on KOZN 1620 The Zone. Follow him on Twitter (@paulmbanks). His work has been featured in hundreds of media outlets including The Washington Post and ESPN 2