Is Mickey Joseph the frontrunner for Nebraska’s head coaching job?

Welcome to the Hot Topic, a weekly feature that poses a burning question about the Nebraska football team. On the “Life in the Red Podcast,” Luke Mullin and Jordan McAlpine will discuss a topic heading into that week’s game, and a transcription of the conversation will appear in the Journal Star’s Huskers section on gameday.

Jordan: I’m going to throw out the biggest cliché in all of sports — the term buy in. You see the way that these guys have bought into him the last couple weeks; the different confidence, swagger and culture that they’re playing (with) under him, you can tell that there is a difference. You see how Mickey’s handling the press conferences and he’s kind of evolving in the last three weeks pretty well on the job. 

Deep down, I don’t know if I’d go as far as to say he’s the front-runner right now, just based off where we are at this point in the season. He doesn’t have that full-time head coaching experience, granted that a month from now if they keep winning I might change my answer a little bit on that part. It’s been a great start to his audition and if he keeps it going I wouldn’t rule it out, but right now I’m still a little cautious based on those factors.

Luke: I do agree with you, and I think he still has a lot left to show if he really wants to take that position full time and run with it in the next couple years. There are a lot of great coaches out there, both from college and from the NFL, and lots of different coaches with experience like you said.

I do give Mickey a ton of credit because this team needed someone to kind of light a fire under their ass, to be honest. They had the potential, they weren’t playing to the fullest of it and the belief wasn’t there; it’s been a completely different team in the last couple weeks.

He takes over three games into the year and Nebraska’s in a very bad spot at 1-2 ahead of the Oklahoma game. So, 1-3 and those final eight games you kind of had the inclination that he might need to get them all the way to a bowl game. Staring at that 1-3 record, a bowl game was just so far out of the equation that people weren’t even thinking about it.

So now, they win two games, they’re 3-3, and the next two games for Nebraska are winnable as Scott Frost said many times. They’re winnable games, but they’re tough games to win. If you’re going to be Nebraska’s head coach, you have to win tough Big Ten games so the next two weeks will tell a lot.

If Nebraska does manage to win those two, which is a big if, they’re 5-3 and I think he still needs another win. Gotta make a bowl, because while 5-7 is a lot of progress from last year’s team that won three games, ultimately this team needs to be making bowls consistently and they need a head coach who can get that done. That’s what Trev (Alberts) is going to be looking for.

Jordan: It’s about who they’ve done it against. By no means is that a discredit to Mickey; he has jolted this team. You hear the way players and other coaches talk about the way he’s handled everything, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence the way they came out playing the last couple weeks. It’s a direct reflection of that.

Even this week, you see a Matt Rhule name enter the potential list of candidates, and with the amount of guys that are out there, you don’t want to run the risk of this being a one-hit wonder with him coming in for seven or eight games and turning it around. You could go out and make that splash or go get somebody not just for one year but to really build the program. The way that this place has been the last couple years, you need somebody to come in and really make those overhauls.