Turner Gill named MAC's top coach

University at Buffalo head football coach Turner Gill, who was interviewed on Monday for the Nebraska job, has in the mean time been named MAC coach of the year for guiding the historically hapless Bulls to their best Division I-A season ever, with a record of 5-7. Which, incidentally, is identical to Nebraska's record this season. Raise your hand if you saw that coming before the season started.

UPDATE: In a development that should surprise no one, ESPN is reporting that "Nebraska has narrowed its search to two candidates: Turner Gill, head coach at Buffalo, and Bo Pelini, the defensive coordinator at LSU." Those two have been considered the front-runners all along.

Pelini! Pick Pelini!

UPDATE 2: Mum's the word:

As the University at Buffalo football team was being honored at halftime of Thursday’s basketball game against Tulane, the Bulls’ student section made their feelings clear about Turner Gill.

“Turner stay, Turner stay!” they chanted. “Turner stay!”

Afterward, the only thing Gill wanted to discuss was UB football, not the possibility of becoming the next coach at Nebraska. Gill, a front-runner for the job almost from the time Tom Osborne became the interim athletics director at the school, declined comment on anything Cornhuskers related Thursday.

“Unable to comment,” Gill said. “That’s all I can say.”

Also Thursday, Osborne declared himself the interim coach until he hires a successor to Bill Callahan, allowing Nebraska’s beloved former coach to visit prospective recruits and try to prevent the program from slipping during the recruiting contact period. Osborne said he hoped to have a new coach by next week.

Gill, who according to sources met with Nebraska officials Monday, was also asked if he had been contacted by other schools, and also declined comment. Gill’s name has surfaced for openings at Washington State as well as Duke. He said he remains committed to coaching at UB.

The basketball team beat Tulane, by the way.

Comments

[Brian Foster]

Please pardon yet another OT comment, but I thought I should let everybody know that the horrible ordeal of Joshua Ray Widner has finally come to an end:

http://www.ajc.com/services/content/metro/henry/stories/2007/11/27/widner_1128.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=13

Or, to paraphrase our host:

Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, Joshua Ray Widner is free at last!

And he's free the *right* way -- through a reasonable exercise of prosecutorial discretion, rather than a naked aggrandizement of power by a state court judge.

[Mike's brother Matt]

You know, if you'd told me at the start of the season that Buffalo and Nebraska would have the same record, I'd have found it reasonable. I thought the Cornhuskers were going to be even worse than they ended up being, and 3-9 by both seemed reasonable. Congratulations to Buffalo, and may Turner Gill bring many more years of success.

[Weston]

I still am clinging to a hope that Nebraska won't take Gill. I have become a big Bo Pelini fan as of late. (During a slow stretch of the game yesterday, for the first time ever I turned to Barbara and lamented that I have to wait 9 more months for UB football to start up again).