Bumped. Post written on January 31. GO BRUINS. -N

How do you know whether someone is a good coach? Well just the gauge the reaction of his team's fan-base when he goes somewhere else. I am sure many here can remember the reaction of Pitt's fan base when Howland announced he was leaving the Panthers to join our Bruins. It ranged from anger to despair. Same goes for Roy Williams when he left Kansas for UNC.  So with that in mind it is really interesting to read the reactions from Nebraska fans, who just lost their OC - Jay Norvell - to UCLA. Here is one example of a Nebraska fan's perception of their former OC:

A coach who is fond of playing the blame game. Well at least that means his philosophy is going to be in sync with the blamer-in-chief of the Bruin football program. More comments on Norvell (from the same posted linked above): HT to What's Bruin, Dawg, who like rest of UCLA fans (which apparently even includes the toadies over at the Daily Bruin (via DD)) are not excited about the arrival of Norvell: Couldn't agree more with Jason. To be fair there are few Nebraska fans who may have some nice things to say about Norvell. But then again there are fans who are loyalists to a fault in every program. Case in program we can look at our program, where there are still people who believe the football program is heading towards the right direction under Karl Dorrell. Then again there were actually self proclaimed UCLA basketball fans who supported Lavin to the very last day in the name of staying loyal to the program. So I took those reactions with a grained of salt. The three games I saw Nebraska play this year were against Southern Cal, Oklahoma, and Auburn. And I'd rather trust my eyes, which saw why Nebraska fans might have had serious reservations about Norvell's contributions as the OC of their vanilla, boring, and predictable WCO.

We will try to keep an open mind about Norvell.  And see how the offense turns out under him. But given Karl Dorrell's incredibly mediocre track record, it is hard to get excited about his latest hire, who doesn't have much on his resume to rebut the perception he was anything but a "trained parrot" at this previous job.

Anyways, "trained parrot" or not, Norvell with 10 returning starters on offense will be responsible along with Karl Dorrell for delivering a Pac-10 championship to Westwood next season. If he doesn't he should be looking for a new gig along with head coach this time in 2008.

UPDATE: Per Nebraska fans Norvell doesn't bring much to the table when it comes to recruiting either.

GO BRUINS.