One thing I know about Bo Pelini, is that he is never afraid to speak his mind. The victim of his most recent tirade is Nebraska athletic director Shawn Eichorst immediately follow him being fired. Needless to say Pelini didn’t pull any punches with Eichorst and he conveyed every bit of the conversation with the team during his final meeting as head coach.
Pelini met with players on Dec. 2 at Lincoln North Star High School. In a 30-minute meeting, he provided a window into the strained — almost non-existent — relationship between he and his former boss.
“A guy like (Eichorst) who has no integrity, he doesn’t even understand what a core value is,” Pelini told players. “And he hasn’t understood it from the day he got here. I saw it when I first met with the guy.
“To have core values means you have to be about something, you have to represent something, you have to have something that is important to you. He is a f—— lawyer who makes policies. That’s all he’s done since he’s been here is hire people and make policies to cover his own ass.”
The World-Herald on Wednesday listened to an audio tape of Pelini’s address that night. He spoke conversationally, rarely raising his voice. It’s a rare window into the mindset of a coach who increasingly felt besieged by his own administration and fan base.
During the tape, Pelini expresses gratitude, support and advice for players. The majority of the tape, however, reveals Pelini’s thoughts about Eichorst. In the first minute of his talk, he uses two vulgarities associated with female genitalia to describe his former boss.
“I didn’t really have any relationship with the A.D.,” Pelini said. “The guy, you guys saw him (Sunday), the guy is a total p—-. I mean, he is, and he’s a total c—.”
During his introductory press conference Wednesday in Ohio, Pelini called Tressel “a president who understands football, who’s going to support me, something I don’t know if I’ve ever had.”
On Dec. 2, Pelini told players he saw anger in administrators’ faces when the Huskers beat Iowa in the regular-season finale. They didn’t want NU to win.
That Sunday, Eichorst called Pelini into his office. Pelini described for players the exchange. After the A.D. informed Pelini he’d been fired, the coach asked if NU was honoring his and his assistants’ contracts. Eichorst said yes.
If Eichorst wasn’t going to support him, Pelini said, a change was for the best.
“He goes, I disagree that I haven’t supported you. I said, ‘Hey bud, you can’t support someone under a f-ing rock.’ I said, to do your job at this level, in a place like this, you gotta be a grown-ass f-ing man…to lead something. I said you can’t lead anything under a f-ing rock. I said you don’t spend any time with us. Our players don’t even know who you are. That isn’t leadership.
“And he said, ‘Well I appreciate (your) advice.’”
“I said, ‘I suggest you take it, but see you later.’ And that’s how it went down.”
Ouch. Tell us how you really feel, Bo. I can’t blame Pelini for feeling the way he does if the administration never really showed support for him, and I guess if you are going to go out, you might as well go out in a blaze of glory. I can respect Pelini for keeping it real, but it will be interesting seeing if this causes any future athletic directors to be hesitant to bring him in for a job after this story.