On Wednesday, Bo Pelini took a shot at Nebraska president Harvey Perlman during his introductory press conference at Youngstown State. It turns out Perlman wasn't the only member of the Nebraska administration that Pelini is upset with, as he ripped into the school's athletic director, Shawn Eichorst, during his final meeting with Nebraska players.
The Omaha World-Herald got ahold of an audio recording of Pelini's final meeting with his players at Nebraska, and during the 30-minute meeting he spent a lot of time expressing his feelings about Eichorst, and those feelings were not kind. The meeting took place on Dec. 2 at a local high school in Lincoln, and Pelini just tore into Eichorst in an expletive-filled tirade.
“A guy like (Eichorst) who has no integrity, he doesn’t even understand what a core value is," Pelini said to his players in the recording. "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.”
In the first minute of the recording, Pelini used two vulgarities associated with female genitalia to describe Eichorst.
“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---.”
Pelini also told his players that he felt his dismissal coming, saying he saw members of the Nebraska administration that were actually unhappy the Cornhuskers beat Iowa in the final game of the regular season because they didn't want Nebraska to win. He also told his players that he went to the Board of Regents a week before his dismissal and asked for it.
“I don't even know what those guys really do. And I said ‘Hey, if (Eichorst) isn't gonna do his job, if he doesn't have the balls to go out there and support me, to support these kids, support this program, do me a favor and get rid of me.’"
Pelini also addressed his players on the idea of transferring. He didn't come out and tell anyone to do so, but given the extent of his comments, it's not hard to guess how he feels about the situation.
“If any of you guys have on your mind, 'Hey, should I go or should I stay?' At the end of the day, you gotta sit there and think, ‘This is how many years I got left,'" he said. "'These ought to be the best of my life.' And if (you) don’t think it’s going to be this way this place, then you shouldn’t stay. But if you feel like, 'Hey, this is the place for me, this is the place I’m going to enjoy my career,' then you should stay. That’s what it should come down to.”
These are just some of the things Pelini had to say, and I recommend reading the story to get all the thoughts because they're interesting to say the least. After reading them, it's also not hard to see why Pelini took the job at Youngstown State.
“I have been at LSU, I have been at Oklahoma, I have been to these other places," said Pelini. "The scrutiny, it negativity, it ain’t like that everywhere. But it is what it is and you gotta be strong as hell and you gotta stick together to deal with it. You have to. Because it’s real, I know it’s out there. I’ve seen it.”
And now we're all seeing it.
