Terry Bowden to Coach Akron Zips in 2012: Bowden's Prospects Compared to Bo Pelini's Outlook with the Nebraska Cornhuskers and Carl Pelini's Future with the Florida Atlantic Owls

The AP reports via Rivals.com that Terry Bowden returns to Division I with Akron.

With perhaps the exception of Carl Pelini taking over as head coach for the Florida Atlantic Owls (1-11 this regular season), Bowden will probably have more fun coaching next season than any other head coach in college football. After all, after two straight 1-11 seasons, the Zips can only get better, and every win can be like a national championship game in terms of the feeling of success. The same applies to Florida Atlantic.

Compare Carl Pelini's and Bowden's prospects to the outlook for Nebraska head coach Bo Pelini, who faces massive expectations in Huskerland with a not much better than average team that is not being bolstered much by top recruiting. I say that as a Husker alumnus. Consider this stat: the Cornhuskers during the regular season in 2011 averaged 5.6 yards per play on offense and allowed 5.1 yards per play on defense, i.e. virtually no dominance at all. In 2010 the Husker figures were 6.1 ypp on offense and 4.6 ypp on defense, so the Huskers have taken a significant step backward in 2011.

Even the Ohio Bobcats averaged 6.1 yards per play this season on offense and 5.2 yards per play on defense. When adjusted for schedule difficulty and won-loss records, our stats indicate that the Huskers are a mere 5 points better than Ohio on the scoreboard.

As can be seen at cfbstats.com, the Husker's average gain of 5.6 yards per play on offense in 2011 put the Big Red 61st out of 120 FBS teams, i.e. right in the middle of what we might call Roman Hruska's famed "mediocrity", and half of its schedule were teams with weak defenses. Nebraska's 5.14 yards allowed per play on defense put NU tied with Virginia for 37th out of 120 teams, with a not-so-famous Houston defense following at 39th.

Compare that to Alabama, playing a much tougher schedule, which in the regular season gained 6.53 yards per play on offense and permitted 3.4 yards per play on defense, tops in the nation and .62 yards per play better on offense than LSU and .57 ypp better than LSU on defense.

Akron, playing a much weaker schedule than Big Ten or SEC teams, by contrast ranked 116th in the nation at 4.22 yards per play on offense and 96th in the nation at 6.09 yards on defense. Bowden is bound to improve those stats markedly in 2012.

The stats (cfbstats.com) for Florida Atlantic this season were a 119th rank out of 120 teams with 4.04 yards per play on offense and a 54th rank out of 120 FBS teams with 5.31 yards per play on defense. A defensively skilled Pelini will have a more difficult time bringing quick success to the Owls, whose main problem is offense.

As for Nebraska, with the departure of Lavonte David, the Husker defense would appear to be even weaker next year than this season, while there is little reason to believe the Cornhusker offense will be any better than currently.

In fact, faced with physically strong Big Ten teams on its schedule, the Huskers appear to be short on top manpower just about everywhere that one may look, except for the kicking game. We would gladly be surprised to the contrary, but it is not likely to happen.

Nebraska is still miles from the best teams the Huskers had in long gone glory days, and nothing in current Husker recruiting indicates it will be able to compete with the likes of Alabama or LSU for years to come. Quite the contrary, if comparably top teams surface in the Big Ten, they will likely be at Ohio State and Michigan. The Cornhuskers have a hard road to hoe.

There is no doubt about Pelini's defensive coaching talent -- but he also has to have talented players to be able to use his own talent to produce national championship contenders. Right now, according to our stats, the Crimson Tide are a full 3 touchdowns better than the Huskers and LSU 2 TDs better.

Two different football worlds.