Hlas: Bielema to Nebraska made for a good yarn

If you call yourself The Football Scoop, the one thing you should be good at is getting scoops about football, right?

The Football Scoop reported today that Nebraska has identified its target to replace Bo Pelini as head football coach, and that person is ... Bret Bielema?

Nebraska Athletic Director Shawn Eichorst was Wisconsin's deputy athletics director from 2009-11, when Bielema was the Badgers' head coach.

This is what was on Football Scoop Wednesday afternoon (I've already linked it, in the second paragraph):

Since last night I have spoken with a number of connections and the feeling in the profession is that Nebraska athletic director Shawn Eichorst seems to have a very short list — perhaps with only one name on it. Sources have told me he isn't taking calls from coaches trying to get themselves involved. He doesn't appear to be building a list. He sounds like he is locked in.

This one sounds like it is coming and it is coming soon.

As smarmy emcees used to say at dance marathons during the Great Depression, yowsah, yowsah, yowsah!

What we know about coaching searches is to take everything with a grain of salt, but rule out nothing. Is that a contradiction? Yes. It's big-time college sports, isn't it?

Bielema's Arkansas team won two of its last three SEC games in November to lift him from someone who hadn't won a single game in the league over two years to someone who clearly had the Razorbacks pointed forward.

Shutting out LSU and Ole Miss in successive weeks will do that for a guy. And before that, the Hogs had come within one score of beating Mississippi State on the road and lost by one point to Alabama at home.

By the way, if the Big Ten wants to put Iowa in the Music City Bowl with 6-6 Arkansas, there are worse potential storylines for an Iowa sports columnist trying desperately to find something interesting in the Hawkeyes' postseason.

But for fun, let's consider the obvious consequences

if this story had legs and Bielema did left Arkansas for Nebraska.

First off, Bielema would be very fortunate that his first game against his old Wisconsin team would be in Lincoln, not Madison.

Second, it would effectively put an end to the speculation of some that Bielema would be a logical target of Iowa's to replace Kirk Ferentz when the day comes that Ferentz is no longer the Hawkeyes' coach.

I've never viewed that as a serious possibility, anyway, because ... how would that be a forward move? Seriously.

Would Nebraska, for that matter? Seriously.

And what would it say about a coach who would voluntarily change jobs twice in a 2-year period?

By the way, this came from Bielema's mouth at his Wednesday morning press conference, hours before the Football Scoop thing broke:

'I can't tell you how excited I am for next year and obviously my commitment to Arkansas in the long term.'

And here's what ESPN college football writer Chris Low tweeted Wednesday afternoon:

Talked to Bret Bielema and he said he's not going to Nebraska and that he's all Hog

.

OK, so ... who do you like to get that Nebraska job?