Gill ready to go about business in Buffalo
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By CURT McKEEVER / Lincoln Journal Star
Nebraska football fans that watched Turner Gill unassumingly go about his business as an assistant with the Huskers for more than a decade would have expected this type of behavior.
Gill, earlier this week, was practically apologizing for “ducking and dodging” a media contingent that had been trying to pin him down on his level of involvement with NU’s then-vacant head coaching position.
“But that’s the way things go from that standpoint,” Gill said.
So, you see, he had no other choice.
If he did, he would have been glad to share some of his feelings while waiting to hear if his Nov. 26 interview left the man he once helped elevate to revered status thinking he needed to hire him.
By now, you know another former Husker assistant who coached alongside Gill for one season, Bo Pelini, made the biggest impression on interim athletic director Tom Osborne.
But for the majority of the eight days it took Osborne to complete his search, the swirls of speculation about who would be Nebraska’s next coach were as blinding as a lake-effect Buffalo snowstorm. One minute it’s Gill. The next it’s Pelini. Then it’s somebody else.
For Gill, it was an emotional tug-o-war. And right now, he doesn’t want to talk about what that was like for him.
But he did admit that Nebraska was one of “a few schools that I would have any interest in going to,” and wished the Huskers the best.
After all, one never knows about the future. Though the circumstances were different four years ago, Pelini and Gill were granted interviews by then-Nebraska athletic director Steve Pederson just before he wound up hiring Bill Callahan.
Pelini took a job at Oklahoma, and Gill, after serving under Callahan for a season, left for a position with the Green Bay Packers. One year later, he was hired to lead Buffalo's doormat program.
With Gill finally getting the chance to pull the switches, in 2006 the Bulls produced their highest point total since they’d been a NCAA Division I-A program, and also won their first game since joining the Mid-American Conference in 1999 against a team that finished with a winning record.
This year, Buffalo went 5-7 and tied for first in Eastern Division of the MAC, an accomplishment that led to Gill being named the league's coach of the year.
It also got him an interview with Nebraska and contacted by another school for a job he didn’t pursue.
“That’s a good position to be in,” Buffalo AD Warde Manuel said. “I mean, it says that people are looking at him as a coach and what he’s doing, and watching and seeing for what it really is — the incredible turnaround that he’s put into this program.”
Gill, whose original contract at Buffalo was for five years, is about to receive a two-year extension. Still, as long as Buffalo keeps improving, he knows the perception of him will be that it’s only a matter of time before he leaves.
“I have every plan — in my mind, and my wife and my kids’ — (to stay),” Gill said. “I’m not a coach, I’m not a person that needs all the pats on the back. I’ve had a lot of opportunities. I’ve had great success as a player, I’ve had great success as a coach and I’m excited about the opportunity here.
“I’m not going to tell you that I would be here forever. No one coach can ever say that . . . (but) we have some unfinished business. That’s why I want to be here as a coach, making sure that we have a great opportunity next year to be MAC champions. We have a great opportunity to go to a bowl game... We ought to be reckoned with, particularly in the MAC, but also across the country."
Outgoing senior defensive lineman Trevor Scott makes it sound like Buffalo will have a better chance to get to where it wants as long as the Bulls have Gill.
“He’s always so positive with us, looking forward to things to come, rather than worry about the past,” Scott said. “He’s just brought us closer together.”
It’s a touch the Huskers could use right now, too.
“Most people think Nebraska and I would be a great fit,” Gill said, “but it just wasn’t meant to be at this particular time.”
Reach Curt McKeever at 473-7441 or cmckeever@journalstar.com.
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