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UNL was TO and then TO chose Solich... by the time UNL actually did a coaching search, it was for Callahan.   Timing...

There's something to playing the best guy who shows up and tries hard everyday.

What a lot of people do not understand is how hard the man works. I remember his first year at Bama he took a very limited team with no depth, no defensive linemen, some walk ons and a transfer mlb from MTSU and won seven games. He beat Arkansas, Tennessee, Colorado and Houston all who had better personnel, lost to Georgia in ot, and played LSU and Auburn close. Some of those losses were after the NCAA declared seven players ineligible because of a text book fiasco. The most telling thing about Saban that year was after Bama lost the last game to Auburn on a Saturday, on Monday he and his entire staff was on the recruiting trail.  Tommy Turberville went duck hunting. I and virtually anybody else would have gone duck hunting. That is who Saban is.

UNL was TO and then TO chose Solich... by the time UNL actually did a coaching search, it was for Callahan.   Timing...

I didn't realize the Bill Callahan hire was a result of a coaching search?   That was more like a want AD, after Stevie Pedey's master plan exploded all over his pleated pants.  It was a pre-social media Tennessee like hiring process.
Yeah, timing is just such a huge part of life (employment).   You have guys like Lombardi, who seemed like they would succeed at coaching anything, he was a pretty successful hoops coach while he waited around for a more substantive football gig.   The only thing that beat Lombardi was cancer.
I think Osborne would have been successful running other kinds of offenses, he was quite adaptable even within the confines of their 'I formation' at Nebraska, but who knows.   Does his personality translate well in some of the other campuses?  Maybe, maybe not.   He sure seemed to have an extraordinarily high level of influence over the entire 'process' at Nebraska, and enjoyed never to be seen again, long tenured assistant coaches.  Could he do that elsewhere?   He lost 49 games in 25 years, and only one to a team with a losing record, that's obviously a reflection of Jimmies and Joes, but also masterful preparedness.  You had to 'beat Nebraska', as the T-shirts used to say all over the Big 8 (I even picked up one in Syracuse in '84, when they did beat #1 Nebraska).  It should be noted, Osborne benefited from his predecessor, though those were huge shoes to fill which nearly got him run out off Lincoln later in the 70s since he couldn't beat Switzer.
Snyder is a most interesting case to consider.   KSU was so far off the map of college football forever B.S., it is really hard to relate that to anything else in sports.   Only four winning records from 1933-1990. 17 zero win or one win seasons.  He's such a wizard.   Snyder got/gets ripped for weak scheduling, but talk about a place that nobody wanted to visit.   I think the only P5 visitors they hosted in the first Bill Snyder era were Minnesota, Iowa and then USC of all teams.  KSU won those games. They mauled Carson Palmer, USC did make the score look close late.  (That was the '02 season, when everyone thought USC was the best team by season's end.)