Frank Solich initially had to think about switching from coaching in high school for college. He had enjoyed what he was doing, coaching Lincoln Southeast High for more than a decade after two years leading Omaha Holy Name High. Fortunately for Solich's career, his wife Pamela eliminated most of that thinking, leading to a career that has now taken Solich to the College Football Hall of Fame.
 
"Coach (Tom) Osborne gave me a call and asked me if I'd be interested in joining their staff as the head freshman coach," Solich said. "And so, I really enjoyed what I was doing, so I did have to think about it a little bit, but my wife didn't let me think about it at all. She said, 'Hey, Coach Osborne called and asked you to be on the staff? You better look at it.' So, I ended up joining Coach.
 
"I was the head freshman coach for a number of years there, and then I went from that to running backs coach to assistant head coach and eventually head coach and spending all those years at the University of Nebraska."
 
Solich led Nebraska for six years and Ohio for 16 after that, a 22-year head-coaching run in which he posted a 173-101 career record. His 115 wins with Ohio make him the winningest coach in the history of the Mid-American Conference. At Nebraska, his alma mater, Solich led the Cornhuskers to a Big 12 title and a No. 3 finish in the AP poll in 1999, before leading the program to the national championship in the Rose Bowl against Miami in the 2001 season.
 
The Huskers had three top-10 finishes and four top-20 finishes in Solich's six seasons in Lincoln. He coached Eric Crouch (HOF Class of 2020) to the Heisman Trophy in 2001, too.
 
"The losses beat me up, that I can tell you, and I didn't celebrate wins all that much," Solich said when asked for his best memories. "I just moved on to the next game. But the losses kind of hung with me some. You can look at all the big games at Nebraska that we had, and we won our fair share of those. And our first game at Ohio University, a home game, was against Pittsburgh. Three out of the four programs that that I was involved with, they were rebuilding programs.
 
"If you look for particular games, I can pick them out. At Nebraska, the Oklahoma game when we beat them, it was a No. 2-No. 3 matchup (in 2001), certainly a huge game. We played in so many bowl games and those were usually pretty important bowl games. So those games always come back as mostly fond memories."
 
Solich is Ohio's first Hall of Famer, and he is the 27th Hall of Famer from Nebraska, a group that now includes seven Huskers coaches.
 
He spent 29 seasons with the Huskers as either a player, assistant coach or head coach. He served as an assistant on three national title teams. He played for a Hall of Fame coach (Bob Devaney '81) and worked for another (Osborne '99).
 
Solich's .753 winning percentage as Nebraska's head coach was the fifth-highest in school history. After Nebraska, Solich dove right into another head-coaching job at Ohio and ended up matching former Central Michigan coach Herb Deromedi, a 2007 College Football Hall of Fame inductee, for the longest tenure in conference history.
 
The Bobcats had not appeared in a bowl game since 1968. Under Solich, the program made 11 bowl games, winning five. Ohio won four MAC East division titles during Solich's tenure.
 
"I'm the type of guy that when I got a job to do, I'm totally into that job, and so I wasn't thinking about the next step beyond Ohio," Solich said. "I like the people that that I visited with prior to taking the job. I felt they wanted to build the program. I took a look at the university itself. I visited the campus really on my own and drove around and got a feel for maybe what Athens, Ohio was about. And I liked everything that I saw. So, I felt like I could build that program, I could help them at Ohio. And so I ended up taking the job.
 
"And as I look back on it, again, I wouldn't trade my time there for anything, or my time at Nebraska. I feel like my moves were important moves, but they were also good moves. Our family enjoyed everywhere we'd been in terms of coaching."
  
FRANK SOLICH: UP CLOSE

• Overall Record: 173-101-0 (63.1%), including 115-82 (58.4%) during his 16 years at Ohio and 58-19 (75.3%) during his six-year run in Nebraska.
• Ranked fourth for most victories among active FBS head coaches at the time of his retirement in 2021.
• Became the winningest coach in Mid-American Conference history with 115 overall wins and is tied at 16 years for longest tenured coach in MAC history.
• Guided Ohio to four MAC East titles and 11 bowls and five bowl victories and 12-straight non-losing seasons.
• Coached Nebraska to three top 10 finishes (No. 3 in 1999, No. 8 in 2000, No. 8 in 2001), a Big 12 title, three Big 12 North Division titles and an appearance in the BCS National Championship Game at the 2002 Rose Bowl.