At Nebraska, Tom Osborne is afraid not to listen to Ndamukong Suh

Posted by Michael David Smith on March 26, 2012, 7:36 AM EDT

Lions defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh is an influential man at his alma mater.

Just before Nebraska hired Tim Miles as its basketball coach, Athletic Director Tom Osborne heard from Suh, who knows Miles through a mutual friend and wanted him to get the job. Osborne stated Suh’s word carries a lot of weight.

“When Ndamukong calls, I usually listen. And if I don’t listen,” Osborne told the Omaha World-Herald, “he’ll break my neck.”

Any individual who knows how universities function knows that the threat of breaking an individual’s neck isn’t as significantly of an incentive to act as the promise of a multimillion-dollar donation. And that means Suh, who has donated $ two.6 million to Nebraska, gets his opinions heard.

Even with no having to threaten to break any individual’s neck.

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Former Lions coach Steve Mariucci took what appears like a shot at the man who hired him and fired him — Matt Millen — in explaining how Detroit’s football fortunes have finally turned around.

Mariucci didn’t rip Millen personally, but he did praise Millen’s successor atop the Lions’ front workplace, Martin Mayhew, for keeping numerous of the Lions’ scouts on the staff when he took over for Millen — and for following the suggestions of those scouts.

“There’s some great scouts there,” Mariucci stated, per the Detroit Free of charge Press. “I’ve been in a lot of draft rooms around the league, and the Detroit Lions have some very good scouts and they just required to be listened to. And so Martin Mayhew does that. He takes their evaluations and their opinions to heart, as he does with the coaches, and he makes an executive choice based on a lot of information. And that’s exactly where he actually excels.”

That confident sounds like Mariucci is suggesting that Millen, who had final say in the Lions’ draft room from 2001 to 2008, didn’t listen to the scouts on high-profile failed picks like Charles Rogers, Joey Harrington and Mike Williams. But Mariucci, maybe wishing to steer clear of the scent of sour grapes following Millen fired him in 2005, tiptoed away from criticizing Millen and rather focused on praising Mayhew.

“His approach has been successful so far, so let’s just leave it at that,” Mariucci stated of Mayhew. “He’s done a good job.”

It’s been a long time given that anyone has been able to say that about the Lions’ front office.

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