LINCOLN, Neb. — John Cook always enjoys a good football analogy.
He said he considered former Nebraska football coach and athletic director Tom Osborne his “greatest mentor.” Osborne stepped down from coaching in 1997 after thriving for 25 years, the same amount of time Cook directed Nebraska’s volleyball program.
The school announced Cook’s retirement Wednesday. Cook, 68, explained his decision Thursday during an emotional news conference in the shadow of Memorial Stadium, where his team in 2023 set a global attendance record for a women’s sporting event by attracting a crowd of more than 92,000 to watch an outdoor volleyball match.
“We’re at the top of our game,” said Cook, who coached in 12 Final Fours and won four national championships, “so it’s a great time to be a cheerleader now.”
And it’s an opportune moment to debunk a football analogy.
GO DEEPER
Nebraska volleyball coach John Cook retires; Dani Busboom Kelly to take over
Looking to replace a legendary coach after a remarkable quarter-century run — or to foster the return of a native Nebraskan who experienced success on the outside?
Nebraska football knows something about both scenarios.
The hiring of Cook’s successor, Dani Busboom Kelly, is not the volleyball equivalent of elevating Frank Solich or plucking Scott Frost to the football program.
She’s ready, and the time is right.
Solich lasted six years as Osborne’s replacement. Performance slipped. He was fired by a power-hungry athletic director. Frost made it fewer than five seasons and never won more than two games consecutively before he was vanquished in 2022.
“We’ve learned lessons in the past 25 years, how it can go bad,” Cook said in a reference to football. “We’ve got to do everything we can to keep Nebraska volleyball going. Dani, she’s the right person.”
Parallels exist between Nebraska volleyball and football. But consider that Solich was untested as a head coach when he took over a national championship-level program in 1998. He never had time to get comfortable under the intense spotlight.
Busboom Kelly is already comfortable. In her eighth season as head coach at Louisville in 2024, she prospered when the pressure intensified. Predetermined as the Final Four host, Louisville improved dramatically from the start of last season until the end, even as DBK and her players lived with the weight of knowing and hearing that fans expected them to finish their season on the big stage at home in December.
The Cardinals delivered. They beat No. 1-ranked Pitt in the national semifinals after Louisville’s top player, Anna DeBeer, was knocked out with an injury in the middle of an even match.
“They were playing for their injured teammate, but also for their coach,” said Lindsay Peterson, Nebraska’s longtime director of operations who was on staff when Busboom Kelly helped the Huskers as a player and an assistant coach to win national championships. “I wasn’t surprised they were able to do that, because Dani shows incredible belief and gets people to believe that they can do big things.”
Consider, too, that Frost returned to Lincoln in 2017 with only two years of experience as a head coach. He was admittedly reluctant but felt an obligation to his alma mater.
Busboom Kelly took Louisville to the postseason in each of her eight seasons. In 2019, the Cardinals beat Texas to earn their first trip to the Elite Eight. In 2021, she was named the national coach of the year as Louisville made it to the Final Four for the first time. In 2022, it played for a national championship and did the same last month, losing in four sets against Penn State.
She told Cook three years ago she wanted to coach at Nebraska when he retired. Her 120-15 record in the past four seasons outpaced the Huskers, who made three trips to the Final Four and played for two national titles over that time.
So did Louisville, it turns out.
Now, DBK is coming home with none of the baggage that saddled Nebraska in football after it made coaching moves that looked similar on the surface to this one.
Only on the surface.
“I’ve seen what she’s done,” Peterson said. “I know her personality, her characteristics, how she relates to people. I feel confident in telling our team, ‘You’re going to love her.’ I get that change brings uncertainty in everybody. But they will not be disappointed.”
All the feels. 🥹 pic.twitter.com/An52pakNYA
— Nebraska Volleyball (@HuskerVB) January 30, 2025
Cook maintains his greatest accomplishment is not the national championships, the Olympians produced by Nebraska or the epic gathering in the stadium two years ago that helped create a surge of momentum in the United States behind women’s volleyball.
Through tears Thursday, Cook said it’s that one of his former players and a Nebraskan will take over the program he nurtured.
Cook met with the returning Huskers on Wednesday and told them a story about Nebraska’s next coach.
Busboom Kelly came to his team from Cortland, Neb. She was a farm girl and the first player recruited by Cook who could hit a fadeaway jumper in basketball. He knew he had an athlete, so Cook made her a setter. In 2005, her junior year, Nebraska lost to Washington in the national championship match.
He felt the need to make a change. So Cook called Dani into his office in January 2006 and told her he planned to move her to libero — like turning a quarterback into a free safety, to use a football analogy.
She cursed him out and left his office. Cook didn’t see her for three days. The coach called her mother, Bonnie, and told her they’d had a “bad meeting.”
“I haven’t seen her,” Cook said. “Nobody’s talked to her.”
Bonnie told Cook that Dani would be in his office later that day. Cook thought maybe she was quitting. Instead, she showed up with a letter written to him, explaining she’d do everything possible to help the Huskers win, no matter her role.
Nebraska teammates elected her captain as a senior in 2006. The Huskers won a national championship. She was the best libero in the Big 12.
“That’s when I knew she would be a great coach,” Cook said.
Busboom Kelly, at age 39 and expecting her second child with husband Lane Kelly, a former Nebraska football player, “bleeds Husker,” Cook said.
She knows the Nebraska way, Cook said. She’ll put her touch on the program. She will dress better than Cook, he said, and she’ll have more fun with the players than he did.
“But it’s still going to be Nebraska volleyball,” he said.
For 25 years, the reality is, Nebraska volleyball far outperformed football. There exists no reason to believe, with Busboom Kelly, that it will lose momentum.
As an institution, Nebraska is not doomed to repeat its mistakes.
(Photo: Jeff Faughender / Courier Journal / USA Today via Imagn Images)
