Farewell To The Huskers, Part 1

And some of the worst SOS on average, both OOC and total. Now and then they’d play a tough Washington, but usually they were catching an Arizona State or UCLA with a losing record in 3 of their prior 5 seasons, and often as not getting ‘upset.’ There’s a reason it was called the Big Overate Conference.

Nebraska was a good school in the top tier, often top 10, but rarely the best or as high as the idiot media portrayed them as. Expanding the conference, adding a CCG, and even the BCS made the poll scam harder to pull off. I’m sure the Cornwankers will cherry pick one season or two and portray it as typical. But analyze the schedule over any 10-year period and you’ll see relatively weak slates. Too bad Huckleberry is going on vacation.

Oh yeah, with apologies to Tony Bruno, “How ’bout them Brazilians?”

“Beautiful, baby, beautiful.”

Can’t wait for Germany to knock out the chunky Communist cokehead tomorrow.

The Husker recruiting strategy: Prior to Callahan debacle.

1. Bring in Cornfed Midwest farmboys to control the LOS
2. Bring in talented specialists from Texas, FL, CA, etc.

A recipe for success when running the option.

Fast forward to 2000ish. Big 12 defenses finally figure out that substituting size for speed at the OLB positions can neutralize the vaunted option, thus rendering Nebbie useless in the 2000’s….enter Callahan. Lolz.

Good write-up, TTR.

What’s necessary to leave out in a capsule like this is Osborne’s constant tinkering in order to reach the top. People remember the gadget plays and the gutsy calls, but forget that he was a real experimenter—more like a garage inventor than a mad scientist. He went “air Tom” during the 1970s, for instance, with Humm and Ferragamo. Eventually he figured out that throwing the long ball in Lincoln during November wasn’t going to work consistently.

In the 1980s he returned to the option, and hit the jackpot with the Gill/Rozier/Fryar trio. This helped him finally getting over the hump vs. Switzer, who had had his number until then.

During the early 1990s, it became clear he wouldn’t be able to win against the Florida teams without a speedier defense, so one night he and Charlie McBride sketched out a new defensive scheme on the back of a napkin in a diner. (Tom had the salad, apparently.) This, and Tommie Frazier, were the secrets of his great teams.

The downsides to his time as coach are well known: the rumors about steroids; and the lawlessness of some of his guys during the mid-1990s. Lawrence Phillips, the second-best back I’ve seen in person after Ricky, is currently serving a 31-year sentence for assault.

lummox, got to disagree. I’m no apologist for the Huskers, but in that period they had a great program. Yes, the Big 8 had 6 programs not nearly as strong as NU’s. Still, in the 40 year period mentioned, NU was 20 – 18 in bowl games and 19 – 20 against the Sooners, another nationally elite program. In other words, they dominated weaker teams, and played comparable teams even- which is what you expect top teams to do.

Good read. I look forward to the next installment. I have to admit that I grew up on college football from about 1998 on. It’s when I started to pay attention more or less, and then since college I have been on blogs and ESPN every day looking for news pretty much. Within that time frame I never knew NU the powerhouse. Always referred to as a powerhouse, but they were just on the cusp of fading when I started paying attention. Good to be reminded why all the love and respect.

There’s a lot to admire & respect about NU’s FB program.

However, Osborne’s attitude & actions, which filtered down to the NU fan base, have really soured me on the Huskers. I hope they get their Big Red Behinds kicked in the Big 10+2.

The irony regarding NU and OU is that by and large, until Osborne started recruiting speed first, OU had NU’s number. Generally speaking, a dominant side won, but when the teams were equally ranked, the Switzer teams beat the Osborne teams. And a Nebraska upset was a rare bird indeed. The ’78 game at Lincoln was memorable in that regard, but Osborne ended up getting a raw deal anyway when the Orange Bowl decided on a rematch.

<emIn the 1980s he returned to the option, and hit the jackpot with the Gill/Rozier/Fryar trio. This helped him finally getting over the hump vs. Switzer, who had had his number until then.

Those guys contributed three of the 5 total wins Osborne (5-12) had against Switzer.

Yes, Bob, but (again, I sound like the apologist that I’m really not) credit to NU for recognizing that Switzer’s teams were dominant because he was unconstrained by ethics, and not responding rashly by firing the coach.

Winning 83% of your games for 40 years is absurdly impressive, no matter who you play.

Good read. As well balanced a writeup as I’ve seen from an “outsider”. It should be noted that Osborne never had a class rated in the “top 10” by the recruiting services of his day. Sure, winning key recruiting battles (like Tommie Frazier choosing NU over ND) and Lawrence Phillips as the #1RB in the nation pushed NU over the top but ultimately the program was defined by the beef and work ethic.

Title IX impact many programs but NU still found a way to field a roster of 200+ players. They did so by adding new women’s programs rather than cutting the roster. The fact that walk-ons were treated the same a scholarship players gave credibility to the program. Of course, there were many a star RB recruits that walked into the locker room on a recruiting visit and left complaining about “12 players on the IB depth chart”.

It should also be noted that a huge percentage of those bowl games occurred in Florida where NU was often playing an FSU/Miami in their own backyard or even home stadium.

I hope the next 2 installments are as balanced as this one was.

Thanks, seattle. The ultimate goal is to maximize talent on the field. The method of doing that by maximizing talent in the recruit class is only available to a few programs. NU found a different way to be one of the most talented teams.

Good stuff.

I’m marrying into a die-hard Husker family, and everything you’re stating here is spot-on.

Another tidbit (please, correct me if I’m wrong here, or elaborate):
Some cities, or counties, in the state of Nebraska (maybe major High Schools, too) awarded an in-state scholarship to a “fellows of leadership” or something like that, which typically were reserved for top in-state football recruits… which, essentially worked as another Big Red pipeline.

This way, Nebraska wouldn’t have to burn a scholarship on it’s own top in-state talent, and could potentially open up spots for more out-of-state talent in other sports… again, I could be way off here, but as I understand it, Eric Crouch was a product of this.

Looking forward to the next two installments…

edit – out-of-state talent… scratch “other sports”

I don’t know about the “county scholarship”. I thought it was debunked. I remember that Jay Novacek grew up in Nebraska, and said he was so offended when he was told that he was expected to walk on at NU (he was offered scholarships by other schools) that he told them to pound sand. If there really were county scholarships, you would think he would have received one.

Let’s take Ghana Bevo to Lincoln, that’ll scare the crap out of ’em:

http://d.yimg.com/a/p/rids/20100623/i/r1691016972.jpg?x=400&y=207&q=85&sig=XB398HeqTkPaH9v6PlGREg—

Come on man! I was prepared to start a drinking game with a shot everytime “county scholorship” and “vitamin S” was mentioned….now I have a bottle only 1 finger width light.

I am looking forward to part 3 though…A Texas blog telling Nebraska about it’s future? Let’s see what cliches we can drink to then. Just make sure you aren’t engaging in some pseudo-scary rationalization/fantasy in redifining Nebraska and it’s future.

I was about to post the over/under number of quotes on that too John… the ol’ Nebraska County Scholarship, the Tsarist blood libel of Big 12 college football. It’s a little known fact that the Elders of Zion always favored the option-I attack.

Whatever the rules were, the rules now are that people who are on scholarship and play football count against the 85 unless all students are treated equally in the awarding of the aid — that is, all students similar to the athlete get the same money.

Taylor, my point on Osborne is that he was being outcoached, unless you want to take the view that Switzer wasn’t getting the most out of what he had bought.

Yes, their was such thing as a scholarship offered by each county. Heck, Nebraska is a very agrarian state and as a Land Grand university the goal is to get kids off the farm and into college. My Freshmen football coach in Scottsbluff was a recipient of one of these scholarships. He was a walk-on. Unfortunately, all scholarships are created equally in the eyes of the NCAA (academic or athletic) thus if they want to set foot on the field they can only give out 85 a year. My coach was told that if he wanted to play he’d have to give up his scholarship. He quit and became a tutor for the team. Oh, these scholarships aren’t reserved for walk-on football players. Nebraska simply recruits walk-ons with a similar zeal as they do for scholarship players. A healthy amount of our walk-ons are out of state too. They come to Nebraska because they want to play FBS football and know they’ll get a fair shot at NU. That is backed up by a program that normally reserves a few scholarships annually for deserving walk-ons.

Right on target.

I am driving through SEC country on thr way to see the younger improved version of java. Any messages I should convey?

BTW, she is a rabid Longhorn completing her residency.

Thanks for a balanced write-up, TTR, especially for recognizing the academic programs at NU. I’d say we’re about as proud of the Academic All-Americans as the “regular” All-Americans at NU.

I know the disagreement about partial qualifiers put Texas and Nebraska at odds in the early years of the Big 12. I wish more of us on both sides of that disagreement had been as fair as you seem to be in this first installment – maybe the Big 10+2 move doesn’t happen if that’s the case.

In analyzing a period as wide as 1962-2001, it may be helpful to break the era into distinct segments, because I think the Nebraska program went through distinct phases over 40 years.

In the period prior to the 1994 National Championship, I think most Nebraska fans would consider the 1970s and 1980s (and early 1990s) “the Osborne years” to be the most frustrating of eras. Neb was routinely beaten by OU, and given the weakness of the Big 8 (Kansas, KSU, and CU were historically bad over most of this period), Nebraska typically entered each season with only two games that they were at risk of losing…OU and the Bowl game. Unfortunately, Nebraska usually lost both. Nine win seasons were the floor, but national championships were the unattainable ceiling.

I further don’t give a lot of weight to the geographic aspect of the “talent” issue relative to tthe modern talent juggernauts (Florida, FSU, Miami, Texas, USC, etc…) because college football was overwhelmingly white for most of the this period, and in Nebraska’s case, right on into the early 1990s (especially on defense). This wouldn’t be fully captured in the 1989-2006 draft analysis above. The white kids of the Midwest were no better or worse athletes than the white kids from anyplace else in the country. Not until Osborne started recruiting African-Americans across the board on defense did Nebraska start competing in the Orange Bowl and against OU. That’s when he had to stray from taking mostly Midwestern corn-fed kids to recruits from Florida, Cali, Louisiana, Texas, Camden NJ, etc..

If you ever get a chance to watch the ESPN 30-in-30 movie about the Miami Hurricanes, Bernie Kosar has some very interesting comments about the Nebraska defense of the mid-1980s….which underscores the point above.

An interesting coincidence of timing was the late 1980s, when Osborne finally started recruiting African-Americans to play defense (not just I-back and QB), and Switzer’s OU blew-up in the face of scandal. Once Switzer was gone and Osborne finally had real
athletes on defense, the table was set for Nebraska to get over the hump in the early 1990s.

From 1993-1999, Nebraska was about as dominant as you can get in college football. Three NCs (though, in fairness, they got lucky with a split poll in 1997 as a retirement gift to Osborne. Michigan was the better team and earned the MNC), and massive home winning streak, and generally wrecked sh** on all comers. This is actually even more impressive in the context of a dramatically improved Colorado and Kansas State within the Big 8, as well as beating Miami and Florida to claim those NCs.

The machine was never able to duplicate the success once the Big XII was created though, as Solich replaced Osborne in 1998, and Nebraska became more restricted in the athletes they could recruit into the program (no more PQs). As night follows day, Nebraska couldn’t get the athletes on defense that they were accustomed to, and Solich steadfastly sticking to the old running game playbook in the face of ever pass-happy college football of the early 2000s, the downturn of Nebraska from the mid-1990s was sealed. Miami’s win over Nebraska in the 2001 MNC game was a glaring example of the talent dropoff at Nebraska, especially speed on defense.

I have a lot of respect for all that Nebraska accomplished over that 40 year span, but hindsight and cynicism give me some pause. PEDs, reliance on imported PQs, easy schedules, etc…who knows whether or not (and to what extent) any of this stuff played a role in it? However, the fact that I have to think about it diminishes something about it all.

Thanks for the comments. Looking back on it, I wish I had written “Nebraska regularly turned students of average intelligence, that were willing to do the work, into Academic All-Americans”, and had emphasized my belief that every major program in the country would have loved to have the NU S&C program, no matter what it entailed.

Bob, I don’t think Switzer outcoached Osborne any more than I think he outcoached Royal. He had better talent, that’s all. I think if we could find the NFL draft data from 1972 to 1986, that could be proven. I’m not crazy about Osborne as a AD, but as a football coach and program architect? It’s hard to imagine anyone better. He coached for 25 years, and the only criticisms are that he couldn’t bring himself to kick the most talented guy on the team off (Phillips), and when given two quarterbacks that were analogs to Colt McCoy and Vince Young (Bollinger? berringer? and Tommy Frazier), he tried to play them both.

Damn. I really sound like a fan, and I’m really not. I just think it’s silly to not recognize reality.

Prop 48 meant they could get every retard on the west coast that the Pac 10 wouldn’t take.

Really excellent post, TTR. I enjoyed this as much as I will cringe through the second installment, but I’ll look forward to reading it.

We’ll give you some love over at Better Off Red.

Glass Joe -
I have no dog in the fight, but you’re stretching things to say Nebraska got lucky with a split national championship in 1997. Perhaps you’re basing that on their two common opponents. Michigan beat Colorado 27-3 and Baylor 38-3 while Nebraska’s wins were less decisive (Colorado 27-24 and Baylor 49-21). However, I am among those who would measure a team by how it did in its biggest games. Here there is no comparison:

Michigan: Notre Dame 21-14, Penn State 34-8, Wisconsin 26-16, Ohio State 20-14 and Washington St. 21-16 in the Rose Bowl

Nebraska: Kansas State 56-26, Oklahoma 69-7, Texas A&M 54-15, and Tennessee 42-17 in the Orange Bowl

Wolverines only enjoyed one blowout among their biggest games .. . Nebraska never broke a sweat in its biggest games. I recognize that OU was a mess at that time, but A&M won the South that year and that Tennessee team was SEC champs, featured Peyton Manning and went on to win a national championship the next year. I dont’ see anything in Michigan’s resume as impressive as the win over the Vols. Washington State didn’t sniff the top 10.

As somebody who lived 2 years in Michigan and like the Big Blue, I always thought Michigan was the lucky team in that split.

Sure, the Michigan split is debatable and we’ll never know, but let’s not forget McCloskey’s Corner in ‘82. A catch by Penn State that was clearly out of bounds inside the 5, resulting in a 12-1 season for the Huskers and a Nat’l Championship for Penn State. There was no instant replay in those days. A decade later NU was handed a NC while PSU was undefeated as well. Nebraska was very competitive with lesser talent and sure, there were issues with PEDs, player discipline, etc. You don’t just throw a young man’s life away (Phillips), especially someone so talented….hell, he was plenty capable of doing that himself. I have little doubt some of the same issues were occurring at other schools as well while NU may have been more under the microscope. Thanks for a insightful article. Looking forward to the rest of the series.

I wouldn’t look at how many blowouts Nebraska had vs Michigan. That’s like saying OU’s 60 pt streak in ’08 was that significant. The main argument against Nebraska that year was their fluke win over a mediocre Mizzou team.

No matter you spin it, Nebraska simply could not compete with Texas. I will never forget the quote of the Nebraska when they fired Solich after winning a mere 10 games:

“We are not going to surrender this conference to Texas and Oklahoma!”

Well buddy, you just did. Take your ball and go be Michigan and Ohio State’s whipping boy for a while.

After 1997 Vegas oddsmakers said NU would have been a 7-8 point favorite over Michigan, for what that’s worth.

Arguing over who was better in 1997 is good for The Game, remember! Controversy, attention, relevance! We don’t need a tournament, that would be boring.

The county scholarships deal is a myth and, Wyoming thanks Nebraska for asking Novacek to walk on.

Glass Joe’s comment was an excellent addendum to TTR’s original post.

Nebraska wasn’t much to brag about during most of Osborne’s tenure. It wasn’t until they started loading up on partial qualifiers that NU became a bona fide superpower. Osborne was well aware of this. That’s why he’s caused such as HUGE STINK ever since UT took away NU’s ability to load up on PQs. And he knew the bottom was going to fall out from underneath NU, so he left coaching.

“After 1997 Vegas oddsmakers said NU would have been a 7-8 point favorite over Michigan, for what that’s worth.

Arguing over who was better in 1997 is good for The Game, remember! Controversy, attention, relevance! We don’t need a tournament, that would be boring"

OU ‘09 would have been a 3+ pt favorite over UT ’09 in Vegas if they played after the season was over. UT won by 10 on the field. Sometimes even playing on the field doesn’t solve everything.

“Looking back on it, I wish I had written "Nebraska regularly turned students of average intelligence, that were willing to do the work, into Academic All-Americans", and had emphasized my belief that every major program in the country would have loved to have the NU S&C program, no matter what it entailed.”

When you say “no matter what it entailed”, is that a reference to performance enhancing drugs? PEDs have had ruinous health impact on a lot of athletes. Any coach who encourages college kids to use PEDs is an exploitive asshole.

Looking back, shouldn’t you have focused much more on the role partial qualifiers played in the success of NU?

I always liked NU but Newy25 is right on with his remarks about NU and Osborne. IIRC, NU is bowing out of their game scheduled in Austin the season after next. If true, how chicken shit is Osborne? Osborne always seemed to fear and dislike Texas. I’m not inclined to throw any accolades his way right now.

BTW, is it true (as one commenter stated) that Osborne was slow to extensively recruit black players?

This idea that Osborne was slow to recruit black players is unsupported and ridiculous, especially considering UT didn’t even allow a nonwhite player on its team until 1970, the year before he took the reins at Nebraska.

Nebraska led the nation in recruiting based on merit, and the 1970 and 1971 championships were a direct result (thank you Rich Glover and Johnny Rodgers). In fact, it was out beatdown of Alabama in the bowl game that helped make up Bear Bryant’s mind on recruiting African Americans. If we couldn’t get more quality players on defense until the 1990s (and the facts indicate it was much more due to a change in scheme rather than a change in recruiting focus), it wasn’t from a lack of trying. What was Darrell Royal’s excuse?
 
I fear the comments on this thread illustrate the deep chasm of perception between Longhorn and Husker. With that said, kudos to TaylorTRoom for an objective, interesting look at the old program. It’s too bad we couldn’t provide more opposition for UT during the Big 12, as it’s hard to argue against the series results.

Bob, I’m going to respond to that comment about UT integration. DKR became AD in 1963 and immediately began integrating Texas sports programs. He had an African-American on the track varsity that year. He tried to recruit African-Americans for football in 1964, but either lost them to other schools or baseball (Don Baylor). His first recruited African-American football player was on the freshman team in 1968, but flunked out.

One of the problems with Texas schools integrating was that it was so much easier for an African American schoolboy to attend a northern school than a southern school, due to the Jim Crow legacy. That said, this is not a simple subject at all. OU likes to brag about integrating their varsity in 1958, and credit to them for that. I notice their 1960 and 1961 teams were lily-white. What caused them to resegregate and then reintegrate?

“IIRC, NU is bowing out of their game scheduled in Austin the season after next. If true, how chicken shit is Osborne? "

It is par for the course for Nebraska and their fans. They could not compete with Texas and Oklahoma so they invented this bull shit revenue problem to give them cover to tuck tail and run from the conference. They can sell the fans and the media on the merits of the Big 10 but we all know why they left.

So it is hard for me to sit here and pay my respects to the great traditional power that is Nebraska football when they run like little bitches to an easier conference when they fail to compete on the field.

“In fact, it was out beatdown of Alabama in the bowl game that helped make up Bear Bryant’s mind on recruiting African Americans.”

First I’ve heard of that claim. What has been acknowledged previously was that a USC whipping of Alabama at Legion Field in 1970 settled the issue in Bryant’s mind.

http://wearesc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=35127

To further back up BIH — 1970 was the first year that the NCAA expanded the regular season to 11 games. That summer Bryant called up McKay and set up the game, knowing full well what kind of team he would bring to Birmingham.

Ojnab Bob,
I think you’re taking the African-American recruiting comments the wrong way. Nobody is suggesting in any way that Neb or Osborne had a racist intent at all. I’ve never heard of anything of the sort.

The point is that Nebraska had largely white, unsophisiticated defenses for much of the 1970s and 1980s. It doesn’t mean that they were racist, it simply meant that’s who they decided to go with on defense. Defensive speed wasn’t a premium in the Neb program in the 1970s and 1980s.

Frankly, I often thought that before the early 1990s, defense was something of an after thought in Osborne’s program. He was an offensive innovator, and he 1983 team was the most prolific offense in NCAA history at the time. IMO after Osborne realized that he couldn’t beat the Florida teams in the Orange Bowl and the OU teams in the Big Eight, he finally started putting a premium on defensive speed, the results were manifested in 1993-1998. In fact, I seem to recall a comment from Bowden to Osborne effectively offering the free advice that he (Osborne) needed more speed on defense in order to win an MNC. Regardless, Osborne changed course in the early 1990s.

Again, it has nothing to do with racism, and everything to do with not placing an emphasis on defensive speed in recruiting (until the 1990s).

Fellow UT fans,
I don’t think we should he quick to classify other schools as racist, seeing as how we have a dorm named after one of the founders of the KKK. Even our tshirt fans should know this.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/06/09/2010-06-09_university_of_texas_may_redub_dormitory_named_for_kkk_leader.html

The university has responded by assembling a 19-member panel that will meet for the first time Thursday to deliberate on whether the dorm should be given a new scandal-free name.

I think this panel may need some more members to really get to the heart of this.

“They could not compete with Texas and Oklahoma so they invented this bull shit revenue problem to give them cover to tuck tail and run from the conference.”

Honestly? We’re leaving because we can’t compete with a team we beat last year, and with another team which we just essentially played to a draw in the Big XII title game? Jesus. Get over yourself. Texas is one of the three biggest names in college football, and always fields a top 10 team, but Nebraska certainly is afraid to compete with them, or Oklahoma for that matter. Texas has clearly gotten the best of the series, but the most lop-sided a score has ever been is 31-7. Outside of that game, Texas hasn’t beaten Nebraska by more than 4. Even in our season of discontent in 2007, when our defense couldn’t have stopped a bulimic from her toilet, the final was 28-24 at Texas (and it took a historic effort by Jamaal Charles to win the game for Texas, despite Greg Davis’s best efforts). That’s considerable success on Texas’ part, and frustratingly so to Nebraska fans, but it certainly isn’t dominance of the sort that would cause a team to run and hide.

We’re leaving the conference, not for reasons of revenue, but for long-term stability and a more equitable decision-making structure. It was a good move for our athletics and, more importantly, for our academic interests. We’re not running away from Texas and Oklahoma, we’re heading to a conference which we know will still exist 25 years from now in some form, which is more than anyone can say for the Big XII now or six months ago or 1 year ago.

re:

The university has responded by assembling a 19-member panel that will meet for the first time Thursday to deliberate on whether the dorm should be given a new scandal-free name.

they should rename the dorm, and then go and rename about 3/4 of West Virginia…

What is the big deal about academic all americans? Isn’t it based on grades schools hands out (GPA)? All schools now have great academic support. Considering Nebraska takes the same or even lesser qualified (JUCO) recruits than Texas, wouldn’t the most obvious explanation for Nebraska having more academic all americans and higher grad rates than Texas be that Nebraska is far easier?

Intresting article from an NU fan. While I respect what UT has done in the 2000’s, I think of UT much as I do Colorado-a team that shined for a decade, other than that has up and down years-but has arrogant fair weather fans. Before you get all excited-go check out UT’s record in the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s compared to NU’s. Also-when Nebraska did admittedly suck-in the 2000’s, we still almost beat UT numerous times.

To those who say NU had a weak schedule and the media portrayed them as a great team-what papers were you reading? Last I checked, the easy and west coast writers didn’t care too much about this boring midwest dynasty. And even though NU had weak teams on their schedule (though they always had OU), they still played highly rated teams tough in the bowls or when they did play them.

To those who are sour on Nebraska’s fans attitudes, okay, be sour. As an NU fan I would love to see Nebraska play Texas and OU. More OU, because of the strong rival NU/OU had. I would be afraid that if we scheduled UT long-term, it would end up another weak team on the schedule.