Happy 88th Birthday, Coach Osborne!
- Thread starter king_kong_
- Start date
Mount Rushmore worthy, for sure. Best 25 year span of any coach ever.
Accomplished a lot at Nebraska. But the timing was right for him for sure. Not sure he would have survived the end of the 90's and transition into the BIG. He was nearly ran out of the state in the 80's. Honestly I would have guessed he was older than 88.
Thanks for posting Top Kong but yesterday was his birthday.
88 is getting up there... Would Love to see NU do something special before we lose that state treasure! gonna be a tough day when that happens
Not so sure about that. His offense towards the end was already experimenting with spread formations out of the shotgun. His offense would have easily evolved into what Meyer and Kelly did in the 2000’s
Im not saying that it wouldn't have. I'm saying he may not have gotten the chance.
His words.
Osborne interviewed with Colorado following the 1979 Orange Bowl, later saying "I thought there was enough unhappiness here that maybe I ought to look for a job."[20] CU offered a considerable salary increase and Osborne even traveled to Boulder to meet the team, but he ultimately declined the offer, not wanting the coach against the players he had recruited to Nebraska.[20]
I grew up in the 70's and 80's. Tom got a lot of heat and that was without the internet and chat sites.
A lot of the heat that Dr. Tom took was the timing of Barry Switzer and the amazingly fast athletes he was recruiting to Norman at the time. The Selmon brothers and the defenses of Larry Lacewell were stonewalling everyone. It was a frustrating time in the Big Eight for everyone else including Husker fans. And TO was receiving the backlash of it. That is why he interviewed with Colorado. The local media wasn't exactly kind to him at the time either. Husker fans at that point had been spoiled in the early 70's when Devaney was having his way with Chuck Fairbanks and the Sooners. Then Switzer and Larry Lacewell came along. The challenge was Nebraska couldn't cherry pick recruits out of Texas like Oklahome did. But TO figured out the speed thing in the long run.
His legacy at NU when he toyed with the CU idea was way different than by the time he retired after the '98 OB. He hadn't even won an outright conference title by '79. Are you saying he would have been forced out if he stayed on past '97 and went back to 9-10 win seasons like he had in the 70s?
No I was saying that he may not have made it through the 80's had the competition been what it was in the late 90's and into the BIG with fan expectations and the rise of chat boards and such. I recall him saying as much in an interview years ago. His main regular season obstacle was, as the post above indicated, Oklahoma. The rest of the Big 8 was crap until Colorado made a push in the late 80's and early 90's. Then you throw in the consistent bowl losses and you had a whirlwind of discontent through much of the 80's. Im glad we stayed the course and eventually enjoyed several years of complete dominance during the mid 90's.
