If we've only been better than Texas for 15 years how is it that you haven't buried us overall? 6 more total wins and 1 percentage point better winning percentage overall
If you're actually interested in knowing, it's very simple.
Texas was quite far ahead of Nebraska in all-time wins and win percentage all the way through the 1970s and 1980s. After 1983, however, Texas fell on hard times for a variety of mostly interrelated reasons, including, but not limited to:
- (1) UT academics' war on the athletics program in the mid-1980s, resulting in the imposition of academic qualification standards higher than the NCAA minimums for more than a decade, which partially choked off the flow of talent;
- (2) the impact of the TV rights deregulation (shifting control over TV rights negotiation from the NCAA to the conferences), which inflicted an eventually fatal wound on the demographically puny SWC;
- (3) the rapid financial impoverishment of the athletics program thereafter and the resultant inability to pay for top-tier coaches (John Cooper was eager to come to Texas in 1987 until he found out that we couldn't outbid his employer at the time -- mighty Arizona State) or to maintain even marginally adequate facilities;
- (4) the flight of talent from the state of Texas to programs in conferences with greater TV exposure; and
- (5) the loss of access to the talent that didn't flee the state to the SWC programs that engaged in the most egregious rulebreaking during the 1980s and 1990s (SMU, A&M, Houston).
There were other factors, but these are the most significant as to how Nebraska was able to catch up to and briefly surpass Texas in wins and win percentage.
At the end of 1983, Texas had an AP-era record of 363-138-12 (.719) to Nebraska's record of 312-181-12 (.630). But while Texas was about to wander in the wilderness for the next decade and a half, Nebraska would simultaneously put together the best period in its history. By 1997, NU caught Texas in win percentage. In the mid-1990s, UT academics' hostility to the athletics program subsided (as more of them began to understand that a more successful athletics program meant more donations not only to athletics but to the academic side as well) and Texas joined the Big 12, resolving all of the impediments to success previously mentioned, and before long Texas began to perform at a high level again -- until six seasons ago, of course.
It's not a given that Texas will overcome TCU, Baylor, Texas A&M, and Houston anytime soon, either. I would say that you should, but it's not a given.
True, nothing's ever a given. But the combination of resources, unmatched brand power, proximity to elite talent hotbeds, and traditional-power status (along with the attractiveness of Austin and the status of the University) give Texas pretty nice fundamentals when it comes to long-term projections -- and certainly
far more so than those of Baylor, TCU, and UH.
Mack Brown let the program rot around him in his final years, and the rebuild is taking some time. Strong is about to pull in a very impressive 2016 class -- likely the best in the state and in the Big 12 -- to go along with his last, and whoever is coaching in 2017 is going to have considerably more elite talent to work with than Texas has had at any time this decade. It's not hard or unreasonable to imagine much better times in the near future. And if Texas can out-recruit the rest of the state and its conference currently, it's reasonable to think that recruiting will be back among the very best in the country again (as in top three to five) with a return to strong on-field performance.
Sure, some factor or another could always screw things up for a while, but the underlying program fundamentals are good reasons to expect that the program will find its stride again before long.
Whether you want to admit it or not, Nebraska has just as much or more tradition than Texas does, and we are the only show in the state. Texas is routinely losing recruits to all of the other in state programs and the longer that goes on, the harder it will be to recover.
I don't have any problem admitting that Nebraska has great tradition or greater tradition than Texas. My point is simply than even in recent history that was not the case, that the programs are closer in that regard than NU fans would like to admit, and that, considering current program fundamentals, the smart money would say that it won't remain the case in perpetuity.
