Link: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/spor...awrence-phillips-mike-bianchi-0824-story.html
Nebraska legend Tom Osborne backed Lawrence Phillips until the sad, suicidal end
by Mike Bianchi, Orlando Sentinel
Even until the sad, suicidal end to a tragic, tumultuous life, Nebraska coaching legend Tom Osborne would not give up on Lawrence Phillips.
He visited him in prison, tried to keep his spirits up and wrote him one final letter of encouragement just before Christmas of 2015.
Phillips, the star running back of the dominating, dismantling Cornhuskers during Osborne's national championship-heyday, never got the letter and was found dead in his cell a couple of weeks after the holidays. He hanged himself with a bed sheet that had been ripped in half. According to the coroner's final report, Phillips taped a note to his chest that said, "Do Not Resuscitate."
"It got to a point where he felt like there wasn't any hope," Osborne told me a few days ago when he was in town as a guest speaker for UCF's Football Kickoff Luncheon. "I felt bad because I'd written him the letter. I new he was going to be in prison over Christmas and that's always a hard time. Then I found out [the prison] had been holding his mail and my letter and several other letters had never gotten through to him. Maybe if those letters had gotten through, it would have ended differently.
"I felt bad about that because I didn't want him to feel that somehow we abandoned him."
Osborne -- one of the greatest college football coaches in history -- could have and probably should have abandoned Phillips long ago. It would have saved him from the biggest moral stain on an otherwise noble and righteous coaching career.
Two decades after the fact, I have changed my perspective on Osborne. Back then, I thought he was a win-at-all cost coach who was simply keeping a star player on the team so he could win another national championship. In hindsight, I truly believe he was trying to save the life of a talented-but-troubled young man.
It was 1995 when Nebraska had one of the greatest assemblages of talent in college football history with Phillips as the featured I-back in Osborne's vaunted option offense. But early in the season, Phillips was arrested after he broke into an apartment and brutally dragged his ex-girlfriend down three flights of stairs by the hair and rammed her head into a mailbox.
It was the apartment of current UCF football coach Scott Frost, who then was a sophomore quarterback for the Cornhuskers. Osborne had warned Frost not to get involved with Phillips former girlfriend.
Phillips was arrested and Osborne suspended him from the team, but the coach would not bend to media and faculty pressure and permanently remove him from the team. Despite the firestorm of national criticism, Osborne eventually reinstated Phillips, who ran for 165 yards and scored three touchdowns in the Cornhuskers' crushing 62-24 win over undefeated Florida in the 1996 Fiesta Bowl -- a victory that earned Nebraska a second straight national title.
Leading up to that Fiesta Bowl, Osborne angrily walked out of a press conference when a reporter asked him, "If one of your players had roughed up a member of your family and had dragged her down a flight of steps, would you have reinstated that player to the team?"
Osborne's stance remained consistent. He insisted he didn't keep Phillips on the team to provide wins; he kept him on the team to provide structure. "I felt the only thing I could put in place that would keep him on track was football because that was probably the only consistent organizing factor in his life," Osborne told USA Today after Phillips committed suicide.
You see, Osborne knew where Phillips came from and knew were Phillips would go back to without somebody providing him constant guidance. And he was exactly right. Phillips was abandoned by his parents, wandered the streets of L.A. and grew up in foster homes. Osborne tried to save him, but he was unsalvageable. But the time he got to Nebraska, the scars of his boyhood had defaced his manhood.
The St. Louis Rams drafted him in the first round but eventually cut ties with him because he showed up drunk for games. The Miami Dolphins released him after he was arrested for assaulting a woman. He was released by the San Francisco 49ers for conduct detrimental to the team. He was even kicked out of the Canadian Football League and the Arena Football League.
In 2009, he was sentenced to 31 years in prison for two separate incidents -- driving his car into three teenagers and assaulting an ex-girlfriend. In prison, he faced a possible death sentence after being charged with the murder of his cellmate.
It's because of kids who grew up like Phillips that Osborne now devotes much of his time to a charity he founded called "Teammates" -- a mentoring program for troubled kids.
"If Lawrence had had somebody in his life -- somebody stable and somebody who cared about him when he was 8 or 9 years old -- quite likely we would have seen a different outcome," Osborne said in a TV interview after Phillips committed suicide.
The iconic Tom Osborne won 255 games, 13 conference titles and three national championships, but his biggest defeat came at Christmastime two years ago.
The great coach taught Lawrence Phillips how to run away from defenders, but -- as hard as he tried -- he could not teach him how to run away from his past.
Nebraska legend Tom Osborne backed Lawrence Phillips until the sad, suicidal end
by Mike Bianchi, Orlando Sentinel
Even until the sad, suicidal end to a tragic, tumultuous life, Nebraska coaching legend Tom Osborne would not give up on Lawrence Phillips.
He visited him in prison, tried to keep his spirits up and wrote him one final letter of encouragement just before Christmas of 2015.
Phillips, the star running back of the dominating, dismantling Cornhuskers during Osborne's national championship-heyday, never got the letter and was found dead in his cell a couple of weeks after the holidays. He hanged himself with a bed sheet that had been ripped in half. According to the coroner's final report, Phillips taped a note to his chest that said, "Do Not Resuscitate."
"It got to a point where he felt like there wasn't any hope," Osborne told me a few days ago when he was in town as a guest speaker for UCF's Football Kickoff Luncheon. "I felt bad because I'd written him the letter. I new he was going to be in prison over Christmas and that's always a hard time. Then I found out [the prison] had been holding his mail and my letter and several other letters had never gotten through to him. Maybe if those letters had gotten through, it would have ended differently.
"I felt bad about that because I didn't want him to feel that somehow we abandoned him."
Osborne -- one of the greatest college football coaches in history -- could have and probably should have abandoned Phillips long ago. It would have saved him from the biggest moral stain on an otherwise noble and righteous coaching career.
Two decades after the fact, I have changed my perspective on Osborne. Back then, I thought he was a win-at-all cost coach who was simply keeping a star player on the team so he could win another national championship. In hindsight, I truly believe he was trying to save the life of a talented-but-troubled young man.
It was 1995 when Nebraska had one of the greatest assemblages of talent in college football history with Phillips as the featured I-back in Osborne's vaunted option offense. But early in the season, Phillips was arrested after he broke into an apartment and brutally dragged his ex-girlfriend down three flights of stairs by the hair and rammed her head into a mailbox.
It was the apartment of current UCF football coach Scott Frost, who then was a sophomore quarterback for the Cornhuskers. Osborne had warned Frost not to get involved with Phillips former girlfriend.
Phillips was arrested and Osborne suspended him from the team, but the coach would not bend to media and faculty pressure and permanently remove him from the team. Despite the firestorm of national criticism, Osborne eventually reinstated Phillips, who ran for 165 yards and scored three touchdowns in the Cornhuskers' crushing 62-24 win over undefeated Florida in the 1996 Fiesta Bowl -- a victory that earned Nebraska a second straight national title.
Leading up to that Fiesta Bowl, Osborne angrily walked out of a press conference when a reporter asked him, "If one of your players had roughed up a member of your family and had dragged her down a flight of steps, would you have reinstated that player to the team?"
Osborne's stance remained consistent. He insisted he didn't keep Phillips on the team to provide wins; he kept him on the team to provide structure. "I felt the only thing I could put in place that would keep him on track was football because that was probably the only consistent organizing factor in his life," Osborne told USA Today after Phillips committed suicide.
You see, Osborne knew where Phillips came from and knew were Phillips would go back to without somebody providing him constant guidance. And he was exactly right. Phillips was abandoned by his parents, wandered the streets of L.A. and grew up in foster homes. Osborne tried to save him, but he was unsalvageable. But the time he got to Nebraska, the scars of his boyhood had defaced his manhood.
The St. Louis Rams drafted him in the first round but eventually cut ties with him because he showed up drunk for games. The Miami Dolphins released him after he was arrested for assaulting a woman. He was released by the San Francisco 49ers for conduct detrimental to the team. He was even kicked out of the Canadian Football League and the Arena Football League.
In 2009, he was sentenced to 31 years in prison for two separate incidents -- driving his car into three teenagers and assaulting an ex-girlfriend. In prison, he faced a possible death sentence after being charged with the murder of his cellmate.
It's because of kids who grew up like Phillips that Osborne now devotes much of his time to a charity he founded called "Teammates" -- a mentoring program for troubled kids.
"If Lawrence had had somebody in his life -- somebody stable and somebody who cared about him when he was 8 or 9 years old -- quite likely we would have seen a different outcome," Osborne said in a TV interview after Phillips committed suicide.
The iconic Tom Osborne won 255 games, 13 conference titles and three national championships, but his biggest defeat came at Christmastime two years ago.
The great coach taught Lawrence Phillips how to run away from defenders, but -- as hard as he tried -- he could not teach him how to run away from his past.
