The reality of our situation

[cubsker]

Would you like to refresh my memory all these multiple games Crouch had with turnovers on the first play besides Dan Alexander 10 thumbs catching a option pitch..

first play of a&m game was an option pitch to newcombe that he dropped. why were we getting cute running option to a receiver!?!?!?!? Crouch made several questionable pitches all year long.

 

[oldjar07]

I’m 45 and, was lucky enough to be around to enjoy our amazing run in the 90’s. The fact is our reality was much different at that time.

* The Big Eight was NOT a very good football conference. We very much benefited from a weak conference schedule, and by the 90s OU was struggling.

* NCAA was just getting going with steroid testing and I don’t think that the conference tested. We were also on the cutting edge with regard to our S&C/nutrition programs...everyone does this now.

* We benefitted from low academic standards and partial qualifiers...Texas ended the partial qualifiers.

* 95-92 scholarship limit benefitted the blue bloods. Also our in state walk-on program got quite a few kids that seem to end up at places like Wyoming and the Dakotas these days.

*Our recruiting was not what people seem to remember. We had some our our greatest success leading up to and during that run, but we also benefitted from an unusual amount of local talent over those years. That said, even during our best years we did not ever have a draft class that matches some of the NFL drafts Ohio St, Bama, and Clemson have put together over the last few years. Sure we were close a few of those years, but we had a lot of mid to late round picks.

* Our success on the national scene was up and down. For years leading up to that run, we had struggled mightily in bowl games.


As much as I hate to admit it (and I’m a bit of a pessimist in these matters),I don’t ever think we will see a run anywhere near what we did back then. As fans, we need to rethink our expectations (most of us have). When Frost was hired, I told myself that he was the guy and that he would have my support until he wanted to move on.
That said, four years in the product we are putting on the field is unacceptable with the resources we still have. SF is clearly a poor game coach, and we are not getting better. Worse yet, somehow I really think he believed that we would be a good football team this year. I don’t expect to ever see much improvement in our program under Frost.

The first part of your post is completely wrong. You're completely wrong about the Big 8. We struggled in bowl games because the team we faced finished either #1 or #2 every single year. Picture playing Alabama or Clemson every year for 7 straight years, it's not hard to imagine why we couldn't win a bowl game during that stretch. When we played teams that were ranked 10-15, we usually beat them.

 

[x35goahs]

I think a lot of people on here are not putting enough blame on the players. I hate to be so brash but we have had one of the worst if not the worst 5 year stretch of draft picks in the programs history. Our talent over the last 5 years have been unimaginably mediocre. We’ve had line backers the last three years put up numbers on their pro day that the offensive lineman at the combine could beat....literally. Play calling aside we have to get more talent and develop talent and I think we have to be quick to move when a kid doesn’t live up to or rise up to the talent we require.

 

[Capdanjou]

Because I had nothing better to do.

1988: Lost by 3 to Fla State, which ended the season no. 2
1989: Lost to Miami, which ended the season no. 2
1990: Lost to Fla State, which ended the season no. 3
1991: Lost to Ga. Tech, which won a share of the NC
1992: Lost to Miami, which won the NC
1993: Lost to Fla State, which ended the season no. 2
1994: Lost to Fla State, which won the NC

 

[Spectrumalaska]

I’m 45 and, was lucky enough to be around to enjoy our amazing run in the 90’s. The fact is our reality was much different at that time.

* The Big Eight was NOT a very good football conference. We very much benefited from a weak conference schedule, and by the 90s OU was struggling.

* NCAA was just getting going with steroid testing and I don’t think that the conference tested. We were also on the cutting edge with regard to our S&C/nutrition programs...everyone does this now.

* We benefitted from low academic standards and partial qualifiers...Texas ended the partial qualifiers.

* 95-92 scholarship limit benefitted the blue bloods. Also our in state walk-on program got quite a few kids that seem to end up at places like Wyoming and the Dakotas these days.

*Our recruiting was not what people seem to remember. We had some our our greatest success leading up to and during that run, but we also benefitted from an unusual amount of local talent over those years. That said, even during our best years we did not ever have a draft class that matches some of the NFL drafts Ohio St, Bama, and Clemson have put together over the last few years. Sure we were close a few of those years, but we had a lot of mid to late round picks.

* Our success on the national scene was up and down. For years leading up to that run, we had struggled mightily in bowl games.


As much as I hate to admit it (and I’m a bit of a pessimist in these matters),I don’t ever think we will see a run anywhere near what we did back then. As fans, we need to rethink our expectations (most of us have). When Frost was hired, I told myself that he was the guy and that he would have my support until he wanted to move on.
That said, four years in the product we are putting on the field is unacceptable with the resources we still have. SF is clearly a poor game coach, and we are not getting better. Worse yet, somehow I really think he believed that we would be a good football team this year. I don’t expect to ever see much improvement in our program under Frost.

One of the weaker takes I have read on our troubles.
The Big 8 was not weak, in fact stronger than any other conference during its existence evidenced by two achievements never replicated by any other conference. Top 3, 1971, and 4 in top 10 in 1995.

As far as our success on a National level, we are still top 4 in wins since 1970 and 5 undefeated championships. At least 6 teams in best 25 all time.

All because of weak conference and lack of quality competetion.

So sad if you are really 45, and had seen what you say you did, that this is your conclusion.

 

[oldjar07]

I think a lot of people on here are not putting enough blame on the players. I hate to be so brash but we have had one of the worst if not the worst 5 year stretch of draft picks in the programs history. Our talent over the last 5 years have been unimaginably mediocre. We’ve had line backers the last three years put up numbers on their pro day that the offensive lineman at the combine could beat....literally. Play calling aside we have to get more talent and develop talent and I think we have to be quick to move when a kid doesn’t live up to or rise up to the talent we require.

Who recruits the players? Who's responsible for lack of development among those players to the point where the majority don't get any better from their freshman to senior years? The coaching staff and ultimately the head coach are completely responsible for what happens in how they run the football program. It's a pointless exercise to blame the players.

 

[EastOregonHusker]

One of the weaker takes I have read on our troubles.
The Big 8 was not weak, in fact stronger than any other conference during its existence evidenced by two achievements never replicated by any other conference. Top 3, 1971, and 4 in top 10 in 1995.

As far as our success on a National level, we are still top 4 in wins since 1970 and 5 undefeated championships. At least 6 teams in best 25 all time.

All because of weak conference and lack of quality competetion.

So sad if you are really 45, and had seen what you say you did, that this is your conclusion.

Right. So your argument is that a conference with Iowa St, Mizzu, Kansas, KSt, Oklahoma St, and Colorado was the pinnacle of college football??? And yes, go back and look at our bowl record from 85-93 and tell me how dominant we were on the national stage. And yes, it is much easier to win 8-9 games when you play in a conference with so many relatively weak teams.

 

[406Nebraska515]

Right. So your argument is that a conference with Iowa St, Mizzu, Kansas, KSt, Oklahoma St, and Colorado was the pinnacle of college football??? And yes, go back and look at our bowl record from 85-93 and tell me how dominant we were on the national stage. And yes, it is much easier to win 8-9 games when you play in a conference with so many relatively weak teams.

Why don’t you tell us which conference was better than and why.

 

[EastOregonHusker]

Why don’t you tell us which conference was better than and why.

Well my point was never that we were not a top tier team. Because of the strength of Nebraska and OU, I would say we were definitely a top 5 conference most years. In the 80s, the sec, swc, and southern independent were better. Eastern independent and Big 10 were probably better. Pac10 was better top to bottom many years too.

 

[Spectrumalaska]

Right. So your argument is that a conference with Iowa St, Mizzu, Kansas, KSt, Oklahoma St, and Colorado was the pinnacle of college football??? And yes, go back and look at our bowl record from 85-93 and tell me how dominant we were on the national stage. And yes, it is much easier to win 8-9 games when you play in a conference with so many relatively weak teams.

I argue none of that.

I argue you are a troll. It is not logical to call the Big 8 a weak conference.

 

[Reditus]

I’m 45 and, was lucky enough to be around to enjoy our amazing run in the 90’s. The fact is our reality was much different at that time.

* The Big Eight was NOT a very good football conference. We very much benefited from a weak conference schedule, and by the 90s OU was struggling.

* NCAA was just getting going with steroid testing and I don’t think that the conference tested. We were also on the cutting edge with regard to our S&C/nutrition programs...everyone does this now.

* We benefitted from low academic standards and partial qualifiers...Texas ended the partial qualifiers.

* 95-92 scholarship limit benefitted the blue bloods. Also our in state walk-on program got quite a few kids that seem to end up at places like Wyoming and the Dakotas these days.

*Our recruiting was not what people seem to remember. We had some our our greatest success leading up to and during that run, but we also benefitted from an unusual amount of local talent over those years. That said, even during our best years we did not ever have a draft class that matches some of the NFL drafts Ohio St, Bama, and Clemson have put together over the last few years. Sure we were close a few of those years, but we had a lot of mid to late round picks.

* Our success on the national scene was up and down. For years leading up to that run, we had struggled mightily in bowl games.


As much as I hate to admit it (and I’m a bit of a pessimist in these matters),I don’t ever think we will see a run anywhere near what we did back then. As fans, we need to rethink our expectations (most of us have). When Frost was hired, I told myself that he was the guy and that he would have my support until he wanted to move on.
That said, four years in the product we are putting on the field is unacceptable with the resources we still have. SF is clearly a poor game coach, and we are not getting better. Worse yet, somehow I really think he believed that we would be a good football team this year. I don’t expect to ever see much improvement in our program under Frost.

 

[TheBeav815]

Exactly. It is total poppycock to say that the Big 8 was weaker than most conferences. For several decades the Big 10 was Michigan and OSU, and then everybody else trailing behind. The Pac 10 was USC and UCLA and nobody else. The SWC was a train wreck of NCAA probations and is the reason it fell apart. East Coast football, outside of independent Penn State was a joke, which is precisely why undefeated PSU teams never won a title since most of their wins came against hapless teams like Temple and Maryland. Only the SEC was stronger in any meaningful way but still not as powerful as it is today. Alabama, then as now, ruled the day.

Rather than looking at the so-called weakness of the Big 8, or at such red herrings as partial qualifiers, or even at scholarship limits, we need to look at the fact that in today's game EVERYONE has millions and millions of dollars to spend on facilities so the blue blood programs no longer hold an advantage there, and EVERYONE is on television every week, once again undermining one of the advantages that elite teams used to have. So athletes today are tending to stay closer to home which is a huge disadvantage for teams like Nebraska.

But even with all of the advantages Nebraska used to enjoy as an elite team, Osborne knew that Nebraska would never be an attractive option for most of the nation's elite athletes. An inferior school academically with lousy weather in a very sparsely populated rural area in the middle of flyover country. So Osborne built a "system", especially on offense, that gave us a unique identity thus enabling us to get athletes that fit that offense that nobody else was running. And it was an offense that was utterly predicated upon a physical, bruising, power running game that could be run effectively if you had a bunch of big bodies you could bulk up and develop on the line.

THAT is what we now lack. We lack an offensive identity that is unique and we have a really crappy offensive line coach who can't seem to develop players who, under coaches like Tenopir and Young, would have been bulldozers. I really have my doubts that Frost's offense can combine Oregon's speed with Osborne's power. Frost says he wants to do that. So far he hasn't. Frost ran Osborne's offense as a QB. I think he needs to dust off his old playbook.

Edit: And don't tell me that Osborne, had he stayed on, would have moved in the direction of Frost's spread offense. What he would have done is what he was already doing ... building off of the power running game and option, he would have added in elements of the spread as one more complication that opposing defenses would have had to consider. There is NO WAY IN HELL that Osborne would have moved away radically from the base offense his genius invented.

Tons of teams were running an offense similar to what Nebraska ran at that time. It wasn't some unicorn offense you couldn't find anywhere else. Damn near the entire Big 8 ran some option and I'm sure lots of other teams did too.

 

[TheBeav815]

I see absolutely no reason, none, why we cannot run a slightly updated version of Osborne's offense. I think Frost's ego gets in the way. I really do and I do not say that lightly since I do not know the man personally. But I think he fancies himself something of an offensive guru in his own right and is still smitten with how he did things at Oregon and is out to prove that he really is a great offensive mind. But if he values his job rather than his "legacy" he needs to wise up and fast. There is a damn good reason why the most successful teams in the B1G West (Wisconsin, Iowa, NW) are all predicated upon establishing the running game first. Frost wants to get skill players in space via short passes and sees that as a way of opening up the running game. I think he needs to reverse that order. There is a reason why we have not been successful at getting skill players in space and why those swing passes are always getting blown up. It is because the linebackers and the safeties can cover those "spaces" nicely since they can control our running game with just three or four down lineman. If we started pounding away at teams with a bruising running game just watch how fast those "spaces" for guys like Wandale would open up.

Big amen to this.

 

[9and4]

You know, there are data out there to determine which conference was better in any particular year. Somebody used SRS (Simple Rating System) to average the quality of each team in every major conference. The Big Ten ruled college football until about 1970, then dipped below both the SEC and the Big Eight. The Big Ten remained at that level through the '70s and '80s, but started to gain parity in the 1990s, when conference parity was at its highest.

Here's a link to just one story from 2015 that examines the SRS and conference strength.

 

[9and4]

Further, there's the canard that Nebraska never played any difficult non-conference opponents during the 40-season run (1962 through 2001), during which we played for 10 national championships in bowl games, winning five of those.

You can see by the list below that Nebraska regularly played the majority of its non-conference games against other power conference opponents as well as quality independents such as Penn State prior to its membership in the Big Ten, Miami (Fla.), Air Force and Notre Dame. That's 108 of those games over 40 years, for an average of 2.7 scheduled games per year.

In addition, Nebraska volunteered to play in three Kickoff Classics between 1983 and 1994, pitting themselves against Penn State the year after PSU won the 1982 national title, Texas A&M the year after the Aggie finished No. 10 in 1987, and West Virginia the year after the Mountaineers went undefeated in the regular season.

Bottom line: not only was the Big Eight a consistently top-ranked conference during Nebraska's run — and especially from 1970 through 2001 — but Nebraska regularly challenged itself outside the conference. You'll see a total of 108 non-conference major-conference and independent opponents over those 40 years, for an average of 2.7 games (not counting bowl games) against high-level opposition.

Yeah, we have sucked for the better part of the last six seasons, but don't minimize the earned championships and overall dominance of the Cornhuskers under Devaney, Osborne and even Solich.

Notable non-conference opponents by year (not including bowl games):
Three possible non-con games
1962: Michigan, N.C. State
1963: Minnesota, Air Force (our only loss)
1964: Minnesota, South Carolina
1965: TCU, Air Force, Wisconsin
1966: TCU, Wisconsin
1967: Washington, Minnesota, TCU
1968: Minnesota, Wyoming (a year after their Sugar Bowl team)
1969: USC, Minnesota, Texas A&M
Four possible non-con games (fifth games in 1983, 1988 and 1994)
1970: USC, Minnesota, Wake Forest (a year after winning the ACC)
1971: Oregon, Minnesota, Texas A&M
1972: UCLA, Minnesota, Texas A&M
1973: UCLA, N.C. State, Wisconsin, Minnesota
1974: Oregon, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Northwestern
1975: LSU, Miami (Fla.), TCU, Indiana
1976: LSU, Miami (Fla.), TCU, Indiana
1977: Alabama, Washington State, Baylor, Indiana
1978: Alabama, California, Indiana
1979: Iowa, Penn State
1980: Penn State, Iowa, Florida State
1981: Penn State, Iowa, Florida State, Auburn
1982: Penn State, Iowa, Auburn
1983: Penn State, UCLA, Minnesota, Syracuse
1984: UCLA, Minnesota, Syracuse
1985: Florida State, Oregon, Illinois
1986: Florida State, Oregon, Illinois, South Carolina
1987: UCLA, Arizona State, South Carolina
1988: UCLA, Arizona State, Texas A&M
1989: Minnesota, Oregon State
1990: Baylor, Minnesota, Oregon State
1991: Washington, Arizona State
1992: Washington, Arizona State
1993: Texas Tech, UCLA
1994: Texas Tech, UCLA, West Virginia
1995: Michigan State, Arizona State, Washington State
Three possible non-con games (four games in 1998)
1996: Michigan State, Arizona State
1997: Washington
1998: Washington, California
1999: Iowa, California
2000: Iowa, Notre Dame
2001: Notre Dame

 

[AVeritas]

I was at SDSU when Bob took the reins. Heelan's Mike Grace was the first to go, choosing Lincoln over Iowa City or South Bend where the other Crusader greats always ended.

The Jacks were coming off a good year and expected the best, when they played Bob's second-year team with Brown, Kiffin, Kramer, Solich, and the lot. I went to the coach's show in Brookings the Monday following. Coach Ginn said: Watch out for Devaney's Huskers in the years ahead. They beat us 58-7 before 34,463. I guess Husker fans hadn't gotten over just three winning seasons in the past two decades? The Jacks finished 9-1. Devaney went 136-30-7. I had him as an after-dinner speaker once. Common as an evening by the fire in old slippers and a good fifth of Irish whiskey.

Then, Dr. Tom took over. I remember Sioux City N-fans lamenting his inability to win the big games. And then that all changed. Osbone put those big old corn-fed boys in the weight room and by the second half, the other guys were completely wasted. And he'd run the score up on 'em like Spurrier in "the swamp." I remember going to a Nebraska game in Manhattan when Bill was turning it around. Huskers won in the end and that ornery tailback after the game was out there wiping his feet on the Powercat logo. He later went to jail for beatin' a girl.

And then Tom had had enough, which was sort of a shame to my way of thinking. Hell, he was on top of the hill looking down at most of the collegiate world. Frank Solich took over. It was never the same.

And as the opening poster said so well, it's probably never going to return unless y'all can find another drunk Irishman wandering around out there in the Wyoming hills. Remember, he was your fourth or fifth choice at the time. GBR.

 

[coach00036]

And as the opening poster said so well, it's probably never going to return unless y'all can find another drunk Irishman wandering around out there in the Wyoming hills. Remember, he was your fourth or fifth choice at the time. GBR.

Drunk Irishman here, reporting for duty!

 

[x35goahs]

Who recruits the players? Who's responsible for lack of development among those players to the point where the majority don't get any better from their freshman to senior years? The coaching staff and ultimately the head coach are completely responsible for what happens in how they run the football program. It's a pointless exercise to blame the players.

The coaching staff is absolutely responsible for those pieces but when frost got here he had absolute garbage talent to start with. The players I was referring to were recruited by Reily and company. Frost is at least trying to get better talent in the door If they can figure a way to keep them here.

 

[oldjar07]

You know, there are data out there to determine which conference was better in any particular year. Somebody used SRS (Simple Rating System) to average the quality of each team in every major conference. The Big Ten ruled college football until about 1970, then dipped below both the SEC and the Big Eight. The Big Ten remained at that level through the '70s and '80s, but started to gain parity in the 1990s, when conference parity was at its highest.

Here's a link to just one story from 2015 that examines the SRS and conference strength.

This way overrates the SEC and underrates the Big 8/Big 12. According to the graph, not once has the combination of the Big 8 and SWC eclipsed the SEC which is just asinine. The SEC is the dominant conference now, but that hasn't always been the case.