The Rise and Fall of the Nebraska Football Dynasty-Part 5

The fall of recruiting.

Frank Solich - Nebraska Football Head Coach / Huskers.com

The Fall

Fifth in a series of articles by Husker fan Chris Fort. | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 I Part 4

Recalling the Huskers’ consistency through changing rules and styles begs the question of what happened to lead to Nebraska’s demise as a national power. What caused the Big Red Machine to fall apart? It wasn’t the breaking down of a single component, but rather the slow decay of Nebraska’s best parts, the seeds of which were sown as Osborne departed.

If the Husker dynasty was not definitively torn down upon the conclusion of the 2001 season with previously unthinkable blowouts to Colorado and Miami, it was cast into the dirt without a shadow of a doubt by the conclusion of the 2002 season that saw the Huskers lose more games in one season (7), than Dr. Tom lost in his last six combined (6). The Huskers lost by thirty-three points to Penn State, and then by twenty-two to perennial bottom feeder Iowa State, whom the Huskers had defeated by an average score of 55-15 the preceding seven seasons. After the loss in Ames, Stewart Mandel declared Jack Trice Stadium the “final resting place of Nebraska’s long-standing football dynasty.”

Lost amidst the rubble of that dreadful season were the aforementioned streaks of 9+ win seasons, the 21 years spent permanently affixed to the AP poll, and 40 years of the win column outweighing the loss. The bowl streak would not succumb until 2004 in Bill Callahan’s first year as coach.

But the fallout of the 2002 season is a secondary conversation to the results themselves, and more pressingly, the question of what caused the fall of Nebraska’s once impregnable dynasty. Opinions abounded among national talking heads. Seasoned CFB scribe Ivan Maisel described a “precipitous decline in the Cornhusker’s level of talent” after watching the Iowa State game. In a 2010 interview, ESPN recruiting expert Tom Luginbill said, “The number one thing that I think killed Nebraska was the advent of cable television. It used to be Oklahoma or Nebraska was on TV every week. They got all the exposure. Now… every team is on TV.” Mandel himself deemed the Husker’s option offense to be “the source of their undoing.”

But the answer is far more complex and one that, like the factors that created and sustained the dynasty in the first place, is reliant on multiple factors all converging at once. 

Recruiting & Development

Chief among the criticisms levied against Solich was the talent he brought in. "We're not recruiting like we were a number of years ago[1]," former AD Steve Pederson said in his press conference for Solich’s firing.

In December 1995, the newly formed Big 12 implemented limitations that would allow each football program only one partial qualifier per year and no non-qualifiers at all under Proposition 48. Years later, schools would admit that voting against Nebraska was an abject power grab and one meant to undermine the surging Huskers. Osborne openly rued the loss of Prop 48 exceptions and fallout was instantly recognizable. The top recruit of the 1996 recruiting haul, Robert Pollard, was the first academic casualty. However, Nebraska still recruited a class for 1996 that won 45 of 52 games over the next four years, culminating in a Number Two final ranking in 1999. Osborne himself said, "I don't think the quality dropped off (in our recruiting class) a bit. It was just a little harder and took a little longer (to find athletes)." Osborne’s staff still grinded on the recruiting trail to find the athletes it needed to win championships, buoyed by their recent pair of national titles.

But the issue of academics clearly affected Osborne’s successor in who he could and could not recruit. It reared its ugly head in the 2001 class, losing future Super Bowl starter Danieal Manning as an academic casualty.

Academics would not be the only recruiting snafu Frank would run into during his time as head coach. The Huskers would suffer a litany of decommitments and near misses that would derail future iterations of the Blackshirts and option offenses alike. In the 2002 class that Nebraska assembled while making a National Title run, they lost commitments from Ronald McClendon, a future two-year contributor at Running Back for Tennessee, and Stanley Daniels, who’d hang around NFL offensive lines for nearly six seasons. Most notably, Nebraska lost out on the commitment of generational talent Haloti Ngata, who decamped to Oregon and went on to stake his claim as one of the greatest defensive linemen of all time during his tenure with the Ducks. The Huskers were unable to secure the commitment of linebacker Buster Davis, whose decision between the home state Seminoles and the Huskers was delayed past signing day but ultimately went in favor of the Noles. The following year, Nebraska served as runner-up for the services of defensive backs Mike Jenkins and Tom Zbikowski. Davis, Jenkins, and Zbikowski would all earn All-American honors during their collegiate careers. Perhaps the most frustrating of all the misses in recruiting, however, belong to Husker legacies that chose to go elsewhere, as Donovan Raiola and Martin Rucker did in choosing Wisconsin and Missouri, respectively. Raiola went on to start thirty-nine games for the Badgers while Rucker earned All-American accolades at Mizzou.

It’s probable that the costliest loss in recruiting is one that Nebraska actually signed but never suited up in scarlet and cream. In 1999, Nebraska won the services of Carl Crawford, a skilled option quarterback with reputed 4.4 forty-yard-dash speed. Crawford ultimately chose to pursue professional baseball instead after being selected by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in the second round of the MLB Draft. Crawford’s decision altered the course of Nebraska’s offense significantly. “If Carl would’ve been in the program,” Solich later said, “(Starting QB 2002-03) Jammal Lord would’ve been a strong safety.

The 1999 class Crawford signed with, paired with the 2000 signees, sowed the seeds for Nebraska’s eventual downfall. There was one all-conference player between both classes. Solich particularly failed along the offensive line.

They were also guilty of neglecting little details. US Army All-American recruit Kyle Caldwell grew up idolizing the Blackshirts, so much so that he wore number 55 to honor the Peter brothers. But he ultimately chose the Sun Devils of Arizona State over the Huskers in 2003 attributing part of his decision to Richie Incognito serving as the host on his official visit.[2] Player hosts are chosen by coaches and, given Incognito’s reputation for bullying preceded him long before it made national headlines, it was a blunder to pair him with any recruit.

Nebraska coaches’ recruiting slip coincided with the proliferation of cable television, as added networks sought out ratings-grabbing college football games to fill their program slates. A decided advantage, granted one that is difficult to quantify, was no more.

Still the Huskers recruiting classes of 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2002 were ranked an average of 18th by PrepStar, not far from Nebraska's historical average during the late 80s and 90s. Research compiled by Brandon Vogel in 2012 found that Nebraska ranked around the 14th best recruiting class on average in the 90s, per the available SuperPrep and Max Emfinger rankings, around 15 when 1987 – 1989 are included.

But rankings were arguably misleading under Solich. The 2000 class that produced a single NFL player and a then-unprecedented zero first-team all-conference players was lauded by analysts like Bobby Burton of Rivals.com as being “elite."[3] Solich signed two Top 100 prospects in 2000, the same number that Osborne averaged.

But even the recruits Solich and crew managed to get on campus were often lost for myriad reasons, owing perhaps to the program’s declining culture. Projected starters on the offensive line, Jon Dawson and Junior Tagoa’I, were kicked off the team prior to making an impact. Stalwart linebacker, Randy Stella, was booted in 2001.

Some transferred out, including promising defensive lineman Manaia Brown, who played as a freshman in the 2002 Rose Bowl, as well as Marques Simmons, who went on to star at running back for Iowa. No transfer stung more than Curt Dukes. Dukes was promised the lone quarterback spot in the 2002 recruiting class, and why wouldn’t he be? He was considered a four-star prospect by Rivals, the number one option quarterback in the class. A standout in both the classroom and the weight room, he was the presumptive next in line, having been given the famed number 7 jersey worn by Frost and Crouch. But after turning down a chance to start against McNeese State in 2002, Dukes transferred out in spring 2003. Nebraska was back to square one with their quarterback room and never offered an alternative to Jammal Lord until his final year in 2003.

Other promising athletes had their careers spoiled by injury. Willie Amos, the fleet-footed defensive back, started in the Rose Bowl against Miami but suffered knee injuries that he would never fully recover from. Taylor Gehman, one of three true freshmen to contribute in 1999, retired from football after a serious neck injury. The same also happened to Tony Tata, whose loss facilitated the end of Nebraska’s Polynesian recruiting pipeline.

In many cases, Solich simply evaluated poorly. At signing day, he compared Robin Miller to Mike Rozier, a back who in his five years at NU would barely surpass one hundred yards rushing, total. Five-star tight end Chris Septak never made a dent in the starting lineup. Of Thunder Collins, Solich said, "We ended up getting one player at I-back, and that's all that we wanted.” Thunder did not pan out as fans and the coaching staff expected and eventually left the team in 2002.

How much help would Stella have been against the Buffalo and Hurricane squads that plowed over Nebraska in 2001? How much more formidable would offensive lines have been had Dan Stevenson and Stanley Daniels kept their commitments, players like Jemayel Phillips stuck around, if Chris Loos hadn’t been injured, and promising upstarts like Dawson and Tagoa’i not gotten into trouble?

Perhaps much of Solich’s bad luck can be attributed to the disintegration of the Omaha pipeline. The city that served the state’s flagship university well for decades, assembling carbon copy I-backs like Calvin Jones and Ahman Green, curiously dried up. Starting in 1983, the number of programs in the state of Nebraska began a decline that dropped to more than twenty percent[4]. This was particularly problematic as research conducted by the Journal of Sports Economics showed that “proximity to home” is the most important factor in a recruit’s decision.

The Huskers scheme was conducive to what local schools brought to the table. But after Horne, the pipeline of running backs silted up. Dirk Chatelain posited that changing demographics may have played a part as well as a concurrent shift in offensive philosophy among coaching staffs across the country.

Bad luck aside, Solich’s roster management left much to be desired. While the Huskers scheme did not require blue chip pass catchers or even offensive linemen, it did require playmakers at running back and quarterback. Not finding another viable quarterback in 1999 (Jammal Lord attempted 40 passes total his senior year) and striking out completely in 2000 left Nebraska desperate for bodies in the quarterback room. Solich offered Mike McLaughlin and Mike Stuntz in 2001 to shore up numbers. Neither ever contributed (outside of the trick play against Oklahoma). In 2002, sensing he needed to hit a homerun for the post-Crouch era after years of misses, Solich bet the house on Dukes and lost.

[1] Eric Olson, Associated Press, Pederson defends Solich firing
[2] Tweet with Kyle Caldwell
[3] Dirk Chatelain, Omaha World Herald, Mad Chatter: The Worst Husker Recruiting Class Ever
[4] Chatelain, Dirk. “The United States of Nebraska Football.”

Next up: The Fall Conclusion

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