The Rise & Fall of the Nebraska Football Dynasty-Part 2

The rise of recruiting and development.

Nebraska walk-on I.M. Hipp / Rich Clarikson/SI

This is the second of a six-part series of articles written by Husker fan Chris Fort. Here is a little background on Chris.

I was born and raised in Illinois and currently reside in Chicago. I have no ties to the university, unless you count an uncle with a degree from Colorado and a hatred for all things Husker. I was initially intrigued after Black 41 Flash Reverse, but after learning about the sellout streak, Brook’s story, Osborne going for two, etc. I was infatuated. My first game as a fan was the 2001 Buffaloes game – clearly, I’m the bad luck charm. Still, I’m a diehard fan who wholeheartedly believes Nebraska is what college football should be. 

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Nebraska has never been shy about recruiting nationally, but Devaney first sought to resurrect the Nebraska program by reclaiming Omaha in the early 1960s. Just prior to his arrival, the Huskers lost out on signing an Omaha Central running back named Gale Sayers. Sayers, who backed out of a commitment to play for Nebraska after a disastrous recruiting visit would ultimately attend Kansas and go on to be one of the greatest professional players of all time. Devaney vowed that the next Sayers would be a Husker.

Coach Devaney was known as a good recruiter, a witty, self-deprecating everyman who could “talk crop rotation with farmers and profit and loss with financiers.” He lived in a modest home in a middle-class Lincoln neighborhood all throughout his coaching career. His down-to-earth persona helped him connect with players, particularly African American players that were slowly being reintegrated into the sport. Future All-American Tony Jeter was headed to Arizona State until Bob sat down at a piano with Jeter’s mom and started singing hymns with her.[1] Preston Love, a community activist who lettered for Nebraska in 1963 and ‘64, called Devaney “a pioneer, as it relates to how he recruited African-Americans.”

Devaney himself was such a player’s coach that he once insisted that he be sent to jail along with one of his arraigned athletes. That sort of devotion resonated with young men, particularly the young men of Omaha. On his first National Title team in 1970, notable Omaha natives included Jerry Murtaugh, Guy Ingles, Joe Orduna, and future Heisman winner Johnny Rodgers. All four would break school records during their time at Nebraska.

When Osborne took over as head coach, he kept the same emphasis on recruiting the home state. And he had success doing it. “You can count on almost one hand the (Nebraska) players we've recruited heavily who we haven't gotten,” he said in ’93.

There was a rationale for prioritizing the state of Nebraska beyond the conventional cliches related to protecting one’s own territory. Nebraska needed to be a developmental school to mitigate their talent footprint.[2] That meant they needed time and patience to get players to their full potential. A kid who transferred out before that could be accomplished would represent a bad investment.

So, Osborne offered an average of six Nebraska prep players each year. The home cooking recipe paid off. Seventy-two percent (72%) of Nebraska scholarship signees eventually started for the team. Out-of-state signees had a hit rate of fifty-one percent (51%) by comparison. "I think part of it was in-state kids really wanted to play for Nebraska and usually had a great work ethic," Osborne said of his home state strategy. "This is where they wanted to be. So, if things weren't working out really well early on, they weren't looking to go somewhere else… And I think we were able to develop players.[3]

The Nebraska natives were more than just placeholders on the depth chart. In Bob Devaney’s tenure, 41% of his All-Conference players hailed from Nebraska. In Tom Osborne’s 25-year era, it was essentially the same, with 37% of the All-Conference honors going to Nebraska natives. Roughly 40% of Nebraska’s All-American’s were native Nebraskans.

It was Omaha that provided key talent at the I-back spot, the bellwether position in the Husker’s I-Formation offense. From 1984 to 1995, Nebraska signed eight running backs from Omaha high schools. Once in scarlet and cream, they rushed for a combined 17,000 yards. [4]

But because of Nebraska’s small population and resultingly low number of Division 1 prospects, Osborne treated the 500-mile radius around Lincoln – which included neighboring cities like Chicago, Denver, Kansas City, and Minneapolis – much as he treated the state of Nebraska, looking at it as the foundation for his classes. Fifty-six percent of the players he signed from 1984 to his final class in 1997 consisted of players within the 500-mile radius.[5] In his research on Nebraska’s recruiting roots, Omaha World Herald journalist Dirk Chatelain found that the chances of signing an All-American were slightly higher when Nebraska signed a prospect from outside the 500-mile radius. But recruits within it were far more likely to stick around and letter at NU.

The Huskers coveted difference makers from other states to supplement what the Plains did not provide. Winning brought attention, something that helped Nebraska secure prime TV slots in an age when coast-to-coast broadcasts were scarce. “Back then, a winning program was enough to lure recruits, in part because only powerhouses such as Nebraska, Michigan, and Notre Dame appeared on television regularly.” [6] Famed walk-on Isaiah Moses “I.M.” Hipp decided he wanted to attend Nebraska after watching the 1971 “Game of the Century” against Oklahoma, going so far as to send Nebraska coaches a letter. He ended his career as Nebraska’s all-time leading rusher. Steve Taylor, a top 100 national recruit in 1985, grew up a fan of Husker QB Turner Gill after watching him on TV . Taylor ultimately started at quarterback for Nebraska for three seasons.

With increased brand awareness, the Huskers expanded their recruiting territory. In the 1960s, the Big Ten was besieged by tighter scholarship limits and more restrictive academic standards. Devaney, who cut his teeth coaching Michigan high schools, parlayed his folksy charisma to mine the Rust Belt, assigning coaches to Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, and Iowa, with a single coach focused solely on Green Bay and Chicago. By the ‘80s, the Huskers’ gaze shifted to California and especially Texas along with neighboring Kansas, Colorado and Missouri.[7] The perception is that Nebraska raided Florida to assemble their 1990’s Death Star. But the reality is that Nebraska only produced three letterwinners in the ‘90s that called the Sunshine State home – Shevin Wiggins, Tryone Williams, and of course, Tommie Frazier.

An opportunity arose to differentiate themselves started in 1986 when the NCAA adopted Proposition 48, a regulation meant to bolster academic performance. It required minimum GPA and standardized test scores, with some exceptions. But the Big 8 conference did not have rules around those exceptions while leagues like the now-defunct Southwest Conference did. They let individual schools decide. This allowed Nebraska to take partial and non-qualifiers who would have been denied enrollment elsewhere.

But by 1990, Nebraska had only five Prop 48 exceptions on the roster. This changed in 1991, when they took seven in a single class. Five more were added in 1992.

By 1995, Nebraska had at least twelve players on their roster who came to Lincoln as part of Prop 48, including standouts like Tyrone Williams, Michael Booker, Christian Peter, Jared Tomich, Jamel Williams, and Reggie Baul. Their ability to take exceptions made a difference. Husker standouts like Clinton Childs and Eric Warfield stated that they would have attended different schools without Nebraska’s looser policies. Tim Layden wrote: “Kids were given academic opportunities they might not otherwise have found. And Nebraska landed impact players.”

Of course, Nebraska was far from the only school nationally that allowed Prop 48 exceptions. But Nebraska had comparatively cheaper tuition (important as Prop 48 players were forced to pay their own way the first year on campus), a nationally recognized academic support program, and a reputation as one of the few schools perennially stapled to the polls.[8] The recruitment of Prop 48 athletes enabled Nebraska to ascend from perennial title contender to reigning title defender in the age of further reduced scholarships (after 1991). But its impact was limited to the mid-90s Huskers.

The Huskers’ laxer admission standards also helped them with transfers from the Junior College (JUCO) ranks. Hoping to augment the roster after a routing in the 1967 Sugar Bowl by Bear Bryant and the Crimson Tide, then-assistant coach Osborne began recruiting California, primarily its many Junior Colleges. In his tenure as head coach, Osborne would welcome more than forty JUCO transfers, including All-Americans like Bob Newton, Wonder Monds, and Heisman winner Mike Rozier.

But Nebraska’s advantages in pulling blue chips were not enough. A developmental program at its core, they had to mine for diamonds in the rough, recruits with potential but not the cache to their name that comes with lots of scholarship offers and high standing in recruiting rankings. “Probably the greatest asset of the Nebraska program is that it continually takes its share of marginally rated, or sleeper-type prospects, and develops them into college All-Americans,” PrepStar Magazine wrote in 1997. Heavyweight programs typically thumbed their nose at them, but Devaney and Osborne prided themselves on their talent evaluation acumen and regularly took a few of these so-called projects each cycle, hoping to find players with chips on their shoulders and a drive to prove doubters wrong.

“The genius of coach Osborne and his staff was, we're going to create a system where we're going to get those maybe borderline-type kids,” former I-Back George Achola said. “We're going to feed them, grow them, create a program where they can be successful.”[9]

Bob Devaney was the only major coach to take a chance on Frank Solich and Guy Ingles, neither of whom were taller than 5-foot-8 on a good day and consequently had trouble attracting offers. Ingles rewarded Devaney’s faith by becoming the school’s record holder for receptions (though he was quickly passed up by Johnny Rodgers) while Solich held the school record for rushing yards in a game until being surpassed by Richard Berns. Rich Glover’s best offer besides Nebraska was Villanova. He ended up on Sports Illustrated’s All-Century Team .

Over the course of their many years together, Osborne and his staff were able to assemble profiles they looked for when evaluating prospects. In offensive linemen, they looked for quick, agile prospects who could trap and reach block with a certain nastiness. “We look for kids with spunk,” coach Tenopir told Sports Illustrated in 1998. On the opposite side of the line of scrimmage, McBride and Osborne looked for tall, lanky kids with natural athleticism and potential to add mass to their frame. McBride found Jared Tomich in Indiana, a kid who was told by home state Purdue he wasn’t good enough to play big time football. McBride offered him a walk-on opportunity and Tomich ended his career as an All-American drafted by the New Orleans Saints.

Osborne disliked the “diamond in the rough” trope. He felt that if he was offering a kid that others weren’t, it meant the kid was simply overlooked, oftentimes due to location and a lack of offers. "We look at film, not their lists. We don't recruit as much in densely populated areas where everyone else recruits. The more kids are recruited, the higher they go on the lists."[10] Trev Alberts, an eventual Butkus Award winner for NU, was a multi-sport star in his small Iowa town. He declined to attend camps and received only lukewarm recruiting attention accordingly.

Nebraska on other hand took full advantage of camps each summer. They attracted more than 3,000 prospects annually, far more than the average program. This provided opportunities to find lesser-known prospects in the pre-internet era, many of whom came on board first as walk-ons.

Walk-Ons were not unlike the so-called sleeper-type recruits Nebraska fielded, those with similarly scant recruiting attention but without the free tuition. Nebraska would always net fewer signatures from the nation’s elite high school ranks than their chief rivals. A smaller intake of sure-fire talent meant Nebraska had less chances to miss on the recruits they did nab. Osborne felt that having a robust walk-on program was necessary to alleviate their handicap. Fortunately, they had reciprocal interest from the state. As Jim Nantz once said in a telecast: “Nebraska natives don’t walk on to Lincoln. They crawl there.” And crawl they did, from places like Stromberg and Oakland, Wilber and Prague, villages with barely four digits to their population numbers.

The loyalty of the state’s prep ranks, eschewing scholarship offers from competing programs in the hope of donning the scarlet and cream, led to rumors of “county scholarships” and other slanderous accusations. But the allure of playing for the Big Red spanned beyond the obvious homegrown narratives.

“Everybody mattered,” explained Mark Hagge, who walked on to Nebraska in 1986 as a back-up linebacker. “Whether you were a five-star recruit from a big city or fresh off the farm.”[11] Hagge toiled in obscurity at Nebraska despite scholarship offers elsewhere, instead offering himself up as cannon fodder like countless others from the state. As SB Nation reflected: “No state was quite organized around the principle of fealty to the local program the way that Nebraska was for its Huskers.”

Lest anyone think the impact of walk-ons is overrated, and there are plenty who do, take note that 442 walk-ons lettered from 1962 to 2009, with 131 finding their way into the starting lineup, 28 of whom earned first team all-conference honors with four All-Americans among them.

Devaney predecessor Bill Jennings recruited adequate talent, as seen by the number of his recruits that played in the professional leagues. But his development program was left wanting, despite his best efforts. Practices under Jennings were three-hour grinds that led to low morale among players. When Devaney arrived, he reduced practice time and spent more time joking with players.[12] But while Devaney shortened practices, he made them tougher, or so says Hall of Famer Bob Brown, who played for both Devaney and Jennings. Devaney once invented a pro scout at practice to motivate the oft-injured Brown to push through his various maladies. Practices were also made more efficient. Defensive coaching legend Monte Kiffin remarked that he’d never seen a coach in his 50 years of coaching as good at preparation as Devaney.

Osborne, too, was renowned for his organization, his attention to detail, and his process-oriented development. And like Devaney, his practices were tough. There was more contact in Nebraska practices than most other programs.[13] Drills and scrimmages were so intense, in fact, that many players recall them being more physically taxing than the actual games.

The Huskers swollen roster size - the roster topped 206 players in 1985 alone[14] - allowed for another noteworthy advantage over other teams: four-station practices. Most schools ran two practice stations - offensive and defensive units separately running their 11-on-11 plays against lower units. But Osborne always ran four, two for offense and two for defense. The practice system meant that the top two units would get 90 to 100 snaps each. At schools with two stations, the top two units would split those 90 to 100 reps. The repetition was instrumental in preventing mistakes like an errant option pitch or handoff. It also meant that starters couldn’t get complacent, as there was always another well-heeled player pushing for their spot. [15]

Osborne was also a stickler for execution. “Drill it again” was a phrase so commonly uttered by Osborne that players heard it in their sleep, such was his resolve to get things perfect. “You become almost like a robot,” as 80s I-Back Keith Jones described it. The Huskers in turn became as well-calibrated as a finely tuned machine, a cohesive unit as reliable as clockwork.

It developed depth on the roster and, perhaps most importantly, players who would become key features in coming years. “By the time we got on the field, we knew what to do,” Jones added. The preparation for the next in line to step up, the machine churning so well, that lowerclassmen were rarely relied upon. Only forty-three true freshmen lettered during Tom’s 25-year tenure.

Husker coaches didn’t just create a machine – they put it on an assembly line. The consistency in the weight room, the training table, and the practice field created remarkable consistency.

[1] Devaney, Bob. "Devaney" Page 227, 1981.
[2] Tom Osborne, May 2016 interview with Steve Sipple
[3] Tom Osborne, May 2016 interview with Steve Sipple
[4] Omaha's imprint fades on Big Red, Dirk Chatelain, 2012
[5] Husker Recruiting: Changes shrink NU's sphere of influence, Dirk Chatelain
[6] Staples, Andy. “The State of Recruiting.” Sports Illustrated.
[7] Chatelain, Dirk. “Husker Recruiting: Changes shrink NU's sphere of influence.”
[8] Cordes, Henry. “Unbeatable.” Page 45.
[9] Omaha's imprint fades on Big Red, Dirk Chatelain, 2012
[10] 1997 AP article with Tom Osborne.
[11] Barfknecht, Lee. Omaha World Herald. August 31, 2009.
[12] Devaney, Bob. “Devaney.” 1981. Page 74.
[13] Cordes, Henry. “Unbeatable.” Page 12.
[14] Omaha-World Herald, Lee Barfknecht, 2009
[15] Cordes, Henry. “Unbeatable.” Page 18.

Next up: The rise of strength and conditioning

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