Despite 20 years of frustration, Nebraska faithful believe that the ‘N’ will rise again
Obstacles exist, but Scott Frost and his Lincoln-loyal staff have faith a mix of talent and passion can lead Huskers back to prominence.
theathletic.com
Despite 20 Years of Frustration, Nebraska Faithful Believe That The "N" Will Rise Again
by Mitch Sherman, The Athletic
LINCOLN, Neb. — What made the close defeats more painful for Nebraska last year was that everyone just kept watching, like rubbernecked drivers who know to turn away but refuse, as the pileups persisted week to week in different but equally excruciating detail.
There was the scoop-and-score touchdown by Illinois that ignited a four-touchdown onslaught to ruin Nebraska’s opener. The Huskers botched a punt in the final minutes at Michigan State to spoil a magnificent defensive performance in the second half. They inexplicably fumbled late while tied against Michigan and fell apart in the fourth quarter against Cockeye.
Worse yet, it all felt like another chapter in an on-again, off-again nightmare.
Nebraska has been tormenting its fans for the better part of 20 years. And somehow, some way, this football program, for decades the pride of the state of Nebraska, largely remains in that position. More than 54,000 fans showed up last week to watch a spring practice.
Deeply rooted pride brought Mickey Joseph back to Lincoln four months ago. Since the end of his time as a quarterback with the Huskers in 1991, Nebraska has stayed close to his heart, Joseph said. Even while coaching at LSU, the pride of his own home state, for the past five years, he felt a tug to return to his roots. He saw the Huskers come close, yet always fall short last year, the first team in college football history to lose eight games by one score and nine by single digits.
“When you watch it, you see that the kids are playing hard,” said Joseph, the 54-year-old associate head coach under Scott Frost and first-year wide receivers coach, “one or two plays away. They came up short. They came up short a lot.”
Joseph believes.
“You’ve got to embrace it,” Joseph said. “I’m always going to love Nebraska. I’m happy to be here.”
But he knows that desire alone can’t return the Huskers to prominence. It can’t reverse those hard-to-swallow losses or erase the pain left by mismanagement of the program for most of a generation.
“The business is to win,” Joseph said. “They’re not going to keep me here because I played at Nebraska. They’re going to keep me here because I can win.”
Frost looked to the renowned recruiter, who helped produce a bumper crop of NFL talent at LSU, during a time of near desperation.
From 1962 to 2001, the program built by legendary coaches Bob Devaney and Tom Osborne won 398 games, 44 more than the second-most winning team, Penn State, in that period. During the 15 seasons that followed, Nebraska dropped to 26th nationally in winning percentage, sandwiched between Michigan and Miami.
Frost, entering his fifth year as head coach, is 15-29. Since 2017, Nebraska is 19-37. That’s 110th out of 130 FBS programs and better than only seven in the Power 5.
"A slow tsunami"
So what happened? It's a debate that never ends. The bottom began to fall out, of course, long before the Huskers faltered five years ago under former coach Mike Riley.
Nebraska agreed to concessions that led to the erosion of its talent base in recruiting when the Big Eight expanded to include four teams from Texas more than a quarter-century ago. Osborne retired prematurely in 1997, at the age of 60 after winning three national championships in five years, because of a promise made to Frank Solich, the loyal Nebraska lieutenant.
Solich thrived by the measure of nearly any other program over his six seasons in charge, winning 58 of 77 games, but it fell short in Lincoln. A devastating 2001 loss at rival Colorado stripped Nebraska's aura of invincibility built over 50 years.
Two years later, a protracted coaching search, directed by self-enamored athletic director Steve Pederson, thrust outsider Bill Callahan on Nebraska. He never fit well.
At that stage, said Gary O'Hagan, a longtime agent who represented Callahan, Nebraska was moving in the direction of North Dakota State and South Dakota State, not Oklahoma and Texas.
"It was almost like a slow tsunami," O'Hagan said. "And it's proven. There have been some other good coaches. Frost is a good coach. I don't know if you can overcome it. You can't live up to expectations of Osborne and Devaney unless somehow you change some rules."
"That (dominant) period of 25 or 30 years was unique for Nebraska."
Bo Pelini came after a losing 2007 season in which the Huskers, at home, trailed unranked Oklahoma State 38-0 at halftime. Pelini took Nebraska to a pair of Big 12 championship games and one in the Big Ten. But he struggled to break through, and the Huskers adapted slowly to the Big Ten after Osborne as AD and chancellor Harvey Perlman orchestrated the switch of conferences.
Clashes with the Nebraska administration doomed Pelini, along with a litany of unnecessary drama that dragged into the Riley and Frost years.
The hire of Shawn Eichorst to lead the athletic department in 2012 was all but doomed from the start without Osborne's support. Nebraska pushed the pendulum too far in the opposite direction five years later in picking up Pac-12 retread Bill Moos. He lured the coach of choice, Frost in 2017, but Moos failed to provide the oversight required to maneuver a turnaround.
No single answer explains the nosedive. Amid the losing, though, a light shines. Nebraska football is not dead. Its NCAA-record sellout streak of 376 games lives. Rising from the ground adjacent to Memorial Stadium, a $165 million, 315,000-square foot complex is set to open next year as the largest of its kind in the nation.
Inside of the new building, even at this crude stage of construction, hope for the future seeps out. Hope for Nebraska to veer from its wayward journey.
The passion lives
The recipe for revival involves the same dynamics that kept Joseph's fire burning for the Huskers. A passion exists among so many with a connection to the program. If ever Nebraska can't tap into that passion, it's likely done.
On the heels of a 3-9 finish in 2021, Frost hired five new assistant coaches. They're united in recognizing the rare qualities at play in Lincoln that inspire belief when it's easy to be cynical.
Nebraska's first-year special teams coordinator, Bill Busch, another LSU transplant, parted ways with the Tigers after the 2020 season. Busch, a Nebraska native who worked for Osborne and Callahan in separate stints, received an offer from a top-15 program, he said, to co-coordinate its defense in 2021. He talked to his wife, Laura, a former Nebraska cheerleader, and they decided that he should turn it down.
"Either, I would end up not coaching, or I was going home to Nebraska," Busch said.
He took a job on Frost's staff last year as a defensive analyst. In January, the promotion arrived. Nebraska maintained a special place as Busch hopped from Utah to Wisconsin, Ohio State, Rutgers and LSU. He wants to end his career with the Huskers.
"Every job that I had, I was trying to get back to Nebraska," Busch said, "somehow to have it happen."
Bryan Applewhite heard a different version of the same reverence for Nebraska in the weeks after he left TCU to join Frost's staff as running backs coach this winter. Recruiting in Texas, he said, he was received differently than when he represented the home-state Horned Frogs.
"Why? Because it's Nebraska," Applewhite said. "People have not forgotten who Nebraska is."
Perhaps his view is skewed, Applewhite said, because he grew up in Colorado, before the 2001 debacle. Respect for the Huskers was off the charts. People in his circles know about the five national championships, Applewhite said. They remember Osborne, who turned 85 in February.
"They haven't forgotten that this was the original RB U," Applewhite said. "They still know that Neil Smith played here. They know that there's an O-lineman who has an award named after him that played here."
"It's Going to Change"
Donovan Raiola knows. His brother, Dominic, won that award, the Rimington Trophy, in 2000.
Donovan was a kid in his native Hawaii when Dominic starred for the Huskers. Donovan studied Nebraska tradition. When the Huskers played, he woke up early to watch. In 1998, Dominic's second season in Lincoln and Solich's first as head coach, Nebraska lost 28-21 at Texas A&M. Donovan remembered the score all these years later.
"I thought it was the end of the world," he said.
The younger Raiola played at Wisconsin. Still, his passion for Nebraska and his understanding of its offensive-line culture factored in Frost's decision to hire Donovan in December to coach the position group.
"They played so hard," he said of the old Nebraska offensive linemen. "And it was for each other. It was for the state of Nebraska. It was for all the people that helped them."
Isaac Gifford gets it, too. His brother, Luke, at Nebraska from 2014 to 2018, played for Pelini, Riley and Frost before sticking with the Dallas Cowboys as a free agent. The passion burns in Isaac Gifford, a third-year defender in contention to start at the nickel linebacker spot this year.
"For me, it's a big deal," Gifford said. "Just walking through the halls with that N on my shirt, you've got to represent. I've always felt that. When I go out on the field, I'm playing for N. I'm playing for the brand."
Gifford said he believes in the new coaches Joseph and Busch, alongside Frost, to supplement the passion with enough talent to change the Huskers' course. He sells the message often to visiting recruits.
"I tell them it's there, it's coming," Gifford said. "If you want to be a part of that change, then come here. It's going to change. And that was my thinking, too, in picking this place. I want to be here when it turns."
