Tom Osborne is standing on the sideline, arms folded, following the action. Dressed in gray shorts with a white shirt and red Nebraska cap, he seems rail-thin to the point of gauntness.
It is the annual scrimmage between the Nebraska redshirts and freshmen, an event marked by not a little frivolity, but to Osborne it is serious business.
”I`ve got to coach the offense right now,” he says. ”When we go on defense, we can talk some.”
The offense is Tom Osborne`s baby. Always has been, even in the days when Bob Devaney was awakening the sleeping giant that eventually would stand astride the midlands like a football colossus.
Osborne was not the creator, but he was present at the creation when Devaney took a moribund program and in one amazing year turned it around, brought it to life and whipped an entire state into a red frenzy.
A former pro receiver, it was Osborne who devised the passing game that helped turn Devaney`s option-I offense into a grinding juggernaut that simply blew away the opposition.
In 1971, when Nebraska fielded what many consider the finest college football team ever, the Cornhuskers never scored fewer than 31 points in a game. In the Orange Bowl game that clinched their national championship and assured their place in history, they tore apart an 11-0 Alabama team 38-6.
The following year, in one four-game stretch, the Huskers won by scores of 77-7, 49-0, 62-0 and 56-0. By then, Devaney already had announced his retirement and anointed Osborne his successor.
”It was a little difficult following Bob Devaney,” Osborne says, after a redshirt back had run 30 yards for a touchdown.
”There were two reasons. First, he had won more games than anyone else at Nebraska. Second, he was a really popular guy.”
Devaney was outgoing, quick with a joke, the type who seemed to enjoy the give-and-take with reporters.
”I`m a private person,” says Osborne. ”I don`t enjoy all the hoopla and being the center of attention. But sometimes that`s unavoidable.”
In Nebraska, it is always unavoidable. There is no more visible person in the entire state than the head football coach of the Nebraska Cornhuskers. He stands out like an elephant in a cornfield.
And for the first five years after he succeeded Devaney, Tom Osborne stuck out like a sore thumb. An extremely sore thumb. In those five years, Osborne`s teams never failed to win at least nine games. They never failed to go to a bowl game.
And they never beat Oklahoma.
Osborne has a doctorate in educational psychology, but an 8th-grade dropout could have sensed the resentment that was simmering underneath all those big red hats.
”It was a little hard to live with,” Osborne says in his understated manner. ”I felt we had some pretty good teams. But in those first three or four years, we just didn`t have the talent Oklahoma had. That`s when they had the Selmon brothers and all those guys.”
There was a noticeable turning point in the fans` attitude toward Osborne. ”When we finally beat Oklahoma in `78, that helped,” he says. ”And it was somewhere in there that I went and looked at the Colorado job. When it came down to where I maybe would leave, there were some people who decided,
`Maybe he`s not so bad after all.` ”
Osborne understands more than most what football has come to mean in Nebraska. The Nebraska Prep Athlete of the Year as a senior in high school, he was only casually recruited by the state university.
”The main problem I had,” he recalls, ”is I played both football and basketball. I was offered scholarships here in both sports, but both coaches felt it would be impossible for me to do both.
”Recruiting was not that intense in those days. It was kind of, `Drop in and we`ll talk when you`re in Lincoln.` ”
Osborne chose to drop out of the big-time rat race and attend Hastings College in his hometown.
A quarterback in college, he was good enough to be drafted by the San Francisco 49ers. ”They had Y.A. Tittle and John Brodie,” he remembers, ”and they told me if I thought I could beat one of them out to go ahead. I knew my chances were slim and none.
”I had played basketball and knew I could catch the ball, so I decided to try to be a receiver.” Although the 49ers had the likes of R.C. Owens, Billy Wilson and Hugh McElhenny, Osborne managed to stick with them for a year, then played two years for the Washington Redskins.
”I was able to start my second year in Washington,” he says, ”but I had a pulled hamstring, and I played with it. They were injecting the thing, and I knew that couldn`t go on forever. I had to get on with my life. I was never a high-salary player, and I saw a lot of guys who were 30 and not prepared to do anything else. I thought I`d better get back to grad school.” Osborne wrote to Devaney, who had just taken the head job, and asked for a spot as graduate assistant. Devaney was unable to offer him a salary, but ”they put me at the dorm and let me eat at the training table,” Osborne recalls.
So he literally worked for his supper, at the same time working on first his master`s, then his doctorate.
”I thought at the time I`d go into college administration. I had no intention of coaching full time. But I knew I would miss the game and a clean break would be very hard. I thought coaching a little bit would ease me out.” In the end, Osborne ”just couldn`t make the break.” But he doesn`t think the education has gone to waste. ”Your education is always part of you. But I`m a coach, not a psychologist. Sure, there`s psychology in coaching, but I think it`s intuitive.”
Meanwhile, the freshmen, being freshmen, have turned the ball over again, and Osborne has turned his attention back to the redshirt offense.
After a fake field-goal attempt has failed, he picks up the thread of the conversation. ”I`ve only lost about 10 pounds,” he says, responding to a comment on his obvious weight loss after open-heart surgery.
”I still eat a lot, but I`m eating low-fat, low-cholesterol food. I run three or four miles a day and work a full day. I`m still a little bit in the process of recovering.”
It has been little more than half that long since Osborne had his coronary bypass. ”I missed about a month of running,” he says. ”I started again two weeks after I got out of the hospital, and I was up to a mile within a month.”
Osborne first was alerted to his heart condition ”when I was running and noticed after about a mile a tightness in my chest. At first I thought it was a chest cold, but it persisted, and after six weeks I had it checked.”
His reaction when he heard the results? ”Well, it wasn`t real pleasant, but it was something that had to get done.”
Osborne has made few concessions in his lifestyle, other than changing his diet and cutting back somewhat on his outside activities.
”I think stress was a part of my problem, and most of my stress had nothing to do with the kind of things that happen on the football field. I tend to be a kind of compulsive person, and I had myself scheduled for every minute.”
The surgery has changed his outlook on life somewhat. ”To some degree, it reinforces the idea of your own mortality,” he says. ”It tends to reinforce the idea you`ve only got so many years to do what you have to do. You`re a little more apt to do what you think needs to be done and not count the cost.”
Osborne`s actions on the football field have always indicated that winning football games ranks as his most important work. He doesn`t see it quite that way.
”The short-term thing is winning,” he agrees. ”But 10 years from now, what becomes important is what kind of people we have produced.”
