COMMENTARY : Although Never No. 1, Osborne a Champion of Character

It always comes back to the Orange Bowl of 1984. The big bowl games were played on Jan. 2 that year, but the Orange Bowl between Nebraska and Miami had started late and run long and now it was 12:30 in the morning. Nebraska was the No. 1 team in the country, a runaway No. 1, averaging 500 yards a game in total offense. Miami came in ranked fifth in the polls. Miami led, 31-24, and then Nebraska scored with 48 seconds left and finally Tom Osborne, the Nebraska coach, had to decide whether to kick the extra point and tie the game, or go for two and try to win it. Sometimes in sports you are asked to make more than a call. You are asked who you are.

They would have booed Osborne as a bum if he walked out with a tie. Everyone would have screamed the way they did when Notre Dame’s Ara Parseghian settled for a tie against Michigan State in 1966. But Osborne also would have walked out of the Orange Bowl with the national championship. He would have gone back to Lincoln and put another trophy in the case to go with the ones Bob Devaney had won for Nebraska, and no one would have ever been able to say Osborne could not win the big game.

Osborne went for two. As far as he was concerned, there was never anything to discuss on the Nebraska sideline. He believed there were certain rules for champions, that they did not just walk away from this kind of moment or this kind of game.

So Turner Gill, the quarterback that year, threw in the right flat for a kid named Jeff Smith. A Miami defender named Kenny Calhoun broke the play up. Nebraska was 12-1 and because things had broken right in the other bowls, Miami was national champion.

Now Tom Osborne’s team is No. 1 again in one of the polls. The whole thing will probably come back to the Orange Bowl for him. If Miami beats Syracuse this weekend, Nebraska’s opponent on Jan. 2 probably will be Miami. Maybe this time Osborne will finally get the points against Miami.

“I try not to look any farther ahead than today’s practice,” Osborne was saying the other day.

He is one of the true giants of his profession. He has won everything except the title, and conducted himself with grace and dignity in a sport, college football, that is so often cheap slapstick and plain lunacy. Now he has another chance. He had the same chance in the last seconds of the last Orange Bowl, against Florida State, but a field goal was missed.

This always seems more unjust with Osborne because he did the right thing once, when it was all on the line for him in the Orange Bowl of 1984.

“I didn’t realize you had a choice,” Osborne said. “I didn’t know what was happening in the other bowls with the teams behind us, but even if I had, I would have done the same thing.

Osborne paused. “I’m not going to lie to you. It would have taken a lot of heat off me, if I had a national championship trophy to show off. But if I had won it with a tie, I wouldn’t feel as good about it. Ultimately, you’ve got to look yourself in the mirror. The only way you can do that is if you do the right thing. I’ve always believed I did that against Miami.”

This is his 22nd season at Nebraska. His record is 215-47-3 in non-bowl games. Bowl games are a different matter, of course. Osborne is 8-13 and has never won the bowl game that would have given him the title. Now Nebraska fights it out at the top of the polls with Penn State. It would be a fine thing for Paterno to win another title. At the same time it is impossible to root against Osborne.

He lost his starting quarterback, Tommie Frazier, because of a blood clot in Frazier’s leg. There was a time a few weeks ago when it seemed Osborne might run out of quarterbacks. Nebraska keeps going. Its 24-7 beating of No. 2 Colorado Saturday was the best performance against a class team I have seen in college football this season. If they do not lose the rest of the way, they will be the first college team in 90 years to finish 13-0.

They started the season at No. 1, then dropped to No. 2 behind Florida. A few weeks ago, the Cornhuskers somehow fell to No. 3 after they beat undefeated (at the time) Kansas State. They were down to a third-string quarterback and Osborne’s best runner, Lawrence Phillips, did not play the whole game. Penn State went to No. 1 that week, and it seemed Nebraska might be closed out of a clear shot at the title. It seemed nothing could beat Paterno if his team ran the table. Then Nebraska vs. Colorado changed plenty.

“It really was unusual when we dropped a few weeks ago, even with the polls being as unpredictable as they are,” Osborne said.

In the past couple of years, it seems the sporting public--at least outside Nebraska--has come around to Osborne, and his team, seen them as more than college’s Buffalo Bills, a team that cannot win it all. Nebraska was not supposed to have a chance against Florida State in last year’s Orange Bowl, and then the ball was in the air on the last play.

The Cornhuskers did not make the dramatic field goal and win the Orange Bowl of ’94. They didn’t make the two-point conversion against Miami 10 years earlier. Nebraska always has found a way to finish second, in a sports culture where finishing second is supposed to mark you as some kind of worthless loser.

Osborne knows better. Because of who he is. He can live without No. 1. He should not have to. Tom Osborne should get the points this time.