Big Bad Red Machine

This football season was going to be different at Nebraska. Lawrence Phillips was somebody else’s couch case now and all those 5:30 a.m. distress calls were being rerouted to St. Louis.

It was going to be relatively blissful. Christian Peter, the high-strung former defensive tackle once accused of grabbing Miss Nebraska by the crotch, the guy who just served 10 days in jail for disturbing the peace?

Gone.

Tyrone Williams, the former cornerback charged with firing a gun into a car occupied by two people?

Gone. Green Bay Packers’ problem now.

Riley Washington, the former receiver allowed to play last season while a charge of attempted murder was pending?

Gone.

When and if his case ever goes to trial, it won’t be on Coach Tom Osborne’s watch.

It was going to be a seamless season. No more talk about court dates and jurisprudence. No more bonds posted.

The Nebraska Cornhuskers, winners of 25 consecutive games and two consecutive national championships, were out to make a different kind of history in their attempt to become the first team to win three consecutive national titles.

Writers were going to write about football again.

Even the numbing pain of Brook Berringer’s death, in a plane crash outside Lincoln on April 18, was being properly channeled. The team would dedicate the season to the popular quarterback, who stepped in for an injured Tommie Frazier in 1994 and steered the Nebraska ship toward its first national title before stoically, if not happily, returning to the bench last season as Frazier directed the sequel.

Berringer was going to be the new Nebraska poster boy, replacing those post office, most-wanted images.

Nebraska is trying to change. Really, it is. Osborne, who has seen his once impeccable reputation impugned during what should have been the giddiest two-year stretch of his career, was pulling out all stops.

Counselors were brought in to speak to the team during the off-season about responsibility. Seminars were held, team rules were tightened.

“Short of putting one of those little collars on their legs, and placing them under house arrest, I don’t know how much more we can do,” Athletic Director Bill Byrne said.

Osborne spoke daily about the microscope the players were under.

He implored his players to stay out of bars, to avoid trouble at all cost, to think before they acted.

Osborne had delivered just such a lecture on Thursday, Aug. 30, pounding the point home with his fist.

Yet, early the next morning, star linebacker Terrell Farley, a Butkus Award candidate, was arrested for drunk driving in Lincoln.

It was eight days before Nebraska’s home opener Saturday against Michigan State.

Exasperated, Osborne suspended Farley indefinitely, but left the door open for his return. It was Lawrence Phillips all over again, with Osborne left to decide if or when Farley should return.

Last year, Osborne suspended Phillips after a September incident in which the star tailback grabbed his former girlfriend by the hair and pulled her down three flights of stairs.

Osborne incurred the media’s wrath when he reinstated Phillips after six games and started the tailback in Nebraska’s Fiesta Bowl victory over Florida, in which Phillips gained 165 yards and scored twice.

Asked after Tuesday’s practice if he was confounded by the Farley incident, given the edict he had just delivered, Osborne replied, “Somewhat, yeah.”

The Farley arrest triggered an angry response from Nebraska players desperately trying to start the season anew.

The anger this time wasn’t directed at the media, but at Farley and themselves.

Players are tired of Osborne taking the heat for players gone astray.

“People should really be talking to Terrell and asking Terrell what’s going on,” I-back Damon Benning said of Farley. “I know that Coach Osborne is at the end of his rope, and he’s had it. And he’s let us know that he’s had it. We know there is going to be no more of this. And there’ll be no more debates about whether a guy comes back to play or how many games he’s suspended. He’ll be looking for a new school to go to.”

Jared Tomich, the team’s All-American defensive end, said it’s time Nebraska players held themselves accountable. Tomich leads his team’s Unity Council, which met Tuesday to sort through the Farley affair.

“It’s really not fair that players make mistakes and the coach gets blamed for it,” he said. “He’s not out there holding our hand. He does the best job he can to set an example for us, setting good standards and morals, what’s right and wrong. He does a lot more of that than other coaches do.”

“I don’t think he should be the one everybody’s coming down on.”

*

Osborne was jogging on April 18 when his secretary, Mary Lyn, tracked him down with news that the plane Berringer was flying might have crashed in Raymond, a Lincoln suburb.

It was two days before the NFL draft and Berringer, a licensed pilot, was expected to be selected.

The two victims were burned beyond recognition, so Osborne and his staff grabbed Berringer’s dental files and his football mouthpiece and rushed to the crash site.

All that was left of the 1946 Piper Cub Berringer was flying was a metal frame. Berringer was dead, as was Tobey Lake, the brother of Berringer’s girlfriend.

It was Osborne who placed the call to Brook’s mother, Jan Berringer, in Goodland, Kan. Berringer died the day before Nebraska was to honor its 1995 championship team with a celebration at Memorial Stadium.

Osborne canceled the party and handed out the championship rings in his office.

Osborne, 58, had waited 22 years for his first national championship. The football gods had tortured him. At the 1984 Orange Bowl against Miami, Osborne went for a two-point conversation when a tie would have clinched his first national title. The conversion play failed, and Miami won, 31-30.

At the 1994 Orange Bowl, with another national title on the line, his kicker missed a last-second field goal and Florida State won the title, 18-16.

When the national titles did come, in consecutive seasons, they came with price tags. Osborne, the likable, revered, religious, hard-luck loser of seven consecutive bowl games previous, was suddenly painted by some as a win-at-all-costs coach who would do whatever it took to get over the top.

Osborne claimed he was the same guy who was losing all those bowl games.

“I don’t necessarily agree with the theory that in order to win a national championship you have to go out and recruit a bunch of bad people,” he said this week. “We don’t recruit any differently in terms of character or philosophy.”

In Osborne’s 23 years as coach, in fact, Nebraska has never been cited for a major NCAA violation.

But last year was almost his undoing. The hellish year began Aug. 2, when Washington was arrested in connection with the shooting of Jermaine Cole at a Lincoln convenience store.

Washington professed his innocence from the beginning, and Osborne believed him, ultimately allowing the player back on the team, pending his trial.

Washington’s case still hasn’t been heard, because Cole says he is afraid to return to Nebraska from Texas.

Osborne was criticized for conducting his own investigation in the case and using his considerable influence to sway public opinion.

“Tom has been pilloried by the national media who thought he tried to change the legal system and run interference for athletes in trouble,” Byrne said. “It’s simply untrue. That perception was by one person, and got repeated nationwide, and the big lie gets bigger.”

Osborne’s reputation took a bigger hit when he reinstated Phillips and later named him a starter in the Fiesta Bowl, giving the player a chance to shine in front of a national television audience and improve his NFL stock.

“It’s unpleasant,” Osborne said of the criticism. “I guess you’ve got to be true to yourself. I don’t want to do things simply to play to public opinion. Yeah, I’m sorry that people think poorly of me, if they do. But that’s the way it goes.”

Osborne acknowledges that with all the scrutiny that comes with it, winning the national title twice was a mixed blessing.

“I think he’s paid a tremendous price for those championships,” Jan Berringer said. “He’s seen a lot of heartache. Brook was the last. He probably felt like throwing his arms up and saying, ‘What else could happen?’ I think it takes a toll. I know somewhat what he’s like. I know what he feels like inside.”

Osborne has remained in regular contact with Jan Berringer, whose husband died 15 years ago, almost to the day Brook was killed.

“He’s been unbelievable,” Jan said of Osborne. “Like a relative.”

Berringer will attend Saturday’s Michigan State opener as a guest of the school. Osborne invited her to his home afterward.

Two days after Brook’s funeral in Goodland, Jan returned to Lincoln to pay final respects.

Osborne gave her a tour of the football offices. Jan swiveled in the chair that Brook used during film meetings.

She then walked into an empty Memorial Stadium and relived the first time her son had run through the tunnel as a Cornhusker.

“I walked out on the field and could hear the crowd roar,” she said. “I felt Brook running out on the field and remember him describing that. He said there was no feeling like running out on the field. He said it’s overwhelming. I could feel that. I could hear the stadium roar, feel the thundering pounding on the turf.”

Jan Berringer then went to the crash site, and stood on the spot where her son’s plane had crashed.

“I felt I had to do it,” she said. “It was so incredibly hard to do. But I would always wonder. So I stood right there. I tried to make the pain and the terror be mine instead of Brook’s. I thought so many times of the absolute terror of how that must have felt. That just kills me. I’m sure he was busy, trying to do everything he could do, but, at the same time, how horrible, to see it coming and so unable to get out of it.”

*

Jan Berringer is angry with Terrell Farley too. This season was supposed to be about her son, about positive role models and virtues and the majority of Nebraska players who never run afoul of the law.

She said Brook used to tell her how easy it was to stay out of trouble. “Just stay out of the bars, Mom,” he told her.

“It makes everyone mad,” she said. “It makes you wish Tom would come down so hard on them, suspend them indefinitely. I know Tom doesn’t like to close the door on anybody, but it makes you wonder. Do they not understand that they have to keep their noses clean?

“If I was him, I’d throw [Farley] off.”

The problem is, Osborne has established precedent, having allowed Phillips, who pleaded no contest to assault charges, back on the team.

Can Osborne suspend Farley for the season for a lesser offense?

Farley will sit out at least two games, after which his status will be reevaluated, Osborne said.

The knock on Osborne is that he gives his players too much rope. He comes off as a good man with a good heart, one who genuinely wants to help waywards, sometimes to the detriment of his own reputation.

He may ultimately be vindicated in the Washington case if charges are dropped, but his support of Phillips clearly backfired.

Osborne stuck out his neck for Phillips.

Phillips, selected sixth in the draft by the Rams, offered his gratitude in June when he was charged with drunk driving in Los Angeles. If convicted, his probation in the case where he assaulted his former girlfriend could be revoked and Phillips could do jail time.

Nebraska players, even those who defended Phillips, were appalled.

“The least he could have done was keep his nose clean,” Tomich said of Phillips.

Osborne said he did the best he could.

“It’s very disappointing when that happens,” Osborne said of Phillips’ latest arrest, for which he will stand trial later this month. “But there are some things that Lawrence hasn’t done that people have been concerned about. I didn’t have any question that when he left here he had to go through a certain amount of introspection, a certain amount of therapy that would benefit him in some ways. But there’s no way to guarantee that he’ll never have any more problems.

“That depends on him. He was given the opportunity and the tools to be successful. What he chooses to do will be up to him.”

Nebraska tries to move forward, but can’t escape the past.

Phillips made headlines again this week when court papers revealed that former girlfriend Kate McEwen, claiming sexual assault, had filed a lawsuit against Phillips.

It was also a week in which Tyrone Williams was ordered to stand trial next week on his felony charges.

Reserve wingback Lance Brown was suspended for Saturday’s game for breaking a team rule last spring.

And then there was Farley.

“I was very disappointed that we had an athlete ticketed for driving under the influence,” Byrne, the Nebraska athletic director, said. “Is that going to wreck the University of Nebraska athletic department? No. Is that going to be used as ammunition by the media that the athletic department is out of control? Yes. Are we going to have national writers asking about this? Yes. Was it the lead story on ESPN? Yes.”

The players are saying enough is enough. No more excuses. No more letting Osborne take the hits. No more lead stories on ESPN.

“I’m going to stick my neck out on the line and say I think we’re through with the kind of stuff that’s going on here,” Benning said. “There comes a time when we really want to start talking about football. We put ourselves in this position. Some guys here haven’t done the right thing. What happens to us happens to us.

“Our sole driving force this year is having a chance to do what no football team has ever done. We’ve got a shot to do some great things.”