Osborne Out in a Heartbeat

By JIM HODGES

Dec. 11, 1997 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Tom Osborne met with Nebraska players Wednesday and talked about the Orange Bowl, of preparing the No. 2 Cornhuskers to play No. 3 Tennessee, maybe even winning another national championship.

Oh, by the way, he added, I’m retiring after the game.

“Everybody was totally quiet and you could hear a pin drop,” quarterback Scott Frost said. “Coach Osborne doesn’t usually show any emotion, but there was a tear in his eye.”

Osborne figured his body has sent him a message.

Message received.

In his usual low-key way, Osborne, who has never coached anywhere but at Nebraska, said 25 years were enough to work in a job he took 254 wins ago. The announcement came 36 years after he came to the university as an assistant to Bob Devaney, who hand-picked him as the successor.

And it came 3 1/2 weeks after Osborne was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, a heartbeat irregularity that can cause strokes or heart attacks.

Osborne, 60, is no stranger to heart problems, having undergone a bypass in 1984.

“I think it’s wise to back off before you leave feet first or somebody tells me it’s time to go,” he said. “It’s important to walk away while you can still walk.”

Nobody was going to tell him to go anywhere.

Osborne has a record of 254-49-3 and has been to a bowl game every season he has been Nebraska’s coach.

Should No. 1 Michigan find thorns in the Rose Bowl, the Cornhuskers are poised to send Osborne out on top.

He’s used to it. Osborne coached Nebraska to national titles in 1994 and ‘95, and his teams have been ranked in the Associated Press top 10 for 86 consecutive weeks.

“Tom Osborne was one of the great coaches in college football for all time,” Miami Dolphin Coach Jimmy Johnson said. “He has a tremendous amount of class and respect from all of his peers.”

On Nov. 1, Nebraska beat Oklahoma, 69-7, for its 250th win under Osborne, who achieved the milestone faster than any coach in college football history, 18 games faster than Penn State’s Joe Paterno.

Three weeks later came the heart irregularity, after the Cornhuskers had hammered Iowa State, 77-14, and rumors of his retirement began. They grew in intensity over the weekend at the Big 12 championship game in San Antonio, where Nebraska routed Texas A&M;, 54-15.

“They said usually after 48 hours, it’s not going to flip back over,” he said when the irregularity showed in medical tests. “It may happen again, but it may be five years, 10 years, maybe six months.”

He decided not to tempt fate, that the 13- and 14-hour days he spends at work and the extra time spent at home watching tapes were not conducive to a long life.

“It isn’t wise to continue to push that hard,” he said. “There are no shortcuts. I’m in reasonably good shape. I have no major problems where I’m going to keel over in front of you.”

Less than a year ago at the Orange Bowl, Osborne, a daily jogger, had been asked about retirement.

“I had breakfast today with Don Shula, who coached a lot of years, and Joe Paterno is 70 and says he wants to go until he’s 75,” he said. “Bobby Bowden has to be pushing 70 [he’s 68] too, so to say at the age of 59 I’m done might be a little too early.”

At 60, it’s right on time.

Or maybe too early for others.

“I’m surprised and saddened and I just hate it,” Bowden said.

Osborne compiled a 59-3 record the last five seasons but lost some favor around the country because of what many see as a lax approach to off-the-field problems.

In rapid succession two seasons ago, he had to deal with Lawrence Phillips’ pulling a former girlfriend down three flights of stairs by her hair; with Christian Peter accused of grabbing a former Miss Nebraska by the crotch; with Tyrone Williams charged with firing a gun into a car occupied by two people; and with Riley Washington charged with attempted murder.

All continued to play for the Cornhuskers.

Said Williams, now a Green Bay Packer cornerback: “He cared about his players to the fullest. He went to war for you. He wasn’t the type of coach who, if something happened, he turned his back on you. He was there for you. He’s a special man. He’s a unique coach.”

Osborne paid a price for it.

“Tom has been pilloried by the national media who thought he tried to change the legal system and run interference for athletes in trouble,” said Bill Byrne, Nebraska’s athletic director. “It’s simply untrue.”

Said Osborne of the criticism: “It’s unpleasant. 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.”

That was about as animated as Osborne gets.

“He never screamed, yelled, hollered, never used curse words,” Neil Smith, formerly an All-American defensive lineman at Nebraska, now a Denver Bronco, told the Associated Press. “I remember one time at Iowa State. He came in at halftime and said, ‘Dadgum it, we need to play better.’ And that’s as close as I ever heard him come to cursing. Even still, he caught every eye in the room, because we weren’t used to hearing that from him. And we came back out and dominated the rest of the game.”

It has always been Osborne’s way. Son of a preacher, he went to Hastings College, where he played quarterback, and spent three seasons in the NFL as a reserve receiver at Washington and San Francisco.

He came to Nebraska in 1962 as a graduate assistant under Devaney.

“Most everything I know about coaching I learned from him,” Osborne said of Devaney, who died in May.

He worked with two national champions as an assistant, and has carried the ground-pounding Nebraska offense into the ‘90s. Throwing the ball only as a change of pace, the Cornhuskers led the nation in scoring this season.

Longtime assistant Frank Solich will succeed Osborne, pending approval by Nebraska’s board of regents.

“I don’t know how you replace Tom Osborne as much as you follow him,” Solich said. “In his 25 years, nobody has equaled him.”

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Tom Osborne at a Glance

* Age: 60

* Head coaching seasons: 25 (all at Nebraska)

* Head coach: Hand-picked for the top job in 1973 by the man he was to replace, Nebraska Coach Bob Devaney; served as assistant coach under Devaney, starting in 1962.

* Record: 254-49-3; got his 250th career victory on Nov. 1 with a 69-7 defeat of Oklahoma; his five-year record of 59-3-0 is an NCAA best. He also has won 42 consecutive games at home. Never won fewer than nine games in any of his 25 seasons.

* AP Poll: Nebraska has finished in the Top 25 every year under Osborne; this was Osborne’s 86th consecutive week ranked in AP Top 10, another record.

* Titles: Osborne’s first shot at the national title was in 1981, when Nebraska lost to Clemson, 22-15, in the Orange Bowl. His 1993 team, ranked No. 2, lost to No. 1 Florida State in the 1994 Orange Bowl, 18-16. His 1994 top-ranked team defeated No. 3 Miami, 24-17, for Osborne’s first title. The team followed it up with another title in 1995, defeating No. 2 Florida, 62-24.

* Bowl Record: Osborne has an 11-13 bowl record (3-7 in the Orange Bowl) and has won his last three bowl games. The 1998 Orange Bowl will be Osborne’s sixth bowl game where he has a chance at the national title.

* College and Pro: Quarterback, Hastings College; three years in NFL as reserve receiver, two with Washington Redskins, one with San Francisco 49ers. During the season with the 49ers, Jack Kemp was his roommate.

* Low Points: Osborne and his program came under the harsh media glare in 1995 because of the criminal woes of his players. The criticism culminated with the Sept. 10 arrest of star tailback Lawrence Phillips for assaulting his girlfriend. At first, Osborne kicked Phillips off the team but reinstated him to the dismay of women’s groups and domestic violence professionals.

* Education: Bachelor of arts in history, Hastings College; master’s in educational psychology and doctorate in educational psychology, University of Nebraska Lincoln.

* Family: Married to the former Nancy Tederman. Children, Mike, Ann and Suzi; grandchildren William and Catherine. He and his wife received Boys Town’s Father Flanagan Award for service to children in 1995.

* Hobbies: Devoted trout fisherman.

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TOP COACHES

BEST WIN PERCENTAGES

Top percentages , Division I-A coaches :

*--*

Coach W L T Pct. Knute Rockne 105 12 5 .881 Frank Leahy 107 13 9 .864 George Woodruff 142 25 2 .846 Barry Switzer 157 29 4 .837 Tom Osborne 254 49 3 .835 Percy Haughton 96 17 6 .832 Bob Neyland 173 31 12 .829 Fielding Yost 196 36 12 .828 Bud Wilkinson 145 29 4 .826 John Sutherland 144 28 14 .812

*--*

MOST VICTORIES

Most victories, Division I-A coaches :

*--*

Coach W L T Pct. Bear Bryant 323 85 17 .780 Pop Warner 319 106 32 .733 Amos Alonzo Stagg 314 199 35 .605 Joe Paterno 298 76 3 .794 Bobby Bowden 280 83 4 .768 Tom Osborne 254 49 3 .835 Woody Hayes 238 72 10 .759 Bo Schembechler 234 65 8 .775 LaVell Edwards 234 86 3 .729 Hayden Fry 229 169 10 .574

*--*

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Osborne’s Record

The college record of Tom Osborne, who announced his retirement Wednesday as Nebraska football coach, effective after the Orange Bowl:

REGULAR SEASON

*--*

Year School W L T Pct. 1973 Nebraska 9 2 1 .792 1974 Nebraska 9 3 0 .750 1975 Nebraska 10 2 0 .833 1976 Nebraska 9 3 1 .731 1977 Nebraska 9 3 0 .750 1978 Nebraska 9 3 0 .750 1979 Nebraska 10 2 0 .833 1980 Nebraska 10 2 0 .833 1981 Nebraska 9 3 0 .750 1982 Nebraska 12 1 0 .923 1983 Nebraska 12 1 0 .923 1984 Nebraska 10 2 0 .833 1985 Nebraska 9 3 0 .750 1986 Nebraska 10 2 0 .833 1987 Nebraska 10 2 0 .833 1988 Nebraska 11 2 0 .846 1989 Nebraska 10 2 0 .833 1990 Nebraska 9 3 0 .750 1991 Nebraska 9 2 1 .792 1992 Nebraska 9 3 0 .750 1993 Nebraska 11 1 0 .917 1994 Nebraska 13 0 0 1.000 1995 Nebraska 12 0 0 1.000 1996 Nebraska 11 2 0 .846 1997 Nebraska 12 0 0 1.000 Totals 254 49 3 .835

*--*

BOWL RECORD (11-13)

(Year: Bowl--Result)

1974: Cotton Bowl--Nebraska 19, Texas 3

1974: Sugar Bowl--Nebraska 13, Florida 10

1975: Fiesta Bowl--Arizona St. 17, Nebraska 14

1976: Astro-Bluebonnet Bowl--Nebraska 27, Texas Tech 24

1977: Liberty Bowl--Nebraska 21, North Carolina 17

1979: Orange Bowl--Oklahoma 31, Nebraska 24

1980: Cotton Bowl--Houston 17, Nebraska 14

1980: Sun Bowl--Nebraska 31, Mississippi State 17

1982: Orange Bowl--Clemson 22, Nebraska 15