Frank Assessment

Tom Osborne walked away a year ago, but did he have to take his good luck with him?

A year after his abrupt departure, Osborne’s shadow, of course, still cloaks the Nebraska football program. His legacy, mingled with that of his predecessor, Bob Devaney, infuses the state with pride and tradition and most of all, national championship memories.

Good luck to anyone who had to follow that man’s footsteps at Lincoln.

Frank Solich, Osborne’s hand-picked successor and longtime assistant, is the man who got the responsibility.

So, this season, of course, bad luck chased Solich like a curse. Injuries took away his quarterback and wounded his featured runner.

Even Osborne said he never had to go so long without either his quarterback or his I-back.

Here Solich is, after nine victories and three defeats (the same total of losses Osborne had in his last five seasons on the way to a 60-3 record), set to play in tonight’s Culligan Holiday Bowl against No. 5 Arizona at Qualcomm Stadium. It is the least significant postseason berth that the No. 14 Cornhuskers have earned in almost 20 years.

Here he is, looking quite relaxed, actually. Shouldn’t this man be fretting?

“It’s a relief to be one game from having it all over,” Solich said Monday, chatting amiably as his team took a tour of a Navy ship and his wife tugged at his arm to get a better look at a combat air vehicle.

“We’ve had a tremendous amount of injuries. I just want to get through this without anybody else getting injured and with us to play the way we’re capable of playing and finish things off for this football team the way I know they want to finish it off.”

This is a man too steeped in Nebraska tradition to be surprised by sky-high expectations. The former Nebraska running back under Devaney says he felt it the day he was hired--10-win seasons and national-title runs are part of the Cornhusker way of life.

In 10 years, Devaney won 101 games, lost 20, and won two national titles. In 25 years, Osborne went to 25 bowl games, almost never was out of the top 10, and won three national titles.

The last eight years, Nebraska played in six bowl games that produced the eventual national champion.

“That reality hit me almost immediately upon being named to succeed Tom,” said Solich, who is more convivial than the cerebral Osborne, but just as low-key. “I wanted to do everything I possibly could to make sure the tradition continued. So the reality of it all hit me immediately. And of course hit me the day of every game.

“That’s how it works. To me [the season-opener against] Louisiana Tech seemed like a tremendously huge game. . . . Who wants to start off their career as head coach on the home field with a loss? So that game loomed very large to me. And for whatever reason every game had something there that seemed to be just gigantically huge.”

Solich, 54, lost his quarterback, sophomore Bobby Newcombe, because of a knee injury in that 56-27 victory over Louisiana Tech, though Newcombe made failed attempts at comebacks throughout the season.

Solich lost standout tailback DeAngelo Evans for most of the season because of various injuries, most recently a bruised tailbone--though Evans should play tonight.

This season, Nebraska saw its 40-game regular-season Big 12 winning streak end at the hands of Texas A&M; and its 47-game home winning streak (fifth-longest in NCAA history) end in a 20-16 loss to Texas.

But, Solich says, the Cornhuskers made a mark. Despite the injuries, the tradition lives.

“I know this,” Solich said, “I’ve gotten tremendous response from the fans of Nebraska. I think they’ve been tremendous. . . . Even following the regular season here, I’ve gotten a ton of letters from a ton of people who have gone out of their way to say this team battled every time it stepped on the football field, they were proud of this football team.

“There’s always going to be a group of fans that no coach is going to be able to please.

“There were times when Tom . . . when we had trouble getting it done against Oklahoma, and he was labeled with not being able to win the big one and we had a string of bowl losses there that certain factions of people were down on him about.”

Chancellor James Moeser, who hired Solich on Osborne’s forceful recommendation, said Solich has been everything he expected.

And if the world said, “Who’s Frank Solich?” the day he was hired and still isn’t too sure even now, that’s also the Nebraska way--who was Tom Osborne when he was hired to replace Devaney, except a taller version of Solich?

There are no showboats or media gadflies or clipboard tossers coaching at Nebraska.

Moeser points out that the staff basically is unchanged from the one that worked last season’s Orange Bowl destruction of Tennessee, lifting Osborne’s last team to a share of the national title.

“I’ve never doubted the decision,” Moeser said. “And I think he’ll prove to be . . . the tradition will continue.

“The last thing that Tom said, at the big gala [to close last season], he said, ‘If the team goes 9-3, just remember that we would’ve gone 9-3 under me.’

“To me, the secret of the Nebraska program is not just the head coach, it’s the whole staff. Tom’s principle thrust to me was, ‘I want to preserve the culture, not just the philosophy of coaching football, but I think also the intellectual and the ethical culture of this program.”’

And how does the chancellor respond to those hard-boiled Nebraska fans who say that Solich isn’t up to the legacy?

“I ignore them,” Moeser said.

Solich said his biggest responsibility this season was to help his players look beyond the injuries and focus on the battle at hand, not the legacy.

“Did I ever do the ‘why me’ type of thing? No, I never did,” Solich said. “I think that’s what Tom was a master at. There were a few seasons even Tom didn’t win it all. And yet he was very even keel. The players knew what to expect every day he was on the practice field. His staff knew what to expect every day that he came to work in the morning.

“And that’s what I hope that I’ll be able to establish through my coaching career, that even-keel type of work ethic that produced those kinds of wins for him.”

Solich and Moeser invited Osborne, who went to the games in Lincoln, to come to the Holiday Bowl, but he declined, saying he wanted to spend the holidays with his family for the first time in decades.

“I think he would’ve felt uncomfortable,” Moeser said. “He comes to the games at home. But I think Tom very much wants to stay out of the limelight, certainly out of Frank’s way.”

Said Solich: “He’s been tremendous in that regard. He’s offered his support and help. He’s dropped by the offices every so often, peeked into some of our meetings, said hello.

“But he almost was apologetic in that regard because he never wanted to paint a picture like he was still a part of coaching that team. He indicated to me that Bob Devaney was great in that manner when Tom took over for Bob and that’s how he wanted to have it work for me.

“So when he stepped aside, he did just that.”

And here is Solich, at the end of one year, with the shadow fading, just a little, in the Southern California sun.

He chuckled a little when asked about commiserating with any other coaches who had to follow legends, and said there hasn’t been much time for that.

Then he stopped, winked and added: “When Dean Smith stepped down [and Bill Guthridge took over as the North Carolina basketball coach], I did watch that. I have been following that situation, and I’ve kind of become a North Carolina fan right now.”