Nebraska’s Osborne Is Set to Say His Goodbyes

Tom Osborne never has been able to stop coaching football. It’s been more than a decade since his son, Mike, was the quarterback at tiny Hastings College, a Division II school west of Lincoln, Neb. Dad didn’t see many of Mike’s high school games. He was too busy coaching the Cornhuskers. At Hastings, though, there were a few Saturday night games when Tom Osborne -- just finished up in Lincoln -- would drive west so that he could to sit in the stands with his 5-year-old nephew, Justin, and watch his son play.

Only Tom Osborne could not bear just to watch. Standing in the sunshine at Pro Player Stadium on Tuesday afternoon, his own 5-year-old clinging to his ankles, Mike Osborne discovered Tuesday that the memory of those days can still make him laugh.

“I’d look up and I’d see Justin come sneaking down to the bench and I’d just smirk,” said Mike, who is now 32. “Dad would read the defense and he’d send me down plays through Justin. Most of the time they were passing plays -- believe it or not, coming from my dad -- but I guess that’s because we didn’t have much of a running game.”

On Friday night, Mike will sit in the stands here and watch his father coach his final game after completing 25 seasons -- some glorious, some controversial, some both -- as the head coach at Nebraska. The Cornhuskers will face the Tennessee Volunteers in the Orange Bowl that night. And there is a chance, should No. 1-ranked Michigan lose in the Rose Bowl on Thursday, that the game will be played for a possible third national championship in Osborne’s Nebraska tenure. A victory would give Osborne a 255-49-3 career record and would allow him to retire with the highest winning percentage of any active coach.

Those things, though, are maybes. The only certainty about Friday is that, after it’s over, Osborne will, finally, stop coaching the game he always has loved.

“I know a part of him will die this last game,” Mike said. “You do something for 30 years and commit yourself to it and there’s a part of you that lives that, breathes that. And that will be hard for him, I know.”

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There is a taint on Tom Osborne, and just the thought of it angers Tommie Frazier. Frazier was one of Osborne’s greatest quarterbacks, and he was there during the days when Osborne won his first, and long-awaited, national championship, in 1994, and also when the taint first formed. The taint and the titles, after all, can never be separated in many people’s minds.

“This is what I have to say,” Frazier said Tuesday afternoon, choosing his words carefully. “If you really want to know what Tom Osborne is about, hang out with him for a day, watch him for a day, see how he goes about his work and his life.

“You can disagree with the decisions that he’s made, that’s fine. But don’t form your perceptions of him from far away. That’s all I ask. Don’t just base it on what people think are the problems.”

Osborne’s first “problem” was named Christian Peter. His biggest problem, to this day, is named Lawrence Phillips. Together with a handful of other, lesser-knwon Nebraska players, those two men -- and the way Osborne handled their individual situations -- brought harsh public scrutiny of the Nebraska football program, which long had been known for its discipline, its success and its excellent graduation rates.

Peter, a captain, was charged with sexual assault (he eventually entered a “no contest” plea and was sentenced to 18 months probation), among various other crimes, yet never was suspended from the Nebraska football program, and played -- while under indictment -- in the Orange Bowl that produced Osborne’s first national championship. The following year, Phillips assaulted his girlfriend, dragging her down a flight of steps by her hair, and received a six-game suspension from Osborne, who watched Phillips run for 165 yards in the Fiesta Bowl that January, when the team won its second straight national title.

In an extremely candid moment Tuesday, Osborne defended those decisions but admits that others may have good reason to think he was wrong.

“I don’t believe I’ve ever tried to make a decision based on what would play well with the press or with the public or with the fans,” Osborne said “I’ve tried to make decisions based on each case and what I thought was fair and what I thought was right. I’ve probably made mistakes.

“But I feel that because of the way I’ve handled things, I’ve probably had a good relationship with the players and most of them felt I wouldn’t sell them out. You’re going to be misunderstood -- or maybe you’re properly misunderstood. Out there, there are always going to be people who disagree with you.”

Although he does not speak to Phillips on a regular basis, Osborne has watched Phillips get in trouble with the law, again and again, after he was drafted by the Rams, who finally cut him loose earlier this year. Miami Coach Jimmy Johnson decided to give Phillips another chance with the Dolphins late this year.