A LINCOLN MONUMENT

Nebraska football under Tom Osborne has always been more plodding than poetic, save for the setting of tonight’s final act to a 25-year saga that, if charted on a graph, would resemble a straight arrow with a crooked tip.

For Osborne this week in Miami, there has been no escaping the symbolic yin and yang of his head coaching career.

Miami, home of the Orange Bowl, where, in January 1995, Osborne harpooned his own personal Moby Dick and finally won his first national championship.

Miami, home too--for as long as Jimmy Johnson’s patience can withstand--to Lawrence Phillips, whose police-blotter tenure at Nebraska will forever be linked to Osborne, an indelible, undeniable asterisk to the 25 consecutive bowl appearances, the 254-49-3 won-lost record and the multiple national titles.

Multiple as in two or three, depending on the outcome of tonight’s Orange Bowl matchup between No. 2 Nebraska (12-0) and No. 3 Tennessee (11-1)--and the final balloting of the Associated Press and USA Today/coaches pollsters.

Michigan’s 21-16 victory over Washington State in Thursday’s Rose Bowl probably clinched the No. 1 ranking for the 12-0 Wolverines, although some have suggested Osborne’s impending retirement could swing some sentimental votes to Nebraska.

Speaking to this theory Thursday, Osborne, 60, quipped, “You don’t end your career to pick up some votes, normally.”

Osborne, who announced his retirement Dec. 10 after a quarter-century as Nebraska’s head coach, has received most of the media focus leading up to the Orange Bowl--typically, to his own chagrin.

“That’s why I didn’t want to announce this thing until after the game was over,” Osborne said. “But I just felt for recruiting purposes, and for [coaching] staff stability, it needed to be done now.”

So, this week, the laconic, self-effacing Osborne was forced to spend much more time than desired staring at an armada of micro-cassette recorders, anxiously shifting his weight from one foot to the other, frequently interrupting group interviews with a hopeful “Anything else?” and looking genuinely relieved whenever a Nebraska publicity staffer would swoop in to break up the session.

“Seems like we’ve been doing a lot of talking,” Osborne noted with a smile near the end of Tuesday’s media day. “Y’know, the more you talk, the more trouble you’re going to get into.”

Consider it equal time for Osborne, whose coaching career got the microscope-and-sledgehammer dissection treatment in the 1994 and 1995 seasons, when his program won successive national titles while undergoing a make-over many critics regarded as nothing less than Faustian.

For 22 years, Osborne had been Professor Tom--soft-spoken, clean-living, God-fearing, beloved by players, assistants and fans, one high-profile college football coach who did things The Right Way.

He was also the perennial also-ran. Good old likable Tom Osborne, the straight shooter who couldn’t win the big one, who couldn’t win a bowl game in seven consecutive tries from 1988 through January 1994.

That course swerved drastically--some say out of control--when Osborne girded his team for the championships of ’94 and ’95 with players who should have had two photographs in the Nebraska media guide--front- and side-view mug shots.

Phillips, charged with sexual assault for grabbing a former girlfriend by the hair and dragging her down several flights of stairs, was the most notorious case, but Osborne teams of that period featured other players who added “assault and battery,” “attempted rape” and “indecent exposure” to the Cornhusker playbook.

They became vilified as the “Crimehuskers.” Osborne, who suspended Phillips for six games during the 1995 season only to reinstate him well in time for a successful title defense, was branded a coach who sacrificed closely held lifelong principles for a couple of shiny trophies.

“That ’95 season was, in some ways, the best time I ever had and the worst time I ever had,” Osborne said. “Because the public perception--particularly outside of Nebraska--was very negative, and yet we had a bunch of players that played as well together as any team I’ve ever had.

“Certainly, we had the talent, but the chemistry was outstanding. And it seemed like no matter how much people got down on us, they just pulled together harder. They could have fragmented so easily. They could have been divisive, but they didn’t do that.

“So on one hand, it was rough. On the other hand, it was really gratifying to see people respond as they did.”

The bottom line?

Osborne insists his was always the proper treatment and care of his players, disputing the notion that his motivation was any more calculated than that.

“I don’t believe I ever tried to make a decision based on what would play well in the press or the public or with the fans,” he said. “I’ve tried to look at each case and what facts I had and what I thought was fair and right.

“I probably made mistakes. But I’ve tried not to make decisions based on what might look good for me personally or the program over and above what I thought was best for the individual player.

“I hope that doesn’t come off the wrong way, but I feel that’s the way I handled it most of the time.”

Tom Shatel, a sports columnist for the Omaha World-Herald, believes Osborne is sincere.

“I don’t think he compromised himself,” Shatel said. “Everything he did during those years was consistent with his personal philosophy. . . .

“The bottom line is, he upgraded the talent and knew he would have to bring in that type of kid. It’s a naive thing, a Midwestern thing, maybe, but he truly believes he can ‘save’ these kids--’Maybe he’s a bad kid, but he might be better off in our system.’

“I think he thinks he can truly make a difference, that he can help these kids, like he’s the Father Flanagan of college football.

“Lawrence Phillips proved that he can’t save everybody.”

Osborne: “People say you made a mistake [with Phillips]. Well, Irving Fryar was a guy who had a few difficulties, and I personally think Irving’s a great human being today.

“I’ve had a lot of guys like that. Maybe they’re 30, maybe they’re 35 before the light bulb goes on and maybe something happens in their life to where they turn things around.

“And so I’ve learned, I guess, not to be too judgmental and to realize it’s never over until it’s over. And it’s not over until you die, really.”

Still, Phillips’ is a case that saddens Osborne.

“I had my chance with Lawrence when he was in Nebraska and we did everything that we felt was reasonable--and then it’s up to Lawrence,” Osborne said.

“And I think the Rams did about the same and they felt that it was up to him. And I’m sure Jimmy Johnson feels the same way.

“At some point, Lawrence is going to have to respond in the right way or else probably at some point he’ll be out of football. He probably is getting close to the last stop if things don’t get better.

“I would say, just as an outside observer, he’s been under a lot of scrutiny ever since he left Nebraska--and while he was at Nebraska--and as a result, most every scrape he gets himself into is magnified in some way. But that’s the nature of the beast right now and he has to live with it. So, it’s a difficult road for him to walk.”

Since Phillips’ departure after the 1995 season, the Nebraska football program has been relatively incident-free. A Big Red wave of amnesia has rolled over the state of Nebraska--helped along, no doubt, by the Cornhuskers’ 12-0 record--and Osborne’s retirement announcement has been greeted with hosannas and a proposal by the board of regents to rename Memorial Stadium “Tom Osborne Stadium.”

“With Nebraska fans, it’s like it never happened,” Shatel said of the Phillips era. “It’s never a topic, it’s never even discussed. I think that’s just amazing, but that’s how it’s looked upon--a blip on the screen.

“But I think it’s worn on [Osborne]. It’s not the reason he’s leaving, but it added to it. In the last two years, it looks like he’s gotten so much older.”

At Thursday’s final pre-Orange Bowl news conference, Osborne was asked about changes he had noticed in players during his 36 years as a head coach and an assistant at Nebraska, and his answer is telling.

“In ‘62, ‘63, ‘64, occasionally you’d run across a young man from a single-parent family, and usually that was because of a death in the family,” he said.

“Now, probably right around 50% of the young people we’re recruiting are from a single-parent household--and usually it’s a single mother. The absence of a father figure in their lives is difficult for any child, but for a young man it’s particularly devastating. So, as a result, many young people are a little more insecure, a little more troubled, than they had been.”

Osborne believes he has rightly devoted himself to the cause of helping such young people.

And if they, in turn, help Osborne win 59 of his last 62 games--with one more pending tonight--well, that, in and around Lincoln, is known as Big Red synergy.

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BY THE NUMBERS

Division I coaching victories: 254

Rank among Div. I coaches for victories: 6th

Career winning percentage: .835

Rank for winning percentage in Div. I: 5th

National Championships: 2

Top 10 finishes in final AP poll: 17