NEW POLLS TO CONQUER

It was typical Tom. He walked into the 125th Fillmore County Fair at 11 a.m. on July 25 and went undetected for five minutes.

Tom Osborne will never match Huey Long for entrances. It has always been more a gravitational tug with Osborne, his stand-alone aura ultimately nixing the need for sirens and advance men.

Sure enough, like wind through a soybean field, word of Dr. Tom’s arrival rippled and soon young children and old men cast their eyes away from a pig-judging contest and descended the grandstands to engulf the next U.S. representative from Nebraska’s 3rd District.

“Hi, I’m Tom,” Osborne says with each handshake, as if the people didn’t know.

The coronation won’t be official until the November election, but Osborne is about as much a wipeout-in-waiting as Nebraska versus Iowa State in football.

How so?

In 25 years as Nebraska coach, Osborne won 255 games and three national championships in a state that has no other major college or professional sports teams.

Now that’s a record to run on.

The day Osborne announced his candidacy, two Democrats and a Republican dropped out of the race.

Osborne garnered 71% of the Republican primary vote in a district that hasn’t gone Democratic since borders were redrawn in the 1960 census.

Even Rollie Reynolds, the Democratic opponent, describes Osborne as “an astonishing favorite.”

Reynolds can’t quote specific poll numbers because he says he can’t afford polls.

It’s interesting,” Reynolds, a real-estate man from Grand Island, says. “I have a lifetime background in agriculture and he has a lifetime background in football. Agriculture is in the tank. This district is in dire straits, and they’re going to vote for him, probably, because of football and not agriculture.”

Yep.

It’s true.

Every last word.

Folks can’t say for sure why they’re handing the 3rd District over to the Wizard of O’s and Xs.

“I don’t know his proposals,” Linda Bristol, a farmer’s wife from Fairmont, confesses. “But just because of the integrity and honesty he’s shown over the years, people believe in him.”

Don Bristol, Linda’s husband, says the state is taking a flier. He concedes the farm system is in a “state of disrepair” and knows there’s a risk electing a man who has never held public office.

“What are our alternatives?” Bristol asks.

Osborne is not even a textbook Republican. He opposes the death penalty, believes in limited gun control and appears at ideological odds with Nebraska’s $4.5-billion cattle industry. Osborne had heart bypass surgery 15 years ago, which hardly qualifies him as an advocate for red meat consumption.

And although he was born in Hastings, Osborne hasn’t lived in the 3rd District in 38 years.

Carpetbagger?

Perhaps we have not made ourselves clear:

It . . . does . . . not . . . matter.

“Fame trumps issues,” Paul Equale, a Democratic strategist and Clinton administration advisor, says.

Batter Up

Osborne is only the latest sporting figure to enter politics.

In Congress, the ex-coach will join representatives Steve Largent (R-Okla.), the Seattle Seahawks’ record-setting receiver, and J.C. Watts (R-Okla.), the ex-Sooner quarterback. There’s also Rep. Jim Ryun (R-Kan.), the onetime miler, and former pitching great Jim Bunning, a former six-term Kentucky congressman who is now the state’s junior senator.

Russ Francis, a 14-year NFL tight end, is challenging for incumbent Patsy Mink’s U.S. House seat in Hawaii’s 2nd District.

Jack Kemp, the onetime AFL star quarterback, and Bill Bradley, the ex-Princeton and New York Knick star, are ex-jocks who have already cut considerable political swaths.

Eight out of the last 10 presidents, but not Bill Clinton, were either high school or college athletes.

Quote-a-minute ex-NBA star Charles Barkley has threatened for years to run for Alabama governor.

Republicans have relentlessly tried to recruit former Dallas Cowboy quarterback Roger Staubach and have more recently locked on to retired quarterback Steve Young, who gave the invocation at the Republican National Convention.

Anyone out there think Cal Ripken Jr. couldn’t win a House seat in Maryland?

Sporting figures in politics have become de rigueur.

“If Mark McGwire wanted to run for office, Dick Gephardt would be on the phone saying, ‘Please, I hope you’re a Democrat,’ ” Equale says. “Athletes in politics now is really akin to Eisenhower running in ’52. Both major parties recruited him to run. They didn’t know if he was Democrat or a Republican.”

Inaugural Balls And Strikes

This isn’t a new phenomenon.

Wilmer “Vinegar Bend” Mizell, who won 90 games in the major leagues for St. Louis, Pittsburgh and the New York Mets in the 1950s and ‘60s, served three terms in the U.S. House.

Two-time Olympic gold-medal decathlon winner Bob Mathias, a former California congressman, was one of the first jock politicians.

But modern-day sports stars are seeking office in droves.

Why?

They have advantages your circuit-court judge couldn’t touch with a 10-foot gavel.

If modern-day politics is about money and marketing--and it is--sports stars have both feet in the voters’ box.

“Athletes are like Hollywood celebrities,” Bob Rusbuldt, a longtime GOP strategist based in Washington, says. “We’re in an age when media costs are spiraling out of control. If you don’t have to raise money on name identification, that’s a huge advantage.”

Athletes seeking office also tend to enter the arena with less baggage. Media coverage of sporting icons, not unlike five-star generals, tends to be more effusive than intrusive.

“It’s not a silver bullet,” Equale says of fame. “But it can be a very effective launching pad.”

There have been exceptions:

Walter Johnson, a Hall of Fame pitcher and pig farmer, failed in his bid for a House seat in 1940. It might have helped had Johnson picked up a newspaper.

Asked where he stood on the issues, Johnson muttered, “I plan to study up on them things.”

Famed Oklahoma football coach Bud Wilkinson might have seemed a cinch to win a Senate seat in 1964, but he made the tactical mistake of switching from Democrat to Republican and went down in the Barry Goldwater landslide.

And while Richard Petty may be a stock-car king, his bid to become North Carolina’s secretary of state in 1996 ended up on blocks.

“If I knew I was going to lose, I wouldn’t a run,” Petty was quoted as saying.

Francis, a Republican, could be next to fail. He’s a longshot to unseat Mink in Hawaii.

“It’s a steep hill to climb,” Francis says, “but that’s how I got in shape in football: running up hills.”

Tough Calls

So what qualifies Tom Osborne for public office?

“What qualifies Hillary Clinton to be Senator of New York?” Rusbuldt volleys back. “What qualifies a lawyer who worked in a law firm his whole life? Or a realtor? Or a college professor? Whether you’re a college football coach, a major league pitcher, basketball player for the Lakers, or a lawyer in San Diego, I think it’s what you know upstairs.”

There’s no denying the similarities between the occupations; politics has long been an allegory of sports.

A great speech delivered in politics is called a “home run.” A desperate legislative issue is “fourth and long,” an evasive political maneuver an “end around.”

Political writer Matthews’ cable show is called “Hardball,” not “Tea Time.”

There are political “dark horses” and in California, a controversial “three strikes” law.

“There are similarities,” Watts says, “although I’ve never heard the term ‘omnibus budget’ in my huddle . . . I think politics and football are similar in a sense that you kind of take what the defense gives you.”

Equale says it took Jack Kemp “15 years of quarterback jokes to overcome the stigma,” but ex-jocks have often proven themselves worthy.

Bradley and Kemp served Congress with distinction before making presidential runs.

Largent and Watts are considered rising stars in the GOP.

Rather than being a drawback, athletes say their backgrounds suit them for the rough-and-tumble political world.

“These guys have been in front of hundreds of thousands of people on TV and failed,” Francis says of his brethren. “There’s an interesting quality in people who will get back up after that. I saw a burning intensity in Joe Montana and Ronnie Lott. I know if they wanted to serve my community, I’d support them any day of the week.”

Kemp told the Toronto Star in 1996 that “football taught me never to quit.” “Leadership in life,” he said, “is similar to a quarterback who must inspire others to succeed.”

While New Jersey senator, Bradley interviewed a prospective staffer by challenging him to a game of pickup basketball.

In his book, “Values of the Game,” Bradley writes: “I can learn more about people by playing a three-one-three game with them for twenty minutes than I can by talking with them for a week.” So much for the “dumb jock” syndrome.

Fortune 500 companies pay top money for coaches and athletes to address management teams.

“In sports, you subjugate yourself to the team or you all fail,” Francis says. “I’d like to have Congress, after a particularly active session, have to take a look of themselves on film in front of their peers. It’s a humbling experience.”

Francis says it is only because he was an athlete that he is able to challenge Mink, who first held public office in Hawaii in 1956.

“There are very few people willing to stand up, because they come after you,” Francis says. “But if I can handle Howie Long, I can handle this.”

You don’t think coaches make tough decisions?

At Nebraska, Osborne made two calls he will take to his grave.

At the 1984 Orange Bowl, No. 1 Nebraska scored a touchdown in the last minute to cut the Miami lead to 31-30. An extra point would have tied the score and secured Osborne’s first national title.

But Osborne ordered a two-point conversion attempt, which failed.

“I always thought you had to win the game to win the national title,” he remarked at the time.

Osborne could not have garnered more respect in victory.

His impeccable reputation held firm until 1995, when Osborne reinstated troubled tailback Lawrence Phillips for the national title game in the Fiesta Bowl.

Earlier that season, Phillips pleaded no contest to misdemeanor charges after dragging his girlfriend, by the hair, down a flight of stairs.

Osborne suspended the back for six games, but allowed Phillips back for the title game. Phillips’ 165-yard, two-touchdown performance in a 62-24 Nebraska romp over Florida propelled him to the No. 6 pick in the NFL draft and a multimillion dollar contract with the St. Louis Rams.

Phillips’ pro career has since been a police-blotter bust; he currently faces domestic abuse charges (against a different girlfriend) in an alleged Beverly Hills incident.

“You take hits,” Osborne says about his reputation. “If you’re going to be in the public eye, you’re not always going to be perceived as good. I try the best I can.”

As Good as It Gets

There is no getting around the ego factor.

Sporting legends are used to adulation, pressure, intoxicating control and getting their performance reviews on talk radio.

“It won’t ever be the same,” Osborne says of his coaching career. “I knew that my last game. I knew some things I would be leaving could never be approximated again.”

Osborne, 63, left Nebraska at the height of his powers. His Cornhuskers went 60-3 his last five seasons and the last game Osborne coached, a win over Tennessee in the 1998 Orange Bowl, clinched a share of his third national title in the 1990s.

Osborne says retiring was a mistake.

He promised his wife, Nancy, he would step down for health concerns and also kept a commitment that allowed longtime assistant Frank Solich to become his successor.

But Osborne wasn’t happy:

“I still felt like I had one major push in me,” he says.

He considered a return to coaching, but turned down offers from the University of Houston and Michigan State because he did not want to uproot his family.

Politics may not be able to wholly replace football’s void, but in what other profession can you get a ticker-tape parade?

Osborne says campaigning is much like recruiting.

“When you’re talking to 17-, 18-year-old kids, you’re also talking to their teachers, parents, the principal and the coach,” he says.

Though he is dead-solid lock to win election, Osborne goes at campaigning the way he pursued offensive line recruits in North Platte.

Osborne will log about 45,000 miles by car by the time the campaign ends in the sprawling 3rd District, the nation’s largest in area, encompassing 80% of the state roughly west of Lincoln. District borders stretch 300 miles east to west and 200 miles north to south.

Osborne travels in a white Ford Expedition, crisscrossing the tiny farm hamlets that off-shoot Interstate 80.

Osborne knows he’s in over his head on the issues but has met the challenge with the same dawn-to-dusk diligence he used to build a college football empire.

The man isn’t without acumen. Osborne owns a doctorate in educational psychology, and what he describes as the “progressive unraveling of culture” is one of his key campaign themes.

Unlike a rout over Iowa State, however, Osborne refuses to sit on his commanding lead over Reynolds.

The July 25 campaign began at 10:45 a.m. at a Conoco gas station in Fairmont, where a local farmer led Osborne to the county fair.

Later, in Geneva, a tired-looking town, Osborne curbed his SUV for a noon Rotary Club luncheon.

It was some scene: Osborne, tall as corn at 6 feet 3, his opaque skin baked by the sun, ducking into a lodge meeting held in a log cabin.

Over plates of Sloppy Joes, corn, brownies and ice tea, Rotarians opened with a rendition of “My Country ‘Tis of Thee,” followed by “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

It was only honest Tom Osborne who finally cleared his throat to speak in the dusty lodge but, to adoring Nebraskans, it might as well have been Honest Abe.

“I’ve been to a lot of Rotary Clubs,” Osborne said in monotone drawl. “You guys sing better.”

Osborne then methodically ticked off the issues: dropping corn prices and rising illiteracy, the district’s lack of Internet access, the exodus of young workers to higher paying jobs in other states.

He decried the rise of single-parent homes in the district, even dropping a personal aside to Lawrence Phillips.

“I’ll tell you from firsthand experience that if the dad doesn’t stick around to see what you look like, it leaves a hole in your psyche,” Osborne said.

The old coach had command of the audience and seemingly the facts.

Outside, standing by his SUV, Osborne felt a bit strange.

“I really don’t think of myself as a politician,” he says. “But I guess if you run for office, you are. There’s no getting around it.”

After Geneva, the Osborne 2000 campaign headed 50 miles west to his hometown of Hastings, where the candidate toured a soybean refinery plant.

Osborne scribbled copious notes as company leaders outlined how best Congress could serve farming interests.

“I’m just trying to make a dumb football coach smarter,” he says at one point in the meeting.

Tom Osborne and soybeans.

Now, if that isn’t a pair.

Inside the Beltway

It doesn’t bother Rollie Reynolds that Osborne is going to clean his political clock.

“All elections are correct,” Reynolds says. “If someone wants to vote for Sonny Bono or Ronald Reagan or Tom Osborne because of their pretty face or whatever, I’m fine with that. I really am.”

But what happens when Osborne gets to Washington?

Experts say he may be in for a shock. At Nebraska, Osborne effectively operated as a CEO for 25 years, making decisions in the morning that became reality by noon.

Osborne: “In coaching, if you call a play up the middle, you run it up the middle.”

That’s not the way it works in Washington.

Equale compares the experience of a first-term member of Congress to a freshman getting hazed in high school.

“You’re put in a confusing environment, and very often what people are talking about is not necessarily what they’re doing,” Equale says.

“They even ring bells, literally, just like high school. You’re pulled by your Washington staff and colleagues in Washington, and pulled at home by your constituents. Making the adjustment from coach, athlete or any walk of life is an enormous adjustment. Frankly, it’s one reason why many people don’t run.”

Osborne says he understands the enormousness of his undertaking.

This isn’t a one-shot deal for him; he expects to live out his 60s in public service.

“There is a heavy obligation,” Osborne says. “I do desire to serve Nebraska well.”

By late afternoon, Osborne is back at campaign headquarters in downtown Hastings--right across the street from the Olive Saloon.

Osborne was a star quarterback in high school and at Hastings College.

Yet, more memories than friends remain.

“We been gone a long time,” Osborne says. “Things change.”

Osborne will spend Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays in Washington, which may or may not be enough time to wrangle votes on Nebraska’s behalf.

The ex-coach says the endeavor has already enriched him.

“I’ve seen Nebraska from a different perspective,” he says. “I’ve lived here all my life, but I haven’t seen a lot of feed lots, or ethanol plants.”

Osborne recently toured Washington as one of 23 prospective first-term members of Congress.

“I’m somewhat prepared for the frustration,” he says.

Watts, whose Oklahoma teams went 4-1 versus Nebraska, has helped his former on-field adversary prepare for the transition.

“You have to understand it’s more a delayed gratification,” Watts says of politics.

At campaign headquarters, someone asks Osborne if he could relate to “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” the Frank Capra film in which an earnest-but-naive small-town man is thrust into a corrupt Washington caldron.

Osborne manages a smile.

“People ask me about it,” he says. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen it. I hope I come out of it as well as Jimmy Stewart. But I’ll probably have my head handed to me.”