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Heartbreak in the Heartland

Health and continuity questions lead Osborne to step down.
by: Mike Babcock
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Not unlike like millions of fans, players, coaches, alumni and followers associated with what became known as the Big Red Machine, Frank Solich had no idea what a profound effect Tom Osborne would have on his life.

In 1962 Solich was a fullback for Bob Devaney's Huskers, and a young assistant football coach named Tom Osborne was teaching classes on the side to help supplement his meager coaching stipend.

Solich was enrolled in an educational psychology. Osborne was his instructor. Thus began a relationship both on and off the field that culminated this past December when Solich was named as the successor to his instructor at the helm of the Cornhusker dynasty.

The passing of time has made it one of life's little ironies. The student of long ago has replaced his teacher, though not in the classroom.

When Osborne walked off the field at Pro Player Stadium in Miami after the Orange Bowl game on the night of Jan. 2, 1988, he did so for the final time as head coach. The next morning, Solich succeeded him, becoming only the third Cornhusker head coach since 1962, Solich's freshman year.

Osborne remained on the coaching staff through Feb. 4 so he could help in recruiting. He will remain at the university, though not as a coach, at least through June. "Personally, I'd like for him to stay through January of next year,'' Solich said. "But I don't think that's going to be the case."

For the record, the date the most successful football coach in Nebraska history, the living legend, announced he would be stepping aside after 25 seasons, was Dec. 10, 1997. It was unexpected, sort of.

Rumors of Osborne's retirement were rampant two days earlier, spreading on the internet to the point that the Omaha World-Herald addressed the issue in its Dec. 9 editions, in a story under the headline: "Osborne: No Truth to Rumor That He's About to Quit." The subject was raised at a pre-Orange Bowl teleconference on the day before the announcement.

Osborne said he had fielded numerous phone calls at home the previous night regarding the rumors, and "I'll probably be waiting by the phone again tonight," he said. "Usually, I go to bed about 11 (p.m.), so I'd appreciate it if you call me before 11. Any rumors, attack them now rather than tonight."

There was speculation at the beginning of this season about when Osborne, who will celebrate his 61st birthday on Feb. 23, might retire. Speculation resurfaced on Nov. 1, after he coached his 250th victory against Oklahoma, and it gained momentum after he was hospitalized and underwent tests for an irregular heartbeat the night after the Cornhuskers' final home game against Iowa State. Osborne said the problem was under control.

"It's something people can live with," he said at the pre-Orange Bowl news conference. "But it can cause strokes. It can cause heart attacks. It's not a good condition to have, and it probably will come back. It's something that once you have it, the odds are, you'll have it again. They have to get it back in sync. I'm doing OK. I've had some warning signals; there's no question about it. But I'm here today, and that's the main thing."

As for the rumors of imminent retirement, Osborne told reporters: "The thing you need to know about my retirement is, the first thing I will do is, I'll talk to the assistant coaches. Then I'll talk to the players. And then I'll talk to you. You aren't going to hear it from me until I've done that. "Once that happens, then . . . it's kind of like when the moon and stars line up."

Osborne was asked when the moon and stars might line up. "I don't know," he said with a laugh. "It could happen any time." Any time was the next day. Osborne tried to interject some humor in the announcement, beginning with the alignment of the moon and the stars allusion of the day before. He said he had gotten a phone call from a reporter for the campus newspaper the previous night, telling him that an astronomer had "said the moon, the stars and everything were coming into alignment. So I really hadn't planned to announce this.

"But since they're all lined up now, I guess we'll go on and do it." What laughter he elicited was uncomfortable and brief, in anticipation of what would come next. "Eventually, at this time . . . obviously, I'm going to step aside," he said.

Earlier, just as he had indicated he would, Osborne told his assistants and his players the same thing. His attempt at levity in addressing the team had failed, too. The players were "all sitting there, and I tried to think of a couple of things I thought were kind of funny," he said.

"Nobody laughed, so I felt really bad. It was hard because, as I said, I care very much about those guys. Hopefully, they'll realize at some point, I tried to do what was best for them in the long-term. I really believe that's what I'm doing right now, to do what's in their best interests."

Junior center Josh Heskew said Osborne used an analogy to explain his decision to the players, telling them that just as he had always encouraged them to take themselves out of games when they didn't feel they were capable of performing to the best of their ability, that's how he felt then. That was a recurrent theme in what amounted to a two-day announcement.

"I really apologize to a lot of you because you've been after me now for three days," Osborne said at the Dec. 10 (Wednesday) news conference. "I think when somebody called me at home the other night, they said: 'We understand that you're going to resign at the press conference tomorrow.' "I said: 'No, I'm not going to resign at the press conference on Tuesday. I'll be at work.' As I said, I couldn't say what was going to happen because I hadn't talked to the people I needed to talk to.

"I hope you didn't feel deluded or deceived."

Like nearly everyone else, the players were caught by surprise. Heskew and senior offensive lineman Matt Hoskinson said they had been told the previous day by offensive line coach Milt Tenopir that, as far as he knew, Osborne didn't plan to retire. Hoskinson said it wasn't until he walked into the meeting the day of the announcement and saw not only players but also athletic department support staff. "Then I thought: 'Oh no, he's going to do it,' " said Hoskinson.

Osborne's decision to step aside was hardly spur-of-the-moment. He had told Athletic Director Bill Byrne and Chancellor James Moeser in September that he was 90 percent certain the season would be his last. Byrne and Moeser tried to persuade him to reconsider, but to no avail. The cosmic conjunction of the stars and moon had nothing to do with the decision. But health considerations definitely did.

"There have been a few things that have happened this fall in terms of stamina, in terms of my cardiac problems . . . cardiovascular problems," said Osborne. "I don't want to overplay those. It isn't like I can't go out and do most everything I've always done. But probably at some point in the next year, two years, whatever, I might have to call a halt to seven days a week and all that goes with it. So I think it's probably wise to back off before you leave feet first or somebody tells you that you've got to go. That's kind of why I'm stepping down right now."

Osborne underwent double-bypass heart surgery in 1985, and "naturally I've been concerned about what was going on with those arteries," he said. "But as far as I know, there's been no progression of the disease. So I'm in relatively good shape in that way. Really, at age 48, I didn't think I'd be standing here today, still coaching. I thought: 'Well, maybe I can coach another five or six years.'

"Now, at 13 (years), it's probably a little more than I expected." The irregular heartbeat that sent him to the hospital after the Iowa State game was a more significant sign than he had previously admitted to reporters. "What I didn't tell you was that they did have to put me under and they had to shock me to get it back in, which is a little bit more than we had hoped," said Osborne. "It will probably go out again sometime, and if it does, it can be put back.

"I might end up with a pacemaker. I hope not. But if it happens, still life goes on. It's not that I'm damaged goods, that I can't function anymore. I can function pretty well. But I just don't think it's probably wise to continue to push that hard. It's kind of hard-headedness. Maybe it's pride; I don't know.

"There are other other ways to coach, and I could do that. But the enjoyment I've had out of coaching, the thing I like to do is coach. So if I can't be the (offensive) coordinator and do all those things, then I ought to step aside because I don't think I would be very good at being sort of a figurehead.

"Tom Osborne is one of the good guys in coaching and in any profession. He's an icon in Nebraska and in this nation. I don't know if there has ever been a better representative for college football than Tom Osborne. And he was a winner. "
Bobby Bowden Head Coach, Florida State

"I wouldn't enjoy it. And I wouldn't be good at it."

The being-good-at-it part is subject to debate. But there is little doubt that Osborne wouldn't have been happy in a reduced role. He was always a hands-on coach. He was the offensive coordinator long before he became the head coach. And he was sustained by studying film and developing game plans.

In addition to his health, Osborne was concerned about the program. "I think he feels he could be productive a little bit more, but I think again, he's an unselfish guy, and I think, honestly, he wanted to make sure of the continuity of the program," said George Darlington, the Cornhuskers' defensive backs coach and the only remaining member from Osborne's first staff of assistants in 1973.

"You throw out a hypothetical situation - let's say two years from now, we're 7-4. Now the pressure's on to go outside the staff (for a head coach). Some of us would be over 60, and it's very easy to say the game has passed them by. You can use all those cliches to justify getting rid of a staff."

The parallels between the present situation and Osborne's replacing Devaney can be instructive. In the days leading up to the 1972 Orange Bowl game, Devaney reconsidered his decision to step down as head coach.

He had been persuaded to remain for one more season, which likely would offer the possibility of his coaching the Cornhuskers to a third consecutive national championship. No major college football coach had ever done that. None has yet.

The No. 1-ranked Cornhuskers still had to defeat No. 2-ranked Alabama in order to earn a second national title, of course. But that was all but a given. So Devaney told his assistants that he would stay on as coach through the 1972 season. Then he would step aside and be replaced by Osborne.

Devaney was also the athletic director and had the authority to make good on his promise. During the interim, he gave Osborne the title of assistant head coach. The transition was relatively smooth, though there were assistants who left who had difficulty accepting Osborne.

But Devaney was convinced he had made the right choice, and the past 25 years have proven his wisdom.

Osborne's record was 255-49-3, with three national championships. No major college football coach ever reached 250 victories quicker. Osborne gave Solich the title of assistant head coach in 1991, not long after Solich weighed an offer to become offensive coordinator for former Cornhusker teammate Barry Alvarez at Wisconsin.

Solich was a valued member of Osborne's staff, which the promotion underscored. Nebraska hadn't had an assistant head coach since Osborne's one season with the title in 1972. Even before the promotion of Solich to assistant head coach the consensus was he eventually would succeed Osborne.

The consensus was largely theoretical, however, because few, if any, could conceive of Osborne's ever stepping aside.

Accepting his career as being finite was nearly impossible. Unlike Devaney, Osborne didn't have the authority to pick his successor. When Solich was named assistant head coach, it seemed that Osborne might follow Devaney as athletic director. Nebraska's hiring of Byrne as athletic director in 1992 changed the situation, however.

From then on, any personal commitments Osborne made to Solich required the approval of someone else. Though he did not say so in announcing his retirement, Osborne almost certainly promised Solich he would do what was in his power to enable Solich to one day become the Cornhuskers' coach.

That might have been to what Osborne alluded when he said: "I just know right now if I were to stay on, I would have violated a trust, and it would not be the right thing to do. That's all I can tell you. I don't think I need to go into it any more here. That's just how I feel about it."

Osborne, like Devaney before him, understood the importance of continuity in Nebraska's program. And over time, he determined that the 53-year-old Solich best embodied such stability.

"I think we've tried to make sure everybody understood what the order of the staff was," Osborne said. Byrne, Moeser and the university board of regents agreed. Without assurances from them that Solich would be named as his successor, Osborne would not have stepped aside.

"I really appreciate the chancellor and Bill doing what they did and recognizing the importance of continuity in this place because, you know, Nebraska's a little bit unique," Osborne said.

"You don't have mountains, and you don't have beaches, and you don't have warm weather, and you don't have a lot of people. So personally, I think the guy who's been here, who knows the ins and outs of recruiting, knows the importance, who knows how practice has to be structured, is critical.

The time is now for Solich, who has been learning from Osborne for 30-plus years.

"I could see a guy with all kinds of credentials coming in here and not having a very good understanding of what would work here. Frank knows what to do. So that's why I feel very good about it."

Symbolically, as well as literally, Solich brings together two eras of Cornhusker football. He was a member of Devaney's first recruiting class in 1962, a three-year letterman at fullback, and now he accepts the standard passed on­or, more appropriately, pitched to him­by Osborne.

All indications are, Nebraska will continue to run an option-oriented offense. Osborne's concern that his staff and players be taken care of was apparent throughout both news conferences. Time and again he returned to the subject, fighting back tears as he talked of his players.

"I think it's better that it happen this way, now, than it happened at some point where they may end up with a guy coming in from the outside who treats them differently than they've been treated," he said.

"All of a sudden, everything they've had that's familiar is taken away from them. So continuity has been critical as far as I'm concerned. What happens to the players and what happens to the staff has been critical. It's been a major part of all of my thinking, really, for two or three years."

In addition to health considerations and concern for continuity in the program, Osborne's decision to call a halt after 36 seasons of coaching (including 11 as Devaney's assistant) was influenced by a desire to spend more time with his family.

"I don't know that you ever make up for lost time," he said. "I don't think you ever really completely do that. But maybe over the next few years, a few things will occur that can make up for some of the times we didn't have together that maybe should have happened."

His commitment to his religion and spiritual life also was an important factor.

"As you know, I take my faith very seriously, and examine that part of my life extensively. It would be wrong for me to continue beyond this time," he said. "Some of you will not understand that. "But some of you may. In that sense, this is something that needs to happen, and if I was to go forward from this point as the coach, I would not feel good about the spiritual aspect of my life."

Osborne's decision was complicated and elicited surprise from other coaches. "I'm surprised and saddened, and I just hate it," Florida State's Bobby Bowden said in a release issued the day of Osborne's announcement.

"Tom Osborne is one of the good guys in coaching and in any profession. He's an icon in Nebraska and in this nation. I don't know if there has ever been a better representative for college football than Tom Osborne. And he was a winner.

"It's hard for me to even think about Nebraska without Tom. It is a sad day for me and college football. I put Tom and Joe Paterno, LaVell Edwards and Hayden Fry in that 'icon' category. You sit and wonder who'll be next, and I guess I thought Tom would be the last of those to retire."

Paterno called Osborne "probably, the most successful football coach that has ever lived." Speaking at a news conference prior to the Citrus Bowl, Paterno said: "I've got some mixed feelings, good news, bad news. That's that he wants to do, great. I wish him the very best. The bad news is, we're really losing one of the most outstanding people who have ever coached this game."

"It's not been a fun day for me," Osborne said at the Dec. 10 news conference. One of the most poignant moments occurred when he asked his wife Nancy to join him at the podium. He put his arm on her shoulder. "I appreciate everything she's done," he said.

His words came slowly. His voice was choked with emotion. "I guess that's about all I can say," he said. Had he said any more, the words would have been washed away in tears. Not just his, but those of a university and a state.






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