treeeman

OWH

 

Unnecessary Roughness: Coaches' kids also targets of frustrated NU fans' ire

BY MITCH SHERMAN

WORLD-HERALD BUREAU

 

LINCOLN — Nebraska football coach Bill Callahan and six of his nine full-time assistants have a total of 12 children enrolled in Lincoln's public and parochial schools.

 

Some of the more public behavior has involved Lincoln Southwest, where sons of beleaguered Nebraska defensive coordinator Kevin Cosgrove and cornerbacks coach Phil Elmassian played this fall as juniors on the football team.

 

On Oct. 12, as Southwest played Lincoln East at Seacrest Field, East students reacted to the announcement of Connor Cosgrove's name by launching a "Fire Cosgrove" chant.

 

The students were quickly reined in. Lincoln East's athletic director and coach later apologized to Southwest officials.

 

School administrators have sought to short-circuit problems, but it's impossible to eliminate them entirely, said Rob Slauson, Southwest's principal.

 

"We want to have an environment that is emotionally safe and physically safe," said Slauson, whose son Matt starts on the offensive line for NU.

 

Even at home, the children of coaches are not safe from criticism.

 

"Never in my life have I experienced this," said Kevin Cosgrove, who started coaching in 1980 and spent 13 years at Wisconsin before coming to Nebraska. "I don't think it should come with the territory. I don't think kids should be getting phone calls and text messages and things like that. I don't think that's right.

 

"These are supposed to be true fans? Really?"

 

Southwest football coach Mark King said he has not witnessed an incident at school.

 

"But I've seen the hurt," King said. "Words sometimes do hurt more than you think. It can be hard when your father's a public figure."

 

Callahan, whose two daughters attend Pius X High in Lincoln, said he wants to emphasize that most people have acted respectfully.

 

When situations turn ugly, the fourth-year head coach said, the experience serves as a "learning process" for the coaches and their families.

 

"Unless you've walked in someone else's shoes, you really don't know what they're going through," Callahan said. "It's easy to criticize, but when you're in the arena and you're trying the best you can and you're battling, it hurts. It hurts everybody in your family."

 

Most troubling, said Tim Cassidy, Nebraska's chief football administrator, is the criticism voiced at home by parents and then repeated at school by their children.

 

Cassidy, whose daughter attends Southwest and whose son, Austin, started at quarterback as a senior for the Silver Hawks last year, said the criticism isn't indicative of the state. He said poor treatment from a few gets a lot of notice.

 

"But I can also tell you that we've got a lot of people who write us to say they're thinking of us," he said.

 

All of this is nothing new. Former Nebraska coach Tom Osborne said that until he retired in 1997, his wife, Nancy, had kept from him the details of the abuse directed at their children during rough periods of his 25-year tenure.

 

None of that makes it any more acceptable, said Slauson, the Southwest principal.

 

Slauson said he checks occasionally with the children of NU coaches to ensure that they feel comfortable.

 

Southwest, in fact, offers something of a comfort zone, with the children of Cosgrove, Elmassian, Cassidy, Nebraska baseball coach Mike Anderson and athletic administrator Dennis Leblanc.

 

"They hang together," Cassidy said. "They support each other. Kids are resilient. They'll bounce back. They're going to move on, grow from this, and hopefully learn how not to sometimes act."

 

Imagine what the kids would be going through in Oakland

Those were the days when the Huskers ran the ball up the middle for 5 yards, why? Because they could, and defenses were beat in the 4th quarter

Josh Freeman will get the last laugh on Callahan

Kent Pavelka sucked. Remember when pinnacle took over, he demand tons of cash, cars, and a paid membership to Happy Hollow CC.

Insanity: repeating the same process over and over; expecting a different result.

I must be insane. I expect to hear news about Cally and Coz fired,resigning etc. evertytime I log in to this board. No news sucks.

in 2 minute offense. keller calls plays, not cally

I disagree. We did everything right today, against all odds. It just didn't go our way in the end.

Did you catch that we blew a 17-3 lead?

We did everything right for 2.5 quarters, then cally took paly calling back

The coaches aren't getting fired until the end of the year. People need to get over it that they are leaving before that. TO said so, so can we stop with all thise crap and just wait on TO.

TO also said he won't leave anyone dangling, we should hear something soon

Nebraska football finds itself in a precarious situation

By Jerry Magee

Oct. 24, 2007

Nebraskans aren’t perceived as cool. Clods. Sod busters. Country folk in overalls with two straps extending over the shoulders, carrying straw suitcases.

I would know. I once was one of them. I grew up in that state and attended the state university. The football team wasn’t much then, either, because Bob Devaney wouldn’t be along for a time, to be succeeded by Tom Osborne, who would turn matters over to Frank Solich, with Solich yielding to Bill Callahan. The end — the end of Nebraska’s run as a leading factor in college football.

The last time I looked, Callahan was still afloat in Lincoln, which is my subject for today. They may not be the most sophisticated of persons, but the people in Lincoln, specifically NU chancellor Harvey Perlman, have hit upon a manner of proceeding that I suspect could have a trickle-down effect in the NFL. Rather than dismiss Callahan with the football program in disrepair, Perlman bounced the fellow who hired Callahan, athletic director Steve Pederson.

Would NFL teams operate along these lines? In the NFL, general managers are akin to athletic directors, but how often do general managers get bounced? Not often. Let them take some falls, I say. The general manager is the strong man in any NFL organization. The head coach once occupied this position, but his status was reduced when the league embraced free agency and the salary cap. No one is more responsible for a professional franchise’s well-being, or lack of it, than the general manager.

Callahan’s plight underscores one other point to me. It is that coaches making the transition from colleges to the NFL are considerably better-placed than coaches who have been schooled in the NFL who show up in the colleges. Football, as it is played for money, is more precise, more technical, than what is done on campuses. Coaches coming out of the NFL tend to complicate the game to a degree that collegians cannot absorb.

About Callahan. He interested me from the first time I saw him. Here was this fellow with a $50 haircut of whom hardly anybody was aware of, who had become head coach of the Raiders after Al Davis traded away Jon Gruden.

A man has to have a lot of confidence to wear his hair as fashionably as Callahan wore his. I took to him immediately, just as his team took to him.

Callahan’s first team in the East Bay in 2002 began blisteringly fast. Callahan wasn’t willing to call his team a “juggernaut,” but he had a hell of a team and he took it to Super Bowl XXXVII. On that afternoon, Gruden was the more powerfully motivated coach, and he had a vastly superior game plan. His Tampa Bay Bucs took it to the Raiders, 48-21.

For a number of reasons, I would continue to be mindful of where Callahan was in his coaching career. After the 2003 season, his second in the East Bay, he would cease being coach of the Raiders and would turn up at Nebraska. Learning of this, my first thought was, “How is he going to get a $50 haircut in Lincoln?” My second thought was that Nebraska had made a great hire. As I was saying, I liked Callahan, who as a quarterback had come out of Illinois Benedictine in the Chicago suburb of Lisle and made himself a student of Mike White, an offensive guru who would precede him as a coach of the Raiders. In Callahan, Nebraska was getting a guy who had coached in a Super Bowl. I was gladdened. Never mind that his tenure with the Raiders was a brief one; those people haven’t had a coach who had any longevity since Tom Flores’ run from 1979-87.

While I was not born in Nebraska, I lived there as a youth and attended NU. As a boy, I would go out and sit in my grandmother’s car, where the radio had stronger reception than the radio in our house, and hang on the accounts of Nebraska games. Football was important to me. It is to most Nebraskans.

It is easy to say this considering how the Huskers have disintegrated, but in my thinking, the cerebral, artsy sort of football that Callahan espouses never is going to be accepted in the cornlands. Nebraska was founded by Bohemians, sturdy folk who ­didn’t mind doing a day’s work. Muscle has to be at the source of the university’s football program. Think of the option, with the quarterback sliding down the line and either keeping or giving the football to a back with some size. None of that sissy stuff.

Callahan, I suspect, is going to have some further successes, but they won’t be in Lincoln. His football, stressing the pass, is all wrong for where he is. Pederson, meantime, had an impressive portfolio, having been associated with the programs at Tennessee, Ohio State and Pittsburgh before he took the Nebraska position, but according to reports he had become more dictatorial in Lincoln than the citizens preferred.

After Pederson was cashiered, an Omaha radio station was playing “Ding Dong the Witch Is Dead.”

Pederson’s interim replacement is Osborne, an almost sainted figure in Nebraska. The state gave Osborne three terms in Congress. He must either retain Callahan (not likely) or choose his successor, with the names of former Huskers Turner Gill and Barry Alvarez being batted around.

Osborne also has a third option, which would be to appoint himself. Osborne is 70, but that does not mean he can’t be effective — George Halas and Paul Brown are two examples who were both sharp football minds at an advanced age.

Know this: Osborne’s presence on the sideline at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln would be welcomed. T-shirts are for sale there (for $16) bearing the words, “Got Tom!” I may order one.

Callahan, finally, is a dead man walking. He is a pleasant guy, but for him and his approach to football, Nebraska was the wrong place.

Jerry Magee has covered pro football for the San Diego Union-Tribune since 1961 and for PFW since its inception in 1967.

Also, yes, I think it is a concern he would bolt for the NFL. But that is a realistic concern with any and all coaches we hire these days.

Why does everyone think coaches want to go to the NFL??? Would you want to manage 53 overpaid crybabies? If your team doesn't make the playoffs, you get fired. A coaches life span in the NFL is about 3 seasons. Coaches prefer the stability and control they get in college football.

UT 59

Team formally known as Huskers 3

Total rushing yards 86

Total passing yars 158

odds of UT gaining more than 600 yards, 2:1

IBR please add me to your PM list

At UofA it was per our Nike contract that anytime we had a press conference or we were making an appearance on behalf of the team, unless we were at a dinner we needed to wear Nike issued gear, we had thousands of it. We wore Nike polo shirt everyday to work.....everyday! It was in our Nike contract. BC gets paid directly from Adidas to wear it....I can almost guarantee it.

Exactly, and by not wearing any appearel, his is hinting at his future

It is in his contract to wear husker attire.

Have you ever heard of "non-verbal communication"?

2.2 mill isn't crap when you think of the lost revenue for TV games, merchandising, licensing, and not to mention if booster $$$'s start to dry up.

Here's my take on it - when we had 185 guys on the walk-on squad, these were guys that grew up and dreamed their whole lives of putting on that white helmet with the simple red N. The guys that got to wear that helmet on Saturday knew what it meant to put that helmet on - it meant something. Very few of the Huskers teams I've ever seen had superstars. Only rarely did one man stick out above the rest - for the most part it was 80 guys on Saturday that were so jacked up to wear that helmet that when they hit the field they were ready to run through brick walls or eat glass so they could wear that helmet the next Saturday.

 

Now our recruiting classes are top 10 lists of guys from all over the country - their loyalty hasn't been at NU since they were 2, and in far too many cases their loyalty is directly tied to the number of touches they get. Anyone remember Huskers doing endzone dances in the 80s or 90s? Maybe they did, but I don't remember it. I remember guys hitting the endzone, dropping the ball on the ground, and trotting back to the sideline as if nothing unusual happened. They were expected to score, and score often, and when they did, they had the personal satisfaction of knowing they had earned the right to wear that helmet.

 

Leadership? Well if someone wasn't cutting it, the certainly had plenty of role models around them, and I'm sure that nobody had to be reminded of anything more than once.

 

Until we build the CORE of our team out of die-hard Huskers - and that means the coaches - we won't have the kind of leadership that we want.

 

And I do NOT blame ANY of the guys that wear the helmets today. I put all of the blame, all 100%, on Stevie P's head - he brought in Businessman Bill, and that's who is supposed to be molding our young men. BIll is a failure at this.

You hit the nail on the head

don't we already have enough a$$holes?

All sucessful coaches will tell you that it's not their team, but the senior's team. Sucessful coaches let the seniors have alot of say in how problems are handled within the team; ie Unity Council.

Whereas Callahan is an NFL type control freak.

Maybe Suh's being suspended had something to do with how they played sat. If you don't like the coaches decison, lose a couple of games and put him on the hot seat.

Suckers

you have way too much time on your hands

he took Grudens team to superbowl. Callahan received way too much credit.

Have Stevie P put on his best used car salesman smile, and go after Al Saunders again

All aspects of the game will have to be drilled hard this week for NU to keep it competitive and have a chance.

I would much rather have them thinking they have work to do, rather than a false sense of security.

What about SC, does all the hype go to their heads?

I like the Huskers chances.

Just like the Texas game last year, but this time we hold on to the ball, and win

I seem to remember all might god TO playing LP, "their football players, not quire boys".

When Johnny Rogers(I wanna puke when I hear that name) held up a gas station, boys will be boys.

I'm sorry, if you want to win you need certain types of players. If you want a bunch of nice boys you can always root for BYU.

Try walking into the OWH. I'm sure they have security at their door.

Hey Shatel, welcome to post 9/11