Switzer would be Assistant

[HuskerfaninOkieland]

Could you imagine these two on the sidelines working together??

 

LJS

Ken Hambleton: For one thing, we know Switzer won't be next coach

Saturday, Dec 01, 2007 - 08:27:58 pm CST

Tom Osborne’s search to replace Bill Callahan has been documented, inspected, detected, dissected and neglected.

 

The investigative wing of Ken’s Corner has been busy.

 

We found out who it won’t be.

 

“I’ve talked to your interim athletic director at Nebraska but he didn’t offer me the job,” said Barry Switzer. “Heck, I’m 70. This is a young man’s game.

 

“I worry about the Nebraska job. It’s important. I want to see them succeed against everybody but Oklahoma. It’s hard. Look how long it took for Oklahoma to find Bobby Stoops.

 

“And at Nebraska, even if they find a Stoops, it’ll be harder to change things than it was at Oklahoma because they are that much farther away from Texas and Florida and California.”

 

Switzer did offer his old friend Osborne some advice.

 

“I told him, if he was smart, he wouldn’t hire a guy named Tom Osborne at coach, either.”

 

But he added: “If Tom named himself as coach and needed an assistant, who made about $4 million a year and didn’t have to recruit, I’d be there in a hurry. That would be fun.”

 

Picture a coaching staff, headed by Osborne, with co-head coach Switzer, assistants Warren Powers, Bill Snyder, Bobby Bowden, Jimmy Johnson and everybody else who gave Osborne fits on the field over the years.

 

Nebraska was nothing without Oklahoma. Nebraska set everything to beat OU. Beat the Sooners and you’ve made it to the top. Later, there was Florida State, Miami and Florida. When the Huskers beat those teams (well, not FSU, but almost in the 1994 Orange Bowl) they were kings of college football.

 

Switzer almost cost Osborne his job a couple of times. The Oklahoma coach beat Osborne’s Nebraska teams five years in a row and brought about the term “Sooner Magic,” for all the heartbreak he gave the Huskers over the years.

 

There was 1973, when Switzer beat Osborne’s first team 27-0 with the three Selmon brothers keeping Nebraska from ever snapping the ball on the Sooner side of the field.

 

There was 1984 17-7 win against Nebraska when Brian Bosworth, Troy Johnson and Kevin Murphy bottled up NU. There was tight end Keith Jackson and Elvis Peacock and Billy Sims and Joe Washington and Kenny King.

 

Osborne actually interviewed at Colorado in 1978 because he “couldn’t win the big one, in particular Oklahoma.”

 

“Hey you can read into that Sooner Magic thing, but we had some great teams that beat Nebraska,” Switzer said. “He put in the option. He still ran the I-formation but there were a lot of elements of the wishbone that we used. He told me he borrowed some of our play principles.

 

“And I’ll tell you what, you could win a national title today using Tom’s playbook of the 1990s.”

 

The key is to get more Texas players, said Switzer, who coached at OU for 16 years and the Dallas Cowboys for four years. “Look at our Heisman guys — all Texans. Look at Missouri and Kansas, Texas quarterbacks. Chase Daniel won three Texas state titles in high school.

 

“That’s why I don’t want to coach any more. Recruiting is 100 hours a week. Back when Tom and I coached it was a free-for-all and we could contact kids all the time. Now, you get one contact a week. That opens it up to everybody. That’s one of the reasons there are so many good teams.”