Tom Osborne had ideas, fool!

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Osborne returns, armed with ideas

 

09:45 PM CDT on Saturday, May 24, 2008

 

 

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COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – Tom Osborne is back in college athletics.

 

And true to his previous careers as a coach and congressman, he has some ideas about how to fix things.

 

Osborne made his first appearance this week at the Big 12's annual meetings at the Broadmoor resort since returning to Nebraska to take over as athletic director and savior last fall. That's when he fired Bill Callahan as football coach and hired Bo Pelini.

 

Among his priorities:

• A proposal to give athletes roughly $2,500 in expense money beyond their scholarships to help meet "the cost of attendance."
  
• Putting pressure on the NBA to either draft a kid out of high school or wait three years after high school to draft him.
  

"If [the NBA] wants to take them right out of high school, then take them right out of high school," Osborne said. "But for heaven's sakes, don't let them come to school for one year. One-and-done is not a healthy situation."

• The involvement of shoe companies and AAU coaches with youth basketball also alarms Osborne because of the influence they wield in the recruiting process.
  

"I'm not sure how to regulate that, but there should be some way to introduce some sanity into the process," he said.

• Osborne is also in favor of merit pay for top football officials to help keep them from jumping to the NFL. It's a proposal that has been embraced by league athletic directors and Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe.
  

As the football coach at Nebraska for 25 seasons ending in 1997, Osborne wasn't a proponent of the Big Eight Conference merging with Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech and Baylor to form the Big 12.

 

Now, he is helping to shape and reform its bylaws.

 

"I think there's been some good things with the Big 12," Osborne said. "More viable TV markets with the state of Texas in it. It's a strong league and a powerful league."

 

Osborne worries too many decisions are being based on money and that the athlete has been left behind.

 

"The student-athlete has probably gone backwards over the last 40 years in terms of the value of a scholarship," said Osborne, 71, who won three national titles at Nebraska in the 1990s.

 

"At one time, student-athletes got $15 a month for laundry in the 1960s. Those dollars would now be worth $80 a month. At one time, they had travel sports jackets and movie passes for student-athletes, and those things have been taken away.

 

"So what we've seen are coaches' salaries escalating, facility expansion and renovation escalating, and yet the economic plight of most student-athletes is not as good as it was 30 or 40 years ago. I think those are things we need to take a look at."

 

Osborne was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as a Republican in 2000 and served six years before running unsuccessfully for governor of Nebraska in 2006.

 

"A lot of these ideas may take some time – like Congress," he said. "Sometimes you have to talk about them for a few years before you can enact them."