Shatel: NU-OU didn't have to go away

[Nexus]

My response to the bolded paragraph below.

 

Mr. Duncan, OU had been playing both NU and UT uninterrupted every year since 1929. But it's okay to suddenly drop the annual NU game because you didn't feel like OU should play both NU and UT every year? WTF changed? Sorry, but that's a poor excuse, sir. Not to mention, absolute poor judgment on your part. You did a huge disservice to college sports rivalries.

 

Say what you want about Notre Dame, but at least they're willing to hold onto a handful of their rivalry games every year (USC, Navy, Michigan, Michigan State, Purdue) without breaking continuity. I respect them for that.

 

 

Man, woman and child, this has been a fun week to sit in the film room of our memories. Oklahoma vs. Nebraska, in black, white and living color. The only way for the Huskers to bid adieu to the Big 12, right?

 

It's very fitting, in more ways than one.

 

Some Nebraska fans will be carrying extra baggage down to Arlington, Texas, this week. All that angst toward Texas. Dan Beebe. The Big 12, in general.

 

But what about the school in crimson on the opposing sideline?

 

This week is a sentimental journey for a generation 35 and older. Those Nebraskans miss playing Oklahoma. They miss their best friend. They blame the Big 12, and even Texas, for ending the series that was like family. But that anger has been misdirected.

 

The fact is, it was Oklahoma that ended the series. Oklahoma that walked away from dear old friend Nebraska.

 

It says here that if Oklahoma and Nebraska had continued their series on an annual basis, NU would not be leaving for the Big Ten.

 

Go back to 1995. Conference realignment was on the fast track. The Big Eight and Southwest Conference weren't likely to secure large TV contracts in their existing state. So Oklahoma Athletic Director Donnie Duncan and Texas Athletic Director DeLoss Dodds got together and assembled the Big 12 — the Big Eight plus four SWC schools.

 

Where was NU Athletic Director Bill Byrne in this scenario? That may have been the first sign of things to come.

 

As divisions and schedule rotations were set up, Duncan made a decision that would change history. With OU and NU in separate divisions, he decided that Oklahoma would no longer play the Huskers annually.

 

Duncan told this story last May while he attended the historic Big 12 meetings on Kansas City's Plaza. I asked him why he chose to end a meaningful rivalry like NU and OU. His reply: "Oklahoma already had a rival in Texas. There was no need to play both Nebraska and Texas every year.''

 

I don't think Duncan acted alone here. You don't end something like Nebraska-Oklahoma without permission from the president, regents, governor and the fans. As I recall, there was little uproar in Oklahoma about this. Most of the noise was coming from north of the Kansas border.

 

How could OU do this? The Sooners already had blood rivals in Oklahoma State and Texas, which would be annual games. And, as Duncan said, why should OU have to play Texas and Nebraska every year when nobody else in the Big 12 South would have to do that?

 

It's a lame excuse. Play Texas and NU in the same year? In the Southeastern Conference, they call that October. Look at NU's inaugural road through the Big Ten next year: Ohio State, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Penn State and Michigan State.

 

Go back to 1995 again. Nebraska had Tommie Frazier. OU had Howard Schnellenberger. Maybe that was part of the incentive. Texas wasn't a threat then. Neither was Oklahoma State. Did Duncan dump Nebraska while the getting was good?

 

The bottom line is, Oklahoma pulled the plug because it never cared as much about this "rivalry'' as Nebraska. And, in hindsight, now we know: NU-OU was more of a classic series than a rivalry. True rivalries aren't allowed to end, no matter the conference structure. See Ohio State-Michigan.

 

What if OU had kept Nebraska as an annual game? History would be different. That move immediately soured Nebraska fans on the idea of the Big 12. The Sooners essentially chose Texas over Nebraska as their running buddy. Things went downhill from there.

 

Yes, there would be other reasons for NU to feel uncomfortable in the Big 12. But with OU-NU still intact, Nebraska would have been able to stomach Big 12 heartburn. There would have been something meaningful for NU to hold on to.

 

I don't think that Nebraska, especially with Tom Osborne at the helm, could have walked away from the Big 12 if it meant turning its back on the Oklahoma game. Without it, there was nothing historical or emotional to tie NU to the league.

 

"That's interesting,'' said OU Athletic Director Joe Castiglione on Wednesday. "I've never thought about that.''

 

It has crossed the mind of Osborne, Nebraska's athletic director. I asked Osborne, via e-mail on Tuesday, if Nebraska would have had a hard time leaving if the Sooners were still an annual staple on the schedule. And I asked if dropping the game got NU off on the wrong foot with the league.

 

"I would say that had Nebraska and Oklahoma played each other every year, it would have made it more difficult to leave the Big 12 Conference,'' Osborne wrote in a reply. "One thing the Big Ten made sure of in its realignment was to preserve the traditional rivalries, and I think those games tend to bind a conference together.

 

"I don't know that we had a sour mood going into the Big 12 because of the loss of the annual game with Oklahoma, but it did put a different complexion on things.''

 

Too bad Joe C. wasn't in charge of the Sooners when the Big 12 was formed. History might be different.

 

Castiglione, a Maryland graduate and the A.D. at Missouri before he went to Oklahoma in 1998, is a big fan of the Oklahoma-Nebraska game. A generation of married couples fell in love to Frank Sinatra songs. A generation of fans fell in love with college football because of Oklahoma vs. Nebraska, Osborne vs. Barry Switzer, Thanksgiving weekend.

 

Castiglione was among them. Two years ago, he came up with the idea to invite the 1971 "Game of the Century'' participants — from both schools — to a reception and dinner at OU before the 2008 Nebraska-Oklahoma game. It was classy. It was so well done Osborne returned the favor last year in Lincoln.

 

Last summer, just after Nebraska announced it was going to the Big Ten, Castiglione called up Osborne to propose a two-game nonconference series beginning in 2021 — the 50th anniversary of the Game of the Century. Castiglione also tried in past years with Byrne and Steve Pederson to make Nebraska-OU a nonconference game. But both schools had trouble fitting the game into already busy schedules.

 

If Castiglione had been A.D. in 1995, NU-OU could have been scheduled as a nonconference game the two years that it wasn't on the Big 12 schedule. But Castiglione wouldn't go there.

 

"It's hard to say what would have happened,'' he said. "I clearly understand the thought process at the time for Oklahoma. You would create a disproportionate schedule for one school against the others (in Big 12 South).

 

"I do think that series meant a lot to Oklahoma. But Oklahoma has a different set of challenges to deal with to make it all work.''

 

If it had gone on, the series wouldn't have necessarily created classics. Osborne vs. John Blake was a mismatch. So was Bob Stoops vs. Bill Callahan. The 2000 and 2001 games offered a glimpse into the past. Now, with Stoops and Bo Pelini in charge, OU and NU would be more like family than ever. It would be harder than ever to break them up.

 

But we'll never know. We'll just have one long, last look at our childhoods this Saturday.

 

"A lot of people are saying how this is a fitting way to end it,'' Castiglione said. "I have some emotions about it, but we all have to move on. There's a level of disappointment in this. There are a lot of people who didn't think it had to end like this.''

 

But it will end, and how ironic that Nebraska's dear old friend Oklahoma may have been the one to pull the plug.

 

LINK

[mmmtodd]

wow. that article had as much up and down emotions for me as playing/not playing the sooners has. very well written. very well.

[huskernumerouno]

Agree with that Nexus

[Nebula]

I'm glad somebody wrote this article. There has been kind of an overflowing sense of love and appreciation for the Sooners around lately, and it is one that I honestly don't really share. I respect the Sooners. But I have always resented the fact that they willingly abandoned us. They didn't even fight to keep us as rivals. I just turned 31 so I missed the real NU-OU rivalry in action. By the time I was really getting into football, OU was starting to get pretty awful...and then the Big 12 happened. For people like me, Missouri has always been more of a real rival than OU. And all the while, everyone has this bitterness towards Texas as if they are the great, lone Satan. OU was almost as complicit as Texas in constructing this league in such a lopsided manner. I hold a special disdain for Texas, but honestly, OU isn't that far off for me. The bottom line is, they could have insisted on keeping our historic annual matchup as a condition of agreeing to the creation of the Big 12. They didn't. They must not have felt our rivalry was as historic as we found it to be. Just as we have suffered due to the southern centric policies of the Big 12, so has OU benefitted. All things considered, I'll be just as happy and willing to turn my back on the Sooners as they were to us. Enjoy your one-relevant-game-a-year conference land stealers! You're the Big East now.

[Nexus]

FWIW, my response should be viewed from an anachronistic perspective. In other words, this would've been my response in 1995 when it was all going down.

 

Truth be told, my zeal for NU/OU ended a couple years after the Big 12 began once I realized it would no longer be a yearly game. I'm actually quite happy that we're headed to the Big Ten and not just for the athletics, but for academics too. In the end, it made too much sense not to jump ship when the opportunity presented itself. I look forward to forging new relationships and rivalries in the Big Ten for years to come.

[dave]

I was going to post about Big 12 screwing Nebraska's schedule strength, etc, but let's look quickly at the

1996 Congrove Computer Rankings for the to-be

 

North:

3 - Nebraska

7 - Colorado

18 - Kansas State

60 - Missouri

70 - Kansas

98 - Iowa State

 

South:

25 - Texas

33 - Texas Tech

43 - Texas A&M

63 - Oklahoma State

72 - Baylor

85 - Oklahoma

 

*** NO WONDER HE WANTED TO CONTINUE HIS RIVALRY WITH TEXAS AND OKLAHOMA STATE!!!! ***

 

1996 - Huskers won 73-21 in Norman

1995 - Huskers won 37-0 in Lincoln

1994 - Huskers won 13-3 in Norman

1993 - Huskers won 21-7 in Lincoln

1992 - Huskers won 33-9 in Norman

1991 - Huskers won 19-14 in Lincoln

1990 - Huskers lost 10-45 in Norman (9-3 that year, losing to Colorado, Oklahoma and then 21-45 to Georgia Tech in the Citrus Bowl)

[gratefullred]

First of all I am not as much of a fan with the move to the Big 10 as it seems my fellow Husker fans are. I see it more as a move that had to happen because of the reasons that Shatel mentions. I will get used to the Big 10, it will take me a few years, and it will take a few years to know how successfull this move is for NU.

 

Secondly, call me sentimental but the NU OU game could be one of the top 5 games played every year. Every series has a down period, but Stoops Pelini would be a classic matchup. The loss of this game on a yearly basis is bad of NU, its bad for OU, its bad for college football. I understand that OU NU was gone when the Big 8 was gone, and that is how it played out. I dont want to blame anyone for it happening, it's just sad.

[knapplc]

The bottom line about all this is, Oklahoma felt only slightly more love for the OU/NU series than Nebraska and fans feel for the NU/MU series. Nebraska/Oklahoma had conference dominance on the line nearly every year which created drama regardless, but typically, so does Nebraska/Missouri (Big XII North dominance), and nary a Husker Fan is shedding a tear for the impending end of this series. Across the border in Missouri, they're far more broken up about it.

 

Same goes for Kansas Fan. Same goes for Kansas State Fan. And ISU Fan. The annual series between our team and theirs always meant more to them than us, just like our annual series with Oklahoma meant more to us than to the Sooners.

 

As we end these series with Missouri, Kansas, Iowa State and Kansas State with little overt concern, it becomes easier to understand how Oklahoma and their fans felt about ending the OU/NU series.

[RazzinGTO]

The bottom line about all this is, Oklahoma felt only slightly more love for the OU/NU series than Nebraska and fans feel for the NU/MU series. Nebraska/Oklahoma had conference dominance on the line nearly every year which created drama regardless, but typically, so does Nebraska/Missouri (Big XII North dominance), and nary a Husker Fan is shedding a tear for the impending end of this series. Across the border in Missouri, they're far more broken up about it.

 

Same goes for Kansas Fan. Same goes for Kansas State Fan. And ISU Fan. The annual series between our team and theirs always meant more to them than us, just like our annual series with Oklahoma meant more to us than to the Sooners.

 

As we end these series with Missouri, Kansas, Iowa State and Kansas State with little overt concern, it becomes easier to understand how Oklahoma and their fans felt about ending the OU/NU series.

 

 

OU has never seen this rivalry as we have. Never....it means more to us then them by far. Hence why it was so easy for them to agree and drop us off their schedule.

[papersun87]

*** NO WONDER HE WANTED TO CONTINUE HIS RIVALRY WITH TEXAS AND OKLAHOMA STATE!!!! ***

 

1996 - Huskers won 73-21 in Norman

1995 - Huskers won 37-0 in Lincoln

1994 - Huskers won 13-3 in Norman

1993 - Huskers won 21-7 in Lincoln

1992 - Huskers won 33-9 in Norman

1991 - Huskers won 19-14 in Lincoln

1990 - Huskers lost 10-45 in Norman (9-3 that year, losing to Colorado, Oklahoma and then 21-45 to Georgia Tech in the Citrus Bowl)

I was going to post this. No wonder they wanted to be shot of us.

[Nexus]

The bottom line about all this is, Oklahoma felt only slightly more love for the OU/NU series than Nebraska and fans feel for the NU/MU series. Nebraska/Oklahoma had conference dominance on the line nearly every year which created drama regardless, but typically, so does Nebraska/Missouri (Big XII North dominance), and nary a Husker Fan is shedding a tear for the impending end of this series. Across the border in Missouri, they're far more broken up about it.

 

Same goes for Kansas Fan. Same goes for Kansas State Fan. And ISU Fan. The annual series between our team and theirs always meant more to them than us, just like our annual series with Oklahoma meant more to us than to the Sooners.

 

As we end these series with Missouri, Kansas, Iowa State and Kansas State with little overt concern, it becomes easier to understand how Oklahoma and their fans felt about ending the OU/NU series.

 

There is some truth to what you're suggesting but I'd take it one step further and say that had Barry Switzer still been at OU through the Big 12 negotiation phase, this series would've stayed put. I think the older generation Oklahoma fans, like NU fans will agree that it was an important rivalry for the obvious reasons. However, once the Switzer era folded, it became a one-sided rivalry in NU's favor. Hence Dave's post above putting it into perspective.

 

But ABC and Keith Jackson would've begged to differ that OU fans didn't feel that rivalry as much as NU fans did all those years. That line of thinking became a new phenomenon once the Switzer era ended and OU fell into mediocrity for a decade.

[Nomaha]

I was born in 1986 so I didn't really start watching the Huskers conscientiously until well into the 90s. I realize that there is a lot of history with the NU-OU game, but I don't understand the fascination sometimes. From what I can tell, most OU fans, particularly those my age or younger, really have no interest in NU outside of what a school in the opposite division of a conference normally would. I don't have any passionate dislike for OU like I do Notre Dame or USC, but when I think of OU now in the context of the NU series, the most prominent things that come to mind are: (1) the cheating in the 80s onward I keep hearing about now (not even from NU sources now, see ESPN 30 for 30: Marcus Dupree or http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=728274) (2) the fact that OU turned South in a big way during the Big 12 alignment, which is understandable and turned out to be a great move for them, maybe until now since NU gets to return the favor by looking East.

 

I guess I don't understand why NU fans like the OU game so much. Is it really just all nostalgia from the 70s and 80s? 2001? Heck, I "like" them less after writing this post. I think some games in the Big 10, especially Iowa and Penn State, have the potential to be a lot of fun if fans get things started on the right foot. Not the same as this series was, but maybe these games will become real rivalries.

 

I have to agree with Tom Shatel when he says, "NU-OU was more of a classic series than a rivalry" (http://www.omaha.com/article/20101201/SPORTS/712019820)

 

What say you?

[Nexus]

I was born in 1986 so I didn't really start watching the Huskers conscientiously until well into the 90s. I realize that there is a lot of history with the NU-OU game, but I don't understand the fascination sometimes. From what I can tell, most OU fans, particularly those my age or younger, really have no interest in NU outside of what a school in the opposite division of a conference normally would. I don't have any passionate dislike for OU like I do Notre Dame or USC, but when I think of OU now in the context of the NU series, the most prominent things that come to mind are: (1) the cheating in the 80s onward I keep hearing about now (not even from NU sources now, see ESPN 30 for 30: Marcus Dupree or http://www.skyscrape...ad.php?t=728274) (2) the fact that OU turned South in a big way during the Big 12 alignment, which is understandable and turned out to be a great move for them, maybe until now since NU gets to return the favor by looking East.

 

I guess I don't understand why NU fans like the OU game so much. Is it really just all nostalgia from the 70s and 80s? 2001? Heck, I "like" them less after writing this post. I think some games in the Big 10, especially Iowa and Penn State, have the potential to be a lot of fun if fans get things started on the right foot. Not the same as this series was, but maybe these games will become real rivalries.

 

I have to agree with Tom Shatel when he says, "NU-OU was more of a classic series than a rivalry" (http://www.omaha.com...PORTS/712019820)

 

What say you?

 

It's just one of those things where "you had to be there" to experience it. Your best bet would be to research the history between the two teams during the Big 8 era and what was at stake all those years to fully appreciate what that game meant. It's understandable why you have no attachment to it.

[husker_99]

Don't worry we will have better rivals in the Big Ten than ever did with the old Big 8 teams.

[VA Husker Fan]

Not just "usually", but for nearly every single year of the last 30+ years of the Big 8, it was for the Big 8 championship, and in some years kept the national championship alive for the winning team. And Osborne vs. Switzer was Good vs. Evil, though of course they actually got along pretty well.