Where we discuss our fondness - or lack thereof - for former coaches now departed - Again

[AFhusker]

 

 

 

 

No idea. But it seems like you were kind of saying that when you said he changed his philosophy to concentrate on faraway football hotbeds.

I don't think he concentrated on faraway football hotbeds as much as he maintained the inroads Solich had already made in places like New Jersey. To get the defensive speed he wanted, he had to compete with SEC schools in areas out of our traditional comfort zone, and double-down in places like New Jersey and California.

 

So much like Mike Riley, Tom Osborne created a team reliant on position players from outside the 500 mile radius, sometimes referred to dismissively as "coastal talent" although most Nebraska fans welcome them as Huskers.

 

Hard to imagine those '95 Huskers being quite as dominant without:

 

Lawrence Phillips (California)

Riley Washington (California)

Sheldon Jackson (California)

Christian Peter (New Jersey)

Jason Peter (New Jersey)

Kenny Cheatham (Arizona)

Terrell Farley (Georgia)

Tyrone Williams (Florida)

Tommie Frazier (Florida)

Cheatham and Washington were not major players that year. Jackson was the 3rd team TE. Phillips was dominate for 3 of 12 games, but the 4 Omaha backs behind him were pretty good in his absence. And for all his greatness, Frazier was marginally better than the local boy Brook.

This is revisionist history if I have ever heard it. Brook was a great person and what happened to him was sad, but he was nowhere near as good of a QB in Tom's system that Tommie was. We were blessed to have the QB depth that we did at the time because Brook was a very good QB, (what a concept!) but Tommie was clearly the best QB on the team and that is why he was the unquestioned starter in 1995. This was after Book did a wonderful job of holding the fort down while Tommie was out in 1994. IMO Tom's masterful use of both of them in the Orange Bowl is what won the game for us vs Miami with how much different QB's they were.

Revisionist history indeed. Osborne himself said that the QB race literally came down to about 1 or 2 plays during practice that year. They were almost exact equals when they were graded out.

 

Listen to Benning, the team was split on who was the better dude.

 

You do realize that the only reason that Brook even started a game was because of Tommie's blood clot problem...right? Brook did a wonderful job of filling in for Tommie when he was out getting treatment for his blood clots, but once Tommie was cleared to play, he was made the starter and became one of the all time greats starting with that 4th quarter in the 1994 Orange Bowl vs Miami. Having guys like Brook as second stringers is what made that 1995 team to be considered the best team of all time and that is because our second stringers could go and start almost any other program in the country. Brook was a lot of good things, most importantly he was a wonderful human being, but one thing he was not, was a better QB that Tommie Frazier.

[AFhusker]

I agree w a lot of cm postings. I wish we still had a floor to ceiling Pillar of Identity that had its roots in the way TO did things.

 

 

One huge problem besides everything that everyone has pointed out is that it wasn't just TO. Uncle Milt, Monte Kiffin, Solich, Brown, etc etc...

 

Not only does a TO not come around very often, neither does a staff with that type of pedigree stick around for an entire generation or two very often either.

 

CM, you gotta stop doing this because you're chasing not just a Pillar of Identity and 1 mans vision for an entire State of football philosophy, your chasing the ghosts of several coaches that we'd be lucky to have 1 of come back in their prime. Things change and people die. It'll never ever be what it once was the exact same way; even if we could download TO's brain and follow his Pillar forever.

 

It would never ever produce the results he had--we as husker fans should just be grateful that we got the run we had. I mean, look at kstate. They've had Snyder there as their TO for a long stretch. And they never won a Nat'l championship.

 

I hope MR can do the best job he can do and I'll be satisfied with that, should he lose too much, he'll need to move on. As for Callahan and Bo, they became hard to be satisfied with anything they did because of the way they acted.

 

We have a chance to win 11 games this year!! I'm pretty stoked. I don't care where the kids come from. As long as they represent N well and play hard and give it their all, I'm cool w/ whatever offense we run or defense we use. You should enjoy it as well and stop chasing ghosts.

You nailed it where I bolded your comments.

[84HuskerLaw]

Really, people, this is a very interesting thread, for a general topic that has been discussed, argued, debated and literally been fought about by almost anyone with a football interest I would say. There are basic elements of truth and accuracy in virtually every post, even though there is apparent violent disagreement in most.

 

In the big picture, TO tried the more wide open, 'pro style' passing game in the 70s with QBs like Ferragamo and Humm. It worked but after the rumbling and grumbling got a little too close for job security comfort reasons, Osborne saw the dominance by Switzer's incredible wishbone teams as too much to take. He adapted and changed in a big way, going with players like Turner Gill and installing the option and focusing on the best dam running attack he could muster, short of the wishbone. I would speculate he might have gone to the 'bone' but he had come from a passing mindset (he was a WR in the pros for a short time you may recall) and a decade of passing. He saw the biggest glaring weakness of the wishbone was the near complete absence of a real passing game. OU got the best dam big linemen and lightning fast, elusive RBs and a 'wishbone magician' to run their offense. It was, and in my view remains, the most potent offensive attack ever devised in football. To this day, there really haven't been offenses any better, over a long term, consistant basis, that OU's wishbone. Before Switzer, they developed it to the highest level and then Barry 'perfected' it really by adding, in Switzer's own words, 'the very best athletes money could buy"! Other than rewrite the record books for the number of fumbles an offense could commit in a single game and still rush for over 600 yards and roll uip 60 plus points. A great wishbone would likely still be a winning offensive approach today. Of course, the 'experts' would criticize it as out moded, antiquated, ineffective, etc. This would only be the case because the players installed would not be 'the best money could buy' and as a result it would be 'average'.

 

TO might well have thrown the ball more than he did if not for the adverse weather. He preferred to avoid those awful games like we had last year with Purdue with gail force winds and sleet, rain, snow, etc. If we played down in 'Bama, where Bear Bryant also loved that wishbone offense, it would have been different.

 

I think Osborne tried to pick as much of the good of the wishbone approach and blend in some passing to keep the defense a little more honest and be more prepared to match up with some of the fast defenses he would have to face in the bowl games (Miami, Florida, etc). He wanted the ability to pass, if he had to, but was gonna run the ball as much as possible and force the opponent to stop us. Few could really and when the defense loaded the box, he would hit them with a few passes, often most successfully out of option or play action type plays, Osborne liked to throw to bail us out of a 3 and very long (3rd and 7 plus) but rarely converted those 3rd and 18 s because we just didn't throw the ball well enough and those were high risk plays where interceptions and sacks often resulted. I recall the offense Osborne ran often being called the 'Osbone'. Other programs that ran the wishbone and variations of the 'option' attack exceptionally well were Texas and Notre Dame. Many national championships were accomplished with this approach. Without fact checking with a bunch of tedious research, I would venture a guess that wishbone and fundamentally option based offenses, have won as many 'national titles' in the past 50 years (the 'modern era' shall we call it?) than any other type.

 

The most important thing, with any offense really, is to pick one and just run it extremely well. Execution at the highest level. Repetitions and more repetitions. Reload instead of retool. You build a top program over time by installing, recruiting to fit that system like crazy, and then sticking with it until you perfect it. Texas Tech, for example under Leach, installed an all out passing attack that became very lethal. Houston had a wild passing offense that racked up incredible numbers at one time as well by throwing it about 90% of the time. The trouble with the passing oriented attack, unless you play in the deep south or inside a dome, is the weather. Wind, rain, etc just take a beautiful pass and turn it into an interception or dead play. Hand offs and short ptiches can functional pretty well in almost any conditions, although when you get to the level of OU in the Switzer bone, fumbles are almost routine. You overcome this, of course, by scoring early and often. OU rarely punted in the glory days because, unless they fumbled, they scored.

 

The Big Ten plays in bad weather for about half the season some years. Three yards and a cloud of astroturf was the best descrption of the Big Ten's offenses for decades, running primarily out of the power I, 'pro style' offense as they did. Nebraska and Urban Meyer have changed the Big Ten the last 6 years. Why? Because of national perception and recruiting that has resulted from said perception. The Big Ten has all but caught up to the mighty SEC in this regard. I believe the Nebraska 'brand' changed the prevailing winds in favor of the Big Ten and away from the Big 12 which was the SEC rival for the time we were in that conference. Coincedence? Maybe but I think not.

 

I think Nebraska slipped from the elites under Solich's reign because he was NOT recruiting for any number of reasons and because of too much emphasis on the QB carrying the ball (see Eric Crouch and Jamal Loard for evidence). Solich was not the 'closer' that Tom was for many reasons beyond Solich's control. We didn't find the elite athletes. Nebraska's best H.S. players were not as many nor as good and that hurt. Scholarship changes, the cost of education for walk ons, serious competition in recruiting for Nebraska players, etc. all contributed as well. Our walk ons were once 3 star type players and became 'no star' practice guys. But weak competition in practice led to poor game results as well.

 

Bill Callahan was NOT a college level coach, although he is a tremendous football coach and 'mind', especially in offensive lines. I believe he is still coaching there at Dallas Cowboys who have a great line this year. He was a great 'two minute' passing in WCO style coach (as good as ever) but didn't understand the college game at all in terms of program building, etc. He also recruited offense players too heavily as compared to defense. Tom Osborne had a penchant for taking the best athletes and playing them on the offensive side until the 90s when he had plenty to go around and let McBride have some too. Great players playing hard with good schemes = great teams. Bo Pelinis was a pass defender and he recruited accordingly. Touchdowns sell tickets and make fans happy but defense wins championships. Fans want both.

 

Riley,it seems to me, understands it all and is an excellent football mind and can in fact win championships at the college level, if he has enough talent across his team to do so. He needs about 25 more top notch players and several better assistant coaches. Whether he can or will get them is another question. I remaind hopeful but am concerned this year's class is coming down to the wire a half dozen short of the goal. We need to win two more games this year and land a couple surprises and finish out strong. Not sure it can happen as injuries have taken a big toll. Time to shine is today. We shall see. Sorry to all you guys who hate my long, verbose comments but I feel it is best to explain in detail my reasoning as some like to misread or misconstrue things here.

[beorach]

Former coaches now departed? That's redundant, at best, and makes it sound like the discussion is over dead guys at worst...

[HuskerNBigD]

Really, people, this is a very interesting thread, for a general topic that has been discussed, argued, debated and literally been fought about by almost anyone with a football interest I would say. There are basic elements of truth and accuracy in virtually every post, even though there is apparent violent disagreement in most.

 

In the big picture, TO tried the more wide open, 'pro style' passing game in the 70s with QBs like Ferragamo and Humm. It worked but after the rumbling and grumbling got a little too close for job security comfort reasons, Osborne saw the dominance by Switzer's incredible wishbone teams as too much to take. He adapted and changed in a big way, going with players like Turner Gill and installing the option and focusing on the best dam running attack he could muster, short of the wishbone. I would speculate he might have gone to the 'bone' but he had come from a passing mindset (he was a WR in the pros for a short time you may recall) and a decade of passing. He saw the biggest glaring weakness of the wishbone was the near complete absence of a real passing game. OU got the best dam big linemen and lightning fast, elusive RBs and a 'wishbone magician' to run their offense. It was, and in my view remains, the most potent offensive attack ever devised in football. To this day, there really haven't been offenses any better, over a long term, consistant basis, that OU's wishbone. Before Switzer, they developed it to the highest level and then Barry 'perfected' it really by adding, in Switzer's own words, 'the very best athletes money could buy"! Other than rewrite the record books for the number of fumbles an offense could commit in a single game and still rush for over 600 yards and roll uip 60 plus points. A great wishbone would likely still be a winning offensive approach today. Of course, the 'experts' would criticize it as out moded, antiquated, ineffective, etc. This would only be the case because the players installed would not be 'the best money could buy' and as a result it would be 'average'.

 

TO might well have thrown the ball more than he did if not for the adverse weather. He preferred to avoid those awful games like we had last year with Purdue with gail force winds and sleet, rain, snow, etc. If we played down in 'Bama, where Bear Bryant also loved that wishbone offense, it would have been different.

 

I think Osborne tried to pick as much of the good of the wishbone approach and blend in some passing to keep the defense a little more honest and be more prepared to match up with some of the fast defenses he would have to face in the bowl games (Miami, Florida, etc). He wanted the ability to pass, if he had to, but was gonna run the ball as much as possible and force the opponent to stop us. Few could really and when the defense loaded the box, he would hit them with a few passes, often most successfully out of option or play action type plays, Osborne liked to throw to bail us out of a 3 and very long (3rd and 7 plus) but rarely converted those 3rd and 18 s because we just didn't throw the ball well enough and those were high risk plays where interceptions and sacks often resulted. I recall the offense Osborne ran often being called the 'Osbone'. Other programs that ran the wishbone and variations of the 'option' attack exceptionally well were Texas and Notre Dame. Many national championships were accomplished with this approach. Without fact checking with a bunch of tedious research, I would venture a guess that wishbone and fundamentally option based offenses, have won as many 'national titles' in the past 50 years (the 'modern era' shall we call it?) than any other type.

 

The most important thing, with any offense really, is to pick one and just run it extremely well. Execution at the highest level. Repetitions and more repetitions. Reload instead of retool. You build a top program over time by installing, recruiting to fit that system like crazy, and then sticking with it until you perfect it. Texas Tech, for example under Leach, installed an all out passing attack that became very lethal. Houston had a wild passing offense that racked up incredible numbers at one time as well by throwing it about 90% of the time. The trouble with the passing oriented attack, unless you play in the deep south or inside a dome, is the weather. Wind, rain, etc just take a beautiful pass and turn it into an interception or dead play. Hand offs and short ptiches can functional pretty well in almost any conditions, although when you get to the level of OU in the Switzer bone, fumbles are almost routine. You overcome this, of course, by scoring early and often. OU rarely punted in the glory days because, unless they fumbled, they scored.

 

The Big Ten plays in bad weather for about half the season some years. Three yards and a cloud of astroturf was the best descrption of the Big Ten's offenses for decades, running primarily out of the power I, 'pro style' offense as they did. Nebraska and Urban Meyer have changed the Big Ten the last 6 years. Why? Because of national perception and recruiting that has resulted from said perception. The Big Ten has all but caught up to the mighty SEC in this regard. I believe the Nebraska 'brand' changed the prevailing winds in favor of the Big Ten and away from the Big 12 which was the SEC rival for the time we were in that conference. Coincedence? Maybe but I think not.

 

I think Nebraska slipped from the elites under Solich's reign because he was NOT recruiting for any number of reasons and because of too much emphasis on the QB carrying the ball (see Eric Crouch and Jamal Loard for evidence). Solich was not the 'closer' that Tom was for many reasons beyond Solich's control. We didn't find the elite athletes. Nebraska's best H.S. players were not as many nor as good and that hurt. Scholarship changes, the cost of education for walk ons, serious competition in recruiting for Nebraska players, etc. all contributed as well. Our walk ons were once 3 star type players and became 'no star' practice guys. But weak competition in practice led to poor game results as well.

 

Bill Callahan was NOT a college level coach, although he is a tremendous football coach and 'mind', especially in offensive lines. I believe he is still coaching there at Dallas Cowboys who have a great line this year. He was a great 'two minute' passing in WCO style coach (as good as ever) but didn't understand the college game at all in terms of program building, etc. He also recruited offense players too heavily as compared to defense. Tom Osborne had a penchant for taking the best athletes and playing them on the offensive side until the 90s when he had plenty to go around and let McBride have some too. Great players playing hard with good schemes = great teams. Bo Pelinis was a pass defender and he recruited accordingly. Touchdowns sell tickets and make fans happy but defense wins championships. Fans want both.

 

Riley,it seems to me, understands it all and is an excellent football mind and can in fact win championships at the college level, if he has enough talent across his team to do so. He needs about 25 more top notch players and several better assistant coaches. Whether he can or will get them is another question. I remaind hopeful but am concerned this year's class is coming down to the wire a half dozen short of the goal. We need to win two more games this year and land a couple surprises and finish out strong. Not sure it can happen as injuries have taken a big toll. Time to shine is today. We shall see. Sorry to all you guys who hate my long, verbose comments but I feel it is best to explain in detail my reasoning as some like to misread or misconstrue things here.

 

Props to you on the time and effort it had to take in drafting this response.

 

Callahan coaches for the redskins now.

[teachercd]

Yeah, it came down to 1 or 2 plays in practice.

Come on people.

[Elf]

 

 

I finally put CM on ignore. I havent used this ignore thing in a while. simply because when someone else quotes that person you can still see that. But i figure with him being ignored by so many, this wont be as much of an issue. And I like to argue. I cant help it. it's enjoyment for me. but 4 others on my ignore list have all been banned. LOL. Maybe i'm not so stupid afterall.

He really does ruin roughly 1/3 of the threads in here for me personally by bringing up the 90s and Solich. That's why I think he's actually trolling us - I'm serious.

 

I get glimpses occasionally that he might actually believe the stuff he says...but at any rate, maybe the ignore feature is the way to go. I don't mean that to be personal to him if he's NOT a troll, though.

 

 

How many people have to put someone on ignore before they get a vacation from the forum?

 

Alternatively, how many people have to put him on ignore before he gets permanently banned for trolling? When it finally happens, it won't be anything that hasn't happened to him multiple times before at multiple message boards. Some folks never learn.

[flfmrredfan]

 

 

But as long as I'm here: Tom Osborne actually did listen to his critics, and nearly 20 seasons into his head coaching career he changed his recruiting philosophy, focusing more on speed, more on defense and more on faraway high school football hotbeds.

 

Still beating this dead horse? It's hard to take your knowledge of NU football seriously if you think that Osborne suddenly woke up during the '90s and realized that he must start to recruit speed! Guy, let me introduce you to Irving Fryer, and Broderick Thomas to Jane a few. Or, are they not speedy enough for you?

And, it wasn't his critics he listened to, rather, it was his friends, like Bobby Bowden (who in turn learned from Jimmy Johnson at Miami) along with hiring assistants like Kevin Steele, which lead to the defensive changes in the '90s, of putting linebackers at defensive ends, and defensive backs at linebacker positions.

Oh it's much easier to pinpoint than that, flmilmflm. Tom Osborne woke up on January 2, 1991 after getting trounced by Georgia Tech in the Citrus Bowl warning his staff that they might get fired and knowing that his own job was on the line. While Nebraska could still chalk up 6 or 7 wins in the old Big 8, Osborne's strong but predictable offenses were getting shut down by the speedy and talent rich teams like Ga. Tech, Florida, Miami, Florida State and Oklahoma and Colorado in our own conference. The "critics" said Nebraska's offense was too predictable, and they were half-right. You still needed defensive speed on the corners to shut down the power option, and unfortunately for us, the elite teams now boasted that kind of defensive speed. As mentioned, Tom sought advice from the coaches who had bested him. Bowden was a friend. That doesn't mean Osborne didn't listen to the criticism. It's certainly to TO's credit that he was willing to change his philosophy 20 years into his career. That's what good coaches do.

 

Osborne's recruiting changes revolved mostly around the defense, although grabbing a savvier, speedier quarterback from one of those "coastal talent" regions certainly helped, as we remember Florida's Tommie Frazier better than we do Aurora, Nebraska's Tom Haase, the starting QB against Georgia Tech on January 1, 1991.

 

Irving Fryar (not Fryer) and Broderick Thomas certainly were fast.

 

Is that all you can bring to the discussion?

Again, it's hard to take your posts seriously, when you spout unsubstantiated rumors of firings and your continued disparaging of a HOF coach by claiming he and his staff weren't smart enough to figure out that they needed to recruit speed before 1990,despite my pointing out a few examples showing the opposite. To be honest, it's more an indication of your lack of knowledge of Osborne and his staff.

 

Yes, he and his defensive staff made subtle changes, however, not in recruiting as you claim, but in the placement of players as I pointed out. The same changes that Miami, under JJ and his staff made prior, and then Bowden and his staff at FSU followed.

 

Oh, and thanks to coach Steele, along with Kordel Stewart committing to CU, Frazier ended up at NU.

[Elf]

 

 

 

But as long as I'm here: Tom Osborne actually did listen to his critics, and nearly 20 seasons into his head coaching career he changed his recruiting philosophy, focusing more on speed, more on defense and more on faraway high school football hotbeds.

Still beating this dead horse? It's hard to take your knowledge of NU football seriously if you think that Osborne suddenly woke up during the '90s and realized that he must start to recruit speed! Guy, let me introduce you to Irving Fryer, and Broderick Thomas to Jane a few. Or, are they not speedy enough for you?

And, it wasn't his critics he listened to, rather, it was his friends, like Bobby Bowden (who in turn learned from Jimmy Johnson at Miami) along with hiring assistants like Kevin Steele, which lead to the defensive changes in the '90s, of putting linebackers at defensive ends, and defensive backs at linebacker positions.

 

Oh it's much easier to pinpoint than that, flmilmflm. Tom Osborne woke up on January 2, 1991 after getting trounced by Georgia Tech in the Citrus Bowl warning his staff that they might get fired and knowing that his own job was on the line. While Nebraska could still chalk up 6 or 7 wins in the old Big 8, Osborne's strong but predictable offenses were getting shut down by the speedy and talent rich teams like Ga. Tech, Florida, Miami, Florida State and Oklahoma and Colorado in our own conference. The "critics" said Nebraska's offense was too predictable, and they were half-right. You still needed defensive speed on the corners to shut down the power option, and unfortunately for us, the elite teams now boasted that kind of defensive speed. As mentioned, Tom sought advice from the coaches who had bested him. Bowden was a friend. That doesn't mean Osborne didn't listen to the criticism. It's certainly to TO's credit that he was willing to change his philosophy 20 years into his career. That's what good coaches do.

 

Osborne's recruiting changes revolved mostly around the defense, although grabbing a savvier, speedier quarterback from one of those "coastal talent" regions certainly helped, as we remember Florida's Tommie Frazier better than we do Aurora, Nebraska's Tom Haase, the starting QB against Georgia Tech on January 1, 1991.

 

Irving Fryar (not Fryer) and Broderick Thomas certainly were fast.

 

Is that all you can bring to the discussion?

 

Again, it's hard to take your posts seriously, when you spout unsubstantiated rumors of firings and your continued disparaging of a HOF coach by claiming he and his staff weren't smart enough to figure out that they needed to recruit speed before 1990,despite my pointing out a few examples showing the opposite. To be honest, it's more an indication of your lack of knowledge of Osborne and his staff.

 

Yes, he and his defensive staff made subtle changes, however, not in recruiting as you claim, but in the placement of players as I pointed out. The same changes that Miami, under JJ and his staff made prior, and then Bowden and his staff at FSU followed.

 

Oh, and thanks to coach Steele, along with Kordel Stewart committing to CU, Frazier ended up at NU.

 

Osborne himself has said many times that his teams needed more speed across the board. And that is just one of the things he changed, recruiting for speed. He also made changes on the defensive side of the ball in regards to what type of players played at each position. And Bobby Bowden's defensive staff taught McBride and company the nuances of running a 4-3 defense.

 

We probably didn't need Tommy because we had Brook Berringer but it was sure nice to have both.

[cm husker]

Pelini about to register YSU's first playoff win in 10 years. Congratulations to him.

[Stumpy1]

[Mavric]

[cm husker]

Great stuff from Turner. I think his brand of discipline would be a bit untenable at the D1A level, but I hope he gets another shot. Kansas is a shitshow and hardly indicative of his coaching ability.

[junior4949]

 

 

No idea. But it seems like you were kind of saying that when you said he changed his philosophy to concentrate on faraway football hotbeds.

I don't think he concentrated on faraway football hotbeds as much as he maintained the inroads Solich had already made in places like New Jersey. To get the defensive speed he wanted, he had to compete with SEC schools in areas out of our traditional comfort zone, and double-down in places like New Jersey and California.

 

So much like Mike Riley, Tom Osborne created a team reliant on position players from outside the 500 mile radius, sometimes referred to dismissively as "coastal talent" although most Nebraska fans welcome them as Huskers.

 

Hard to imagine those '95 Huskers being quite as dominant without:

 

Lawrence Phillips (California)

Riley Washington (California)

Sheldon Jackson (California)

Christian Peter (New Jersey)

Jason Peter (New Jersey)

Kenny Cheatham (Arizona)

Terrell Farley (Georgia)

Tyrone Williams (Florida)

Tommie Frazier (Florida)

Cheatham and Washington were not major players that year. Jackson was the 3rd team TE. Phillips was dominate for 3 of 12 games, but the 4 Omaha backs behind him were pretty good in his absence. And for all his greatness, Frazier was marginally better than the local boy Brook.

 

 

I knew Berringer long before he ever became a Husker. I have family that went to school with him. Heck, I even grew up within 60 miles of him. He was an exceptional athlete and an exceptional person. However, it takes more than athleticism to be the great football player. While Frazier may not have been any more athletically gifted than Berringer, Frazier possessed those intangibles that got us over the hump. It's those same intangibles that made Frazier a fairly unlikeable guy especially to many of his teammates. While a lot of his teammates didn't particularly like him, they all sure as heck respected him. I credit Frazier as much as anyone as to why our OL played as well as they did. He didn't put up with any lackluster play. For as much as I liked Brook, it is my opinion that we don't win a NC in 94', 95', or 97' had Frazier never been on the team. It has nothing to do so much with what he did in any of those years. Rather, it has a lot more to do with what he did in 92' and 93' especially 93' in the bowl game against Florida State. He himself with his play in that bowl game at the end of the 93' season showed his team and us fans that we did belong.

[cm husker]

Nice win for Pelini.

 

Tough loss for Frank.