Barfknecht: Texas kicked sand in NU's face from the startBy Lee Barfknecht
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER
It didn't take long for Nebraska to learn how things would work in the Big 12 Conference with Texas as a “partner.''
Step back to mid-December 1995.
The Big 12 was less than two years into existence, and still seven months from competition. The final wording for some of the league's major bylaws was up for a vote.
That's when Texas threw a hissy-fit and threatened to quit.
It's true. The Longhorns said they would withdraw if their ideas on initial-eligibility standards for incoming freshmen didn't become policy. (Interestingly, the person assigned to draft those proposals was then-UT President Robert Berdahl.)
Texas didn't want Big 12 schools to recruit athletes who didn't meet minimum standards in regard to certain core high school courses and scores on college entrance exams.
Nebraska and most of the schools from the old Big Eight had accepted such non-qualifiers. The four schools from the old Southwest Conference didn't, but had lower standards for junior college transfers than the Big Eight, and had more access to such athletes through the extensive Texas junior college system.
Tom Osborne, NU's football coach at the time, said he found it offensive to “tell a young man that you can't even pay your own way and prove you can make the grade.''
Bill Byrne, Nebraska's athletic director at the time, had extensive research that indicated it would be in the best interest of most Big 12 schools to continue doing business on this issue the way the Big Eight had.
Still, the CEOs voted 11-1 to deny eligibility to nonqualifiers. It didn't help the Huskers' cause that, at the time, they were in a five-year stretch of going 60-3 on the football field.
I called Joan Leitzel, Nebraska's interim chancellor at the time, to ask if NU would withdraw from the Big 12 over the vote as Texas had threatened.
“We won't play it that way,'' she said forcefully.
That episode defines why Nebraska, a state sometimes hampered by its own inferiority complex, and Texas, the bragger of all braggarts, never really got along.
It's one thing to be the 800-pound gorilla, as Texas is in the Big 12. Nebraska understood that.
The part the Huskers couldn't take was Texas' willingness to regularly rub that power in people's faces. So much for teamwork after the Big 12 “saved'' Longhorn athletics.
Who says the Big 12 saved Texas? UT Athletic Director DeLoss Dodds.
“I can't tell you how big that was for us,'' Dodds told me in a 2006 interview. “We couldn't recruit Texas kids anymore. Most of them were going to Miami or UCLA or Notre Dame or Florida State.
“When the Big 12 was put together, that was a stage they wanted to play on. So they stayed close to home.''
I'm not faulting Texas for trying to exploit every advantage it has. This is big-boy athletics, not Division III.
In turn, no one should fault Nebraska for leaping at the chance to join the Big Ten, known as a “check your ego at the door'' league.
“There won't be any bullies in (Big Ten) meeting rooms,'' Wisconsin Athletic Director Barry Alvarez said.
In saying goodbye to this shotgun marriage, we'll recall that the NU vs. UT competition on the field has had its moments.
In 1996, the 21-point underdog Longhorns upset No. 3 Nebraska in the Big 12 title game.
In 1999, Texas won 24-20 in the regular season, with quarterback Major Applewhite noting about Nebraska's defense: “It's not calculus.'' For the rematch in the Big 12 title game, Husker defensive coordinator Charlie McBride calculated well enough to hold Texas to zero offensive points in a 22-6 thrashing.
And, of course, there was last season's Big 12 title game, with conspiracy theorists still claiming there was funny business involved in putting 0:01 back on the clock.
But the board room wrangling and spring meeting drama over the years sometimes overshadowed the games.
Byrne often emerged from meetings looking like he had gone 15 rounds with those on Texas' side. When ex-Nebraska A.D. Steve Pederson arrived, he talked up his friendship with Dodds and followed Dodds around like a puppy — a creepy sight for Husker fans.
Now Osborne is back, and these two power programs with far different world views are parting ways. Agreeing to disagree can be a good thing.
