Who left the biggest black eye on the Program?

Who left the biggest black eye on the Nebraska football program?

  • Lawrence Phillips

    Votes: 69 38.3%

  • Thunder Collins

    Votes: 7 3.9%

  • Bill Callahan

    Votes: 28 15.6%

  • Steve Pedersen

    Votes: 74 41.1%

  • Other

    Votes: 2 1.1%
  • Total voters
    180
Having to ask about Baldwin answers your question.

LP is mentioned every single time. The others very seldom. Peter should be on the same level, but never got the credit for some reason.

 
No doubt LP. I don't think the Peter brothers did us any good either. Either of them! Thunder wasn't much more than a "former" Husker. It's been some 15 years and LP is still getting brought up.

 
Jesus god who cares? Really. It is what it is. Ughhh, the past is the past, Nebraska is not worse or better than anyone else. I know it is the off season but jeeez can we come up something better than this to discuss?

 
LP was certainly a in scum bag territory but he was a kid/young adult and after he left the program was intact. However when a Millionare Adult is hired and quickly takes the program to the point where top tier coaches wont come to UNL so we settle for Callahn and watch the decline of the entire program. (Still it is a tough call but when the adults trash a program and leave it irritates me. I wonder what kind of mess USC will be left in after the NCAA gets done and the old coach is up in Seattle with the Seahawks but this is for a different thread)

 
I voted for Steve Pederson mainly because of his dismissal of Frank Solich and for his famous words of not letting Nebraska gravitate into mediocrity but yet hiring Bill Callahan who already distroyed an Oakland team take the helm of Nebraska Football. That direction didn't go all to well for Steve and Bill which we all knew that.

Steve Pederson as our AD should've stepped in when things were getting ugly and addressed these issues to Callahan so he could resolve these issues to get better as a team. What really screwed Steve over which other Husker fans would agree as to why any AD would give their Head Football Coach a contract extention for beating Nevada on the first game of the year. First of all it was Nevada and I didn't know that Nevada was a Football team to be feared of and Steve should've waited till the USC game to make a decision on whether or not to give Bill a contract extension if we would've won that game. On Steves first day as Pitts AD he gave Dave Wannstedt a contract extention

The thing with Lawerence Phillips I don't think that he really hurt the Universities image. I understand what Phillips did and that some accused Osborne as a coach that would win at any cost. After the Michigan State game Phillips assaulted his g/f and was suspended from the team. Phillips had to sit out 6 games and 2 of those 6 games were played against top 10 teams one being #8 K-State played in Lincoln and #7 Colorado played at Boulder.

If Osborne was a win at all cost coach, I think that Phillips would've played in those two games since they were both top 10 teams and playing in Boulder against a Colordo team that always plays us hard.

I don't believe that Phillips image hurt the Univeristy, his image hurt himself as a person and now he's paying for it with a 31 year prison sentence. Phillips not only had issues at Nebraska but had issues with the Rams, Miami, AFL Florida team, and in the CFL with Montreal and Calgary. Basically every team that Phillips went to he had a problem with the rules and/or the coach and Osborne encouraged Phillips to enter the draft early which Phillips did.

Phillips is just a down right thug who doesn't care about any rules or anybody but himself. Same thing could be said for Blunt with Oregon earlier this year for punching an opposing player and going after fans while heading to the locker room. He was suspended for most of the season but came back to play against UCLA I believe. Will people say that bringing Blunt back instead of missing all of the season will damage Oregons image as a University.

 
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It has to be Pedey. He is responsible for the firing of Solich, hiring of BC and the rest of the staff. He is responsible for completely ruining everything that was built up by Devaney, TO, etc. I think the biggest piece is that he is a Nebraska person and he still screwed everything up.

LP is a close second, but Pedey still takes the top spot for me.

 
knapplc said:
These are some tough choices, Moon. I can see arguments for either side, but the fact that Phillips beat up that girl clinches it for me. I got no truck with woman-beaters.
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Agreed. I can see an argument for why each of these are a huge black eye on the program.

Great sig by the way. That is my all time favorite Husker radio highlight. Kent Pevelka's description of Frazier's 75 yard TD run is second.

 
billdozer15 said:
Its funny to see we are split on who was worse. A man that cost us alot of losses, or a man who raped and pillaged as he pleased and who recently tried to run over some high school kids after losing a pick-up game of football.
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Don't recall a rape.

T_O_B

 
T_O_Bull said:
billdozer15 said:
Its funny to see we are split on who was worse. A man that cost us alot of losses, or a man who raped and pillaged as he pleased and who recently tried to run over some high school kids after losing a pick-up game of football.
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Don't recall a rape.

T_O_B
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Let's not quibble over the difference between physically assaulting a woman way and rape. One or the other doesn't much matter besides arguing semantics. Both are horrible crimes.

 
This has been a good thread and a great debate. IMHO or IMNSHO LP would have vanished into the past long ago if ESPN hadn't continually referred to him as "former University of Nebraska I-Back, Laurence Phillips," every time he got into trouble. He was a major contributor to 1994 National Championship. (For those who don't remember that was the year that Tommie was injured in the third game of the year and didn't play again until the Orange Bowl.) The next year LP was basically on his way to the Heisman (He had just run for 250 yards against Michigan State, at Michigan State.) when the incident with his girlfriend happened. He was then suspended for the next 6 games and returned late in the season. His suspension obviously cost him a great deal when you consider what he had to look forward to. His Fiesta Bowl performance was second only to the game played by Tommie Frazier. The rest of his problems came after he left Nebraska at the end of his junior year. As stated before ESPN continued to refer to him as a former Husker whenever he made the news. He was never referred to as "St. Louis Rams running back" nor was he ever connected to any of the other NFL teams he subsequently played for. I firmly believe that ESPN had an axe to grind with UNL and Coach Osborne and consequently took a shot at the University and T.O. by continually linking LP and his problems to them. There were, ofcourse, problems at other schools (FSU for one but Bobby Bowden was always a good interview.) Michael Vick is referred to as a former Atlanta Falcon, Plaxico Burress is a former NY Giant, Gilbert Arenas is a Washington Wizard. Anybody know who they played for as collegians? LP has been continually crusified by the sports media and he is always connected to the University of Nebraska. Thunder Collins committed a much more henious crime but outside of the Husker Nation who really remembers him? It's time for Husker Nation and the rest of the world to realize that this young man has paid an enormous price for his actions, is even now serving time in prison for some of those actions and will probably continue to pay for the rest of his life.

T_O_B

 
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