Nebraska Fans Fumble for Answers Amid Controversy

This is the time of the year that, for the last 30-some years, has been fun for Nebraska football fans like myself. If Jan. 1 was rolling around, it meant the Huskers were probably headed for a bowl game and, by definition, the chance for us fans to feel the giddiness of a high national ranking. In those years when the game was for the national championship, December found much of the state merrily dysfunctional, able to resume normal operations only after the outcome of the title game was determined.

Disappointments? We’ve had a few, but then again, too many to mention.

Exhilaration? Enough times to know life offers only a few passions to match it.

But win or lose, it’s always been fun. Our family went to the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans after the 1966 season and sat in the rain as Alabama pasted the Huskers, 34-7. Good game? Hardly. Good trip with fond memories? Sure was.

It’s been written a hundred times that the reason Nebraskans are football-nutty is that the team dominates the sports scene there. That is true. What isn’t true is that the fans are crazily fanatic. Husker fans aren’t rabid; in fact, the team has complained from time to time that Memorial Stadium is too laid-back on Saturday afternoons.

What Nebraska fans are, though, is intensely loyal. Part of that, again, is the single-minded focus they train on the Big Red. The other part stems from pride in the school’s status as a perennial winner that has never been on NCAA probation.

This season, the Huskers went after their second straight national title. With the pressure off after winning the championship last year, this should have been the most enjoyable season of them all. A freebie.

But it hasn’t been fun. I’m not even sure the Fiesta Bowl game next Tuesday, when the Huskers go for the title again, can redeem the season.

The reason is the barrage of criticism leveled by the media and others the last two months against coach Tom Osborne for his leniency in allowing players who have had brushes with the law to stay on the team. There are at least three notable examples, but the most prominent has been Osborne’s reinstatement of preseason Heisman Trophy candidate Lawrence Phillips, who recently pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor count of battery against a former girlfriend. A Lincoln, Neb., judge gave Phillips probation.

For what it’s worth, I thought Osborne should have suspended Phillips for the entire season, instead of the six games for which he was benched. The assault was a misdemeanor, but it was violent and did suggest that Phillips has a significant problem that just doesn’t square with someone playing on the state-supported football team.

I think Osborne was wrong, but some of the criticism leveled at him seems equally misguided. I’ve always thought the Phillips issue raised a serious question about what role coaches can and should play in the lives of troubled players--an issue that could have been explored honestly and insightfully. For example, should Osborne’s thesis that he’s trying to redeem Phillips be dismissed out-of-hand as a self-serving rationalization? Why doesn’t Osborne, who just a year ago was touted as the paragon of virtue among coaches, be given the courtesy of his opinion? Yes, even if he’s dead wrong.

Instead, the Phillips reinstatement prompted a lot of simple-minded commentary, including the suggestion that the running back got special treatment because he was a star and that Osborne is only interested in winning football games. If Osborne were only interested in winning football games, would he have benched Philips for six games, including the only two on the schedule that threatened the Huskers’ season--Colorado and Kansas State? A loss in either of those games would have ended the Huskers’ national title chances.

But Phillips is back now, scheduled to start against Florida on Tuesday night, and it’s fair to ask whether he should be.

It’s a question, however, that goes beyond whether Osborne has suddenly corrupted himself for some filthy lucre. Osborne wasn’t one kind of guy last year and another kind this year. Nebraska has been a football factory for 30-plus years, raking in big bucks for the university and the state. It’s fair to debate whether player-personnel decisions are influenced by that revenue stream.

I was just hoping for a more enlightened debate.

I called a Nebraska buddy this week to see if the local mood was as glum as mine. He didn’t think so, noting that “the scramble for tickets is incredible. People are asking $750.” As for the Phillips controversy, my friend said, “There were mixed feelings. Some people think Osborne did totally the wrong thing, that he shouldn’t have let him back on the team and another group, probably the bigger group, that said Osborne knows best, he’s there, he knows the kids.”

With game day approaching, I feel cheated.

It should have been a game with all the best that sports has to offer, but win or lose, this already will go down as the year that Big Red football wasn’t nearly as much fun as it should have been.

Dana Parsons’ columns appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.