Since then the big question regarding Nebraska football has been “what are reasonable expectations for this program?”
I’m not sure there’s ever been a more impressive run by any other college program, if you want to quibble I’m happy to debate it in the comments and open to other suggestions.
Anyways, Nebraska was absurdly excellent but they didn’t arrive there by today’s standards of how greatness is expected to be achieved. In particular they were not the recruiting behemoth that, say Nick Saban’s Alabama has been.
Championship caliber recruiting
My colleague Bud Elliott of SB Nation has a regular feature in his recruiting coverage in which he reveals which teams are recruiting at a “championship level.” It’s all based on a concept called “blue-chip ratio” that makes a certain amount of obvious sense. Even someone who is considerably more skeptical of recruiting rankings, like myself, will acknowledge that the rankings do reflect a general consensus on who the known talents are in a given year.
Snagging a large number of obvious athletes with NFL measurables isn’t a terrible way to build out your roster. “Blue-chip ratio” says that a roster needs to have a higher number of 4 and 5-star players than 2 and 3-star players in order to win a championship. As Elliott notes, that pretty much reduces the number of potential champions to about 10 or less in a given year and they’re all going to be traditional blue blood programs.
Nebraska is still sometimes considered a blue blood program but that perspective is dying in a real hurry. I detailed some of the reasons for that when examining what makes Wisconsin so effective (it’s not blue-chip ratio) but the gist of it is that Nebraska doesn’t have the demographics to comprise a realistic recruiting base to build blue-chip championship rosters from.
Now Elliott’s “blue-chip ratio” theory is already on pretty shaky ground. There have been a few different teams included in the playoffs that didn’t meet that criteria, such as 2015 Michigan State who ended up getting blown out by Alabama, the winning Clemson team only just barely cleared the bar, or 2017 Oklahoma who were a touch below. It almost went down in flames last year due to OU’s lack of bluechip recruits on their roster but was bailed out when Georgia squeaked by the Sooners in overtime.
Now the reason that OU was competitive had a lot to do with an OL stocked with 3-stars and a walk-on (Erik Wren), 3-star FB Dmitri Flowers, and 3-star QB Baker Mayfield. The reason they failed was their defense, which enjoyed a better percentage of blue-chip players but wasn’t any good at all. That alone suggests that blue-chip ratio is not an immutable law, but more of a guideline on how to bet, but I suggest that the issue was already settled in the 90s by Osborne’s Nebraska Cornhuskers.
The 1995 Nebraska Cornhuskers
Looking back at the 90s it’s generally the 95 team that’s considered to be the greatest Nebraska team and perhaps the greatest college team of all time. They were never really tested all year but blasted everyone on the schedule and defeated three top 10 ranked Big 8 schools by scores of 49-25 (K-State), 44-21 (at Colorado), and 41-3 (at Kansas). They also shut out a bad Oklahoma team and went on to face Ol ball coach Steve Spurrier and Danny Wuerffel in the Fiesta Bowl where they beat the no. 2 ranked Florida Gators by a score of 62-24.
Here was an early run from that game that illustrates what that team was all about:
The Osborne I-formation option offense was actually very similar to the style of Wing-T that the Permian Panthers played in and I broke down while talking about “Friday Night Lights.” There’s a lot of stretch blocking and aiming to flank the defense on the perimeter. That’s followed up with various constraints to allow the offense to prevent defenders from beating them to the edge such as the FB dive on option, counters, or trap plays.
I noted that the 1988 season saw Permian’s Wing-T evolve from featuring both the fullback and the tailback as runners to focusing on the fullback in the run game and then passes to the split end as the second big component of the offense. This made better use of the QBs Permian had, who could throw pretty well, and the skill athletes at split end.
Well Nebraska’s second feature after the I-back was the QB in the option. In 1995 Lawrence Phillips and Ahman Green split time at I-back due to some troubles Phillips had. Green had 141 carries for 1086 yards and 14 TDs at 7.7 ypc. Phillips got 71 carries for 547 yards and 9 TDs at 7.7 ypc, then QB Tommie Frazier had another 604 rushing yards and 14 TDs at 6.2 ypc with 1362 passing yards. The Cornhuskers COULD throw the ball some, but there was little need when the run game was picking up a first down every other run on handoffs to their RBs.
If you watch the clip above carefully you’ll see that the offense executes multiple reach blocks, the WRs block well, they cut on the backside, and the fullback nearly lifts a LB off his feet when he meets him in the crease. They were just beating the Gators to spots and then whipping them whenever the Gators finally arrived, which was typically with poor leverage and positioning.
This system didn’t require a pro-style TE that could run option routes, nor did it ask a ton in the passing game of the WRs save to try and run past conflicted safeties at times on play-action. The OL needn’t have the length and feet for pass protection (note the 6-2 LT), just the quickness, meanness, and necessary power to reach and drive defenders. Even the QB and RBs, while they needed to be superior athletes, could be recruited from a national pool due to the ‘Huskers brand and reputation for setting up their runners to look very good.
On defense things were different. Osborne’s genius extended to offense and he had to update his “blackshirts” tactics and methods when his teams were regularly foiled by their inability to stop pro-style passing attacks from schools like Miami. Their defensive strategy essentially became to play the same style of 4-3 defense as everyone else with great athletes at outside linebacker and safety that would have to be recruited. No doubt their defenses were greatly aided by the fact that the offenses controlled the ball, ran clock, and scored lots of touchdowns.
The great battleground of Nebraska’s 90’s recruiting
Explaining the reasons for Nebraska’s brilliance from 93-97 is a very common undertaking for the average college football message board. There’s a lot of theories, info, and misinformation out there about what exactly made the Huskers so great.
First there’s the walk-on program, which was rumored to be set up so that all the good in-state players didn’t have to be put on scholarship. A glance at the 95 depth chart reveals this wasn’t really the case. They had plenty of starters from in-state but they were mostly on scholarship and there can’t have been that many great athletes other top programs would have been poaching if not for Nebraska’s walk-on program. Walk-ons were a focus and their inclusion surely helped, but it would have been marginal and it certainly wouldn’t have allowed them to achieve a championship “blue-chip ratio.” Those walk-ons weren’t missing out on scholarships that then went to blue-chippers from distant lands.
Next there’s the strength and conditioning program, which cranked out a ton of really strong players and is generally regarded as having been ahead of it’s time. Reading between the lines or from rumors here and there it sounds like Nebraska was out in front of a lot of schools in terms of utilizing PEDs to boost the abilities of their recruits. It’s really hard to know how much impact this had, how widespread that sort of thing is anywhere (I assume it’s widespread to some degree even at the HS level these days), and how much Nebraska benefitted from PEDs (if they even used them systematically in the first place). It’s not the kind of thing that people typically explore or quantify and if they did it would be covered from the perspective of a scandal, not researched in the interest of acquiring information. Probably Nebraska used PEDs and used them well, how much of an advantage that brought them is hard to say.
Finally there’s Tom Osborne’s recruiting, which some say was nothing exceptional and others say absolutely was regularly yielding top 10 classes. I found this helpful article which sums up that entire topic quite well with feedback from Osborne himself.
Some evaluators of the time had Nebraska consistently recruiting at a top 10-25 type level with occasional top 10 classes such as in 95 and 96. Other evaluators, or Max Emfinger in particular, had his classes ranking in the top 10 more often. If we take a consensus of the different rankings we have a Nebraska that probably is borderline at best in terms of their roster or two-deep meeting the “blue-chip ratio.” Osborne himself seems to feel that while they did compete nationally they relied heavily on local kids or undervalued players.
The main element to their roster that makes these teams meeting that blue-chip ratio exceptionally dubious is the heavy emphasis they put on Nebraska players. We have 17 years now of good, 247 state rankings of players dating back to the 2002 classes. I looked at the state of Nebraska rankings for all of those years and added up how many blue-chippers were coming out. I predictably found that this state of less than two million people that’s smaller than 34 different metroplexes across the US doesn’t produce a ton of blue chip recruits.
Over 17 years the state has produced ZERO five-star players, 14 4-star players, and 79 3-star players. That’s an average of .82 4-star players and 4.65 3-star players PER YEAR. In other words, it’d be impossible to build out a class ranked anywhere near the top 25 while relying on Nebraska kids and a roster with a large percentage of Nebraskans could never touch the blue-chip ratio.
Perhaps Nebraska players were better back then…but that seems pretty dubious considering the consistent population issues. Even if stocky blockers of the sort you find in Nebraska towns were more valuable then than now, the state couldn’t have produced too many more great ones than elsewhere in the union. If you take a glance at the roster you can see that there were tons of Nebraskans on it, too many for the ratio to work out. The starting lineup on offense included eight Nebraskan starters, two of which were walk-ons. On defense they relied on a much more national recruiting strategy but still started two Nebraskans and a walk-on from Indiana.
I jotted down their 1995 starting lineup myself and took note of who was on the team and where they came from and then I took some stabs at guessing what their recruiting ranking might have been:
There are some places where I was probably not generous enough and others where I was too generous, it’s very difficult to make these guesses decades later. The most difficult places regard how short OL would have been evaluated back then before the passing game was quite as prevalent as it is today. That said, the blocking positions is where Osborne leaned most heavily on Nebraskans so even if 6-2 tackles were more valuable back then you’re still talking about him picking from a tiny pool out of a populous nation.
With these guesstimates the starting lineup for Nebraska’s greatest team would have averaged at 2.8 stars on offense and 3.2 stars on defense. Some will surely scoff, perhaps I have Wistrom rated too low or made some other error or another in the eyes of people who followed these kinds of things back in 1992. Still, it’s hard to see this team having been comprised of blue-chip players when you look at who was involved and where they came from.
In fact, what stands out as a much more plausible explanation for Nebraska’s dominance is their development track and system. They were redshirting almost everyone and even greyshirting multiple guys. No doubt they didn’t lack for some good athletes on defense or at the ballcarrier positions on offense, but elsewhere they were maxing out role players from accessible talent pools via S&C, scheme, and just time.
The “blue-chip ratio” theory of who wins championships in college football should have to contend with the reality that one of the most dominant runs in CFB history was achieved in relative recent history by a team for whom achieving the ratio was nearly impossible. Either the ratio is mostly true but has exceptions, it’s true today but wasn’t then, or it’s not true at all and happens to conveniently correlate to the programs that have elite resources and are popular destinations for bluechip players in a given era.
My explanation for Nebraska’s dominance
The thing about teams, particularly football teams, is that no matter how talented your squad is you’re still going to have just a few main guys and then lots of role players. The way blue-chip theory works out in practice is you have a flexible team that has the star players determined by merit and then the other bluechip recruits are expected to fit into roles around the star player either with the understanding that they may become the stars down the line or by coming to an understanding that at the college game their ceiling in that program is as role players. Given how much praise and attention blue-chippers get these days, this is a more difficult process than many seem to assume.
Ideally the effect of a blue chip team is marginal advantage in every mini-battle of every play that eventually creates an overwhelming victory. This tends to play out much more on defense, since the offense can choose the point of attack but the defense has to be solid everywhere. On offense it’s harder to gain advantages from how talented your role players are because the ceiling for what a role player can accomplish in his duties is often lower than what a blue chip player might be athletically capable of. The other ideal with blue chip theory is that who you rely on can change from year to year based on which positions are stronger, although that requires great tactical flexibility from the coordinators and coaches.
The challenges of blue chip strategy though are in your role player duties. Will the bluechip athlete buy in to a sacrificial, glory-less role? And do the athletic traits that saw him gain a high ranking translate to role player duties? A 10.6 burner at wideout may or may not be good at running precise routes, reading coverages, or executing blocks. Does he have a role if there’s a 10.5 burner with slightly better hands and better reach? The 6-4, 230 pound athletic TE with flypaper hands may or may not relish the role of using those hands to seal the edge in the run game after flexing out wide and running routes in high school.
The teams that succeed in translating top talent to wins on the field are often exceptionally demanding and martial in culture, ruthless about player development, and emphasizing an “up or out” involvement on the team.
The other strategy for excellence is to purposefully recruit guys that are likely to thrive as role players with a narrower range of duties and then only rely on the exceptional talents at the positions that are necessarily featured by the scheme. Obviously that’s what Tom Osborne achieved. The local high schools in Nebraska were running his system and he was plucking the best and brightest talents from a limited pool in terms of executing the essential points of his system while recruiting nationally for the RBs, QBs, and defenders necessary to hold up against South Floridian athletes in championship games. They were able to recruit and develop well enough in conjunction with that system that they achieved the same effect and more of a team that’s really good at convincing brilliant athletes to master supporting roles.
It’s the Jerod McDougal effect basically, every team can field a couple of great talents but the best teams have role players that will give anything and everything they have to thrive in a narrow and sacrificial role. Nebraska recruited guys to do that rather than asking stars to figure it out.
The Art Briles Baylor Bears are probably the closest college football has come to what Osborne achieved in terms of building a system that could develop and max out players without needing more than one or two truly elite athletes. It’s typically on offense where this is more easily achieved for the reason I gave above. If your TE can’t run routes than you just don’t make that the focal point of your offense. But if your strong safety can’t fit the run consistently then you’re going to face runs designed to make him be the tackler.
I believe it’s only a matter of time before another team is able to match Osborne’s success, at least in terms of winning a championship, without following a blue chip theory strategy for building the team. With the hire of offensive genius Scott Frost, it might even be Nebraska again.
********
Read more on how Nebraska’s offense dominated the early Big 12 and necessitated evolutions from opponents that led to the takeover of the spread offense in my book:
I’ve come up with another, even better theory. It’s called the Saban-Meyers-Swinney theory which posits that no team is capable of winning a four team playoff without one of those three guys as their head coach. So far, I’m batting 1.000.
LOL. Irrefutable.
Daily Bullets (January 27) | Pistols Firing - Big 12 Blog Network
[…] Arkansas matchup….A comical guide to the eight months of CFB offseason….1995 Nebraska and the myth of championship recruiting….Get Arkansas ‘ coach Mike Anderson’s thoughts on today’s […]
Scott Frost has already taken Nebraska from a class ranked in the 70’s to as high as 18th in the country. It is interesting to see his approach, which mixes recruiting some elite 4 star athletes and an elite QB recruit with undervalued players from all over who fit his scheme. A lot of undersized receivers with speed to burn will do very well in his offense. Having a system and recruiting to that system remains critical to success for programs without natural recruiting bases or great traditions. Nebraska, Wisconsin, Texas Tech under Leach and Baylor all proved it can be done.
http://www.omaha.com/huskers/football/recruiting/nebraska-s-search-for-recruits-includes-italian-import-kick-blocking/article_1e626990-fbd7-11e7-a90b-dbaf44a3f794.html
The Big 12 on defense in 2018 – Concerning Sports
[…] worked out ways to consistently punch above their weight on offense. I was debating the merits of my recent article on the 95 Cornhuskers and whether blue-chip ratio holds up in light of their achievements and Bud Elliott asked me this […]
This is a good read. Something else to consider is that QBs & OL are the hardest positions to evaluate (both NCAA & NFL) so I bet it’s more common to see excellent teams with non blue chips at those positions
The option aspects of the Osborne offense by the mid-’90s were pretty different from most option offenses before or since. The Osborne option was not often based on deception, nor on establishing the threat of the dive play between the tackles. Most options were “load” options led by the FB – the Husker QB did not make an initial read of an unblocked defender, instead he did a perfunctory fake to the FB, who was already sprinting to the edge as a lead blocker. Instead of the QB reading the unblocked defender, the FB usually took that defender out. The QB could then make his only read on the edge with the IB trailing him. Most if not all FB dives in the Husker option were called from the sideline, usually with trap blocking. This could be devastating as a change-up play, as Miami found out in ’94. Husker FBs often averaged ridiculous yards per carry due to the effectiveness of such plays. Overall the speed, strength, and efficiency of the mid-’90s Husker attack meant that the deception central to most option offenses was not needed, outside of the occasional change-of-pace trap, etc. play.
Word, good comment.
It’s obvious enough watching them that the goal was to get the ball to the QB or the RB, ideally the RB. The FB mostly served as just another way to create angles and blocks for one of those two guys.
I’ve been following Nebraska football (Closely) for 49 years. This is the best piece on husker football (and the most enlightening for me) I’ve ever read. Your assessment of Grant Wistrom is a tad low… he was considered a 4.5 star player…So, he is a four star player, so you’re absolutely right. Great article… Thanks
Thanks for reading! Google my name and Scott Frost and you can find some pieces on your new regime.
Agreed, Ralph! One area I didn’t see much focus on was how “culture” in the state (besides having walkons) contributed to the success as one of the key variables.
Good article, but I think trying to bring PEDs into the conversation was unnecessary and unfounded. I think one of the main things people don’t count enough is the drive and dedication of individuals involved. Tom Osborne and his culture, system, development, staffing, and overall genius running of Nebraska is what made them great. I don’t think I’m giving too much credit either. I once heard someone say that the real judge of something is of it can sustain once the individual who created it is gone but that is ludicrous. Never underestimate the individual’s hand in the process. Solich was a decent coach but he didn’t have the “it” factor Osborne had. Look at what’s happened when people like Osborne leave or take over somewhere. Examples like Urban Meyer (look at every school he’s been at), Tom Osborne, and others (very few though) demonstrate this. Recruiting isn’t the answer. It helps but look athenblue chip argument that is not really proven. It’s development with the right players in the right system with a coach that has the drive and knowledge to be elite. There at many more details that could be discussed but great individuals transform and sustain programs. Gene Chizek is proof that good players only make a coach look good so long, but good coaches take average players and make them great.
The stories about Nebraska’s superior S&C in the 90s are legendary. Some of it was apparently just stuff like being willing to use creatine before anyone was sure of it carried health risks or not. If you ignore the PED and S&C stuff with 90s Nebraska you can’t make an honest attempt to understand how a school loaded with farm boys from a limited talent pool was totally dominant.
Also, the end of prop 48s that started to be reflected on the Nebraska roster just as Osborne was heading out the door suggests that maybe his program could indeed have kept going without him.
After all, his teams were largely guided after by Solich (who’s been successful elsewhere since) and Craig Bohl who went on to build the North Dakota State dynasty and is now working to do the same at Wyoming.
Mr. Boyd,
I’d completely agree with what Luke had to say regarding Osborne and the “it” factor. I would agree with your assessment of PEDS as unfounded. You bring up PEDS like a known fact. Where is the backing research that says this? When I ask my graduate students questions about their papers they write, I’ll often ask, “Says who?” If they can’t back it up, then it’s hearsay! Have you spoken with Boyd Epley, former strength coaches or players, or is this just your opinion? How can this be an “honest attempt,” as you say?
Of course I don’t have anything except rumors, insider stories, and legends regarding PED use. If I didn’t mention it though and it was like “how did this happen? Who can know???” That’d have been dishonest when many people have a strong guess as to part of how it happened. I didn’t write all about the PED thing but I wasn’t going to ignore it as a possible factor without being able to say one way or the other.
There’s enough out there that to not mention it is silly.
Nice in-depth article, but I agree with Luke Benzel in that the PED portion wasnt necessary & totally bogus & the same old lame excuse used by others who couldn’t compete or explain Nebraska’s success!
Daily Bullets (July 6) - Big 12 Blog Network
[…] I think you could substitute Oklahoma State for Arkansas here. The best (only?) example of non-elite recruiting that led to titles here. […]
You had to go all the way back to 1995 to find an exception? Really? In almost every aspect of life, you will find exceptions.
What you fail to convey is the dominance blue chip recruiting has had over the last 20+ years.
Without doubt, blue chip recruiting is a SIGNIFICANT factor in winning championships. However, I am confident another exception like Nebraska will take place again over the next 20 years.
There is no question that from 2003 forward, and arguably from 1998 forward, no team since Nebraska has won a national title without meeting the “blue chip ratio” threshold. The days of winning titles with the best conditioned and hardest driven teams, as Bear Bryant produced in the early to mid 60s, are over. Even he was winning with great talent in the 70s. While I agree blue chip recruiting is a significant factor as you state, I go a step further and claim it to be the deciding factor along with coaching.
If you read closely enough in this, you’d see one of the most recent Oklahoma teams just about pulled this off. The offense was not a high-ranking “blue-chip” team, but still did significant damage. Going further, the defense was better on the “blue-chip” scale and still got pushed around. One thing that can’t be debated is that any of us posting on this article have not, can not, and will not be able to replicate Osborne’s success. I’m also willing to bet, Dan, that if you were to sit down and talk to Tom, Urban Meyer, and Nick Saban, they’d all have roughly the same things to say about building a team.
No doubt the 1993 through 1997 Nebraska was one of college football’s greatest dynasties, but proclaiming it the greatest ever is absurd. 3 national titles in 5 seasons will never equal or eclipse 5 titles in 9 seasons, and that is what Nick Saban’s Alabama teams have accomplished from 2008 through 2017. Moreover, Saban’s run continues unabated in 2018. So does Nebraska have the greatest 5 year run? Arguably it does. But greatest run or dynasty in NCAA history? Sorry, but that honor belongs to Alabama and Coach Nick Saban.
As to the author’s theory that teams need not have 50% or more 4 and 5 star athletes on its roster in order to win a national title, it appears history is proving him wrong. I’m certain this “blue chip ratio” is accurate for all national title winners between 2003 USC and 2003 LSU all the way up to 2017 Alabama. Perhaps all that is truly needed is 2, not 4, consecutive classes meeting the blue chip ratio, but the talent must be there. The only exception would be a team close to that ratio yet having a generational talent at QB like Cam Newton, Vince Young, or Deshaun Watson. Otherwise, without the 4 and 5 star athletes on a team, there will be no national championship for that team. That is the way it is and has been for at least 15 years.
Osbourne was a great coach with a great offensive scheme, but suddenly, in the mid 90s when PEDs were beginning to completely change baseball, Nebraska began producing linemen, many of whom were not highly recruited, who simply overpowered every team they played. This did not happen under Devaney for any 5 year period, and it did not happen under Osbourne for 20 of his 25 seasons as head coach of Nebraska. Suddenly, and for 5 or 6 years, his linemen could not be stopped. Then, with his departure, the NE linemen slowly returned to normal and the teams declined.
Though Nebraska faithful swear there is no proof of PEDs, that does not mean there were none, especially given the lack of vigilant testing procedures in the 1990s. True also is the fact that NE had a superior strength and conditioning program. But Michelangelo could not sculpt a marble Pieta from a block of sandstone. As Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant sagely observed “You can’t make chicken salad with chicken sh-t,” and you must have great talent to create great teams. Producing linemen who dominate all teams, yet are taken primarily from the tiny state of Nebraska, requires a large degree of gullibility or naivete to not suspect PEDs. With today’s testing for PEDs, you will never again see such linemen at NE. You never saw them before or since, and it has been over 20 years since Osbourne left NE. Moreover, the coach who unquestionably and routinely signs the best 5 star linemen in the nation–Nick Saban–cannot reproduce such overpowering linemen. No coach and no team can. There has to be a reason beyond a better S&C program.
I do expect Frost to succeed at Nebraska. He is a very good and potentially great coach. But until be starts routinely signing classes ranked in the top 10 in recruiting, Nebraska will never again achieve anything close to the level of dominance it enjoyed 20 years ago.
I appreciate the thoughtful response!
I hear a lot of these same rebuttals to the argument.
1) The Bama dynasty is better!
Yeah maybe, Alabama hasn’t been quite as dominant as Nebraska was during that stretch but they may end up getting them on longevity. That was a fairly long stretch though and Nebraska was also very good on either side of it. This doesn’t really hurt the argument if there’s another dynasty that was comparable.
2) History says your wrong!
This just doesn’t make any sense. We’re talking about literal history here, in which Nebraska showed that you can win titles without recruiting at a bluechip level. The argument has to be, “things have changed since the 90s that now make that impossible!”
3) They used PEDs!
Yeah probably, but now you’re just explaining why Nebraska had breakthrough success in the 90s without following everyone’s favorite modern formula. That doesn’t mean that another formula can’t exist. There could very easily be another S&C, training, practice, philosophical, or tactical breakthrough that gives another team that isn’t a blue-chip program a leg up.
Also notable, the breakthrough of the 90s Nebraska teams wasn’t the offense although it was particularly good during that period, it was that they could play great defense as well.
I can make a dozen arguments why stocking your team with elite recruits doesn’t yield as big of an advantage as everyone thinks, Ohio State is sort of making it for me even now, but Nebraska does show that it’s entirely possible for a team to build not only a great football team but a historic one using a different model. This is conclusive.
Simple answer Nebraska benefitted from lower academic rwquirements. Guys were waived into Nebraska that couldn’t get into CA schools etc. Recruiting advantage and these players deemed ‘academic casualties’ were talented but ranked lower cause other schools didn’t pursue then.
If you look at the argument it’s clear that doesn’t account for it all. Team was built largely from Nebraskan players.
To explain the success of the Nebraska program during that time to be the result of PED usage is lazy and uninformed at best. Idiotic.
Creatine was the new in thing in sports nutrition at that time.
Nebraska had numerous All Americans on the defensive and offensive lines prior to this 5 year stretch, including 4 Outland trophies and 2 Lombardis won on the offensive line alone in Rimington, Steinkuhler, and Shields.
Post 93-97, Suh captured almost every award except the Heisman and Maxwell, even with regular PED testing.
There are many reasons for this period of dominance, PED usage is a fools errand.
Please explain, then, how an inferior Clemson team, by your standards of recruting, boat-raced Alabama. There’s no questioning that success on the field is going to come easier and more frequently with higher ranked recruits. However, culture is what wins championships. The author hit an excellent point by saying Nebraska simply recruited in-state kids that willingly filled sacrificial roles to complement the one or two “blue-chip” recruits needed to run critical positions. Circling back to my first sentence, Alabama has an inferior culture to Clemson. That 2018 championship game made it clear that Alabama has a roster stocked with talent that’s just there for 3 years until they can enter the Draft. I’d say this coincides well with Saban’s comments against leaving a program early for the NFL. Nebraska, like Clemson today, largely recruited players dedicated to their role and the program.
Good notes. I’d add that Clemson is ahead of Alabama now because they are embracing HUNH spread tactics and Alabama is trying to just dip their toes in the water as a means to boost their run game.
Good stuff, Ian. Not much to quibble with, and I’d agree with you that the ’95 Nebraska team quite likely was the greatest ever, at least in the modern era (post WWII, for simplicity’s sake).
One group that was highly comparable (as I’m sure a few others might be) is the ’71 Huskers team, before your time, but virtually just as powerful.
It destroyed a great unbeaten ‘Bama team coached by The Bear, 38-6, to claim the national title.
Similar to the ’95 team, the ’71 group was a greater version to the prior year’s national title team.
Very insightful article I would agree with most all of it. I would also like to point out that the way Osborn had his team running practice also contributed to this success as well. He had multiple teams practicing at the same time which gave the players lots of reps vs the second third and lower depth squads standing on the sidelines just watching and waiting to get in there this was and still is a valuable coaching process for getting younger players to be ready when called upon in a game situation
Oh yeah, that’s a favored trick amongst many coaches today as well but only if they have enough depth to pull it off.
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Creatine is not PED my cousin mike Rucker went there in the 90s. And if you was not a top talent. Ab or running back. You lifted. For 2 years got bigger faster strong. New them system in your sleep! And we was so ready and wanted to play so bad. From just practicing for 2 years. They just tore it up
My old high school coach used to call it the “University of Steroid at Lincoln.” They were the first program to embrace hardcore S&C training, and they used every means at their disposal. The old Big 8 was awash in PED use. Bosworth got popped for steroids right before the ’87 Orange Bowl because the NCAA knew they could get him any time they wanted.