Familiar Requiem For National Champ Huskies, Like ‘Huskers, Took A Great Fall ‘The Year After’

The gruesome goings-on at Nebraska are surprising to many, but not those around the University of Washington.

Nebraska running back Lawrence Phillips, the early favorite to win the Heisman Trophy, is suspended after allegedly beating up an ex-girlfriend.

His backup, Damon Benning, is arrested for a similar crime.

All the while, wide receiver Riley Washington, who is still on the Cornhuskers team, faces charges of attempted murder.

Obviously, winning a college football championship is not an end-all, rather in most cases simply the beginning of the end.

It’s happened at Florida State, Alabama, Miami, Colorado, Notre Dame. And Washington. In the past four years, in fact, no national champion has gone unscathed.

In Washington’s case, “The Year After” the Huskies’ co-national championship signaled the investigation that started with Billy Joe Hobert’s $50,000 loan and ended with two years of probation.

There is genuine shock at Nebraska, where the football program has been more celebrated than the university, a source of immense statewide pride, and without the problems that consistently have plagued others.

The shock was no less at Washington. Don James knew how to run a clean program. No one cared more about the detail and ethics of college football.

But in the best of times, success takes on a life of its own. Programs change, both under the possibility of winning a title and in the wake of having won one. The Huskies still are paying a price.

Players recruited during and after the Huskies finished 12-0 with one of the great teams in collegiate history make up today’s junior class, brilliant in the play of safety Lawyer Milloy and linebacker Ink Aleaga and productive in that of offensive linemen Bob Sapp and Lynn Johnson and defensive lineman David Richie.

But gone are two nationally recruited and acclaimed players, wide receiver Jason Shelley and defensive lineman Cedric White, plus another top wide receiver, Theron Hill; local linebacker Curtis Bogan; defensive end Hernan Santiago, and offensive tackle Brad Brozaitis.

Two of Washington’s poorer recruiting classes in the past decade came after winning the Orange Bowl in 1985 and the co-national title in 1991.

“I’m sure there are some abuses at Nebraska,” said Sapp, “but it is a lot easier to jump on these guys because they are in the limelight, and not from Alaska King Crab State.”

The focus on a top program is indeed intense. The Year After for Washington found people investigating everything from Napoleon Kaufman’s traffic tickets to Beno Bryant’s summer job. Programs get turned upside down.

But it is too easy to pin the problem on those holding the magnifying glass. Something happens to a program enjoying unprecedented success.

“There’s a ‘We’re big men on the street now attitude, and the rules don’t apply anymore,”’ said Jim Lambright, a longtime James assistant who succeeded him as Washington’s head coach.

“Welcome to winning the national championship.”

Outside, people wonder how a program improves as much as Washington’s did between 1988 and 1991. Did the Huskies cheat to get better, or did getting better simply expose cheating done virtually everywhere else?

Clearly, a program winning a national title gets too full of itself, from coaches and players to boosters, especially boosters.

There was an assumption in 1991 that the Huskies could recruit nationally, appealing to players they’d never appealed to before.

Which is exactly what happened.

Washington went wrong in the sense that it allowed itself to reach a little too high and look a little too low.

Suddenly, players were interested in Washington not because they liked Seattle, or grew up wanting to be Huskies, but because Washington was as high-profile as Florida State and Miami.

“The expectations are pretty high when you’re being recruited by a No. 1-ranked team,” said Sapp, who is from Colorado Springs, Colo. “Maybe you think, ‘I’ll automatically be great, I’ll always be No. 1,’ and when things don’t work out exactly the way you wanted them to, you leave.”

Lambright said he witnessed a great team deteriorate as some players became more interested in themselves than anything else.

“I think we’ve looked more at recruiting team captains, guys with leadership, people who really fit here,” he said. “I like this group.”

Which isn’t what Tom Osborne is saying at Nebraska.