A Bad Rap? Nebraska Deserves It
On a visit here a few years ago, it was discovered that the home of the University of Nebraska is also home to the state Capitol and the state pen. Such a convenience - get a degree, get into politics, get indicted and get a stretch in the joint without ever leaving the city limits.
Turns out it may be more convenient than that. Nebraska football is cutting out the middleman.
Don’t expect a laugh here from a line like that. September has been a pretty mirthless month for the Nebraska Cornhuskers.
The defending national champions of college football have administered beatings devoid of much passion to four overmatched opponents while enduring the slings and Lenos of a nation for their outrageous conduct.
Outrageous, that is, if you can believe a police report - something coach Tom Osborne does reluctantly, it seems.
Today, the Huskers return to where anti-social behavior - alleged or otherwise - is tolerated, between the chalk lines at Memorial Stadium. The opponent is Washington State, which locals and oddsmakers seem to regard as little more than token upgrade of Pacific, even if Wazzu has never lost in three tries here.
Whether they’re right - and there’s reasonable doubt - or wrong, the game-day anticipation may be greater than ever, even in a state where Saturday is a second-string Sabbath. For 3 hours, at least, no one will have to hear about arrests or arraignments.
Beyond Nebraska’s cornstalk hedge, the Huskers have become the latest poster children for college football’s Tragic Flaw Syndrome. Every national championship team of the ‘90s has suffered some fall from grace in the aftermath; now Nebraska is the ranking Program Out of Control, thanks mostly to the mediocre-ing of Miami.
No other comparison offends so.
“People calling us like Miami,” sniffed linebacker Phil Ellis a few weeks ago. “That ain’t right.”
No, indeed. No Hurricane that we know of is still on the squad and practicing despite being charged with attempted murder.
Let’s familiarize you with the docket. Heisman Trophy candidate Lawrence Phillips pleaded no contest to misdemeanor assault in a vicious attack on his former girlfriend, Nebraska basketball player Kate McEwen. Wingback Riley Washington has pleaded innocent to the murder charge in the shooting of a Lincoln man. Cornerback Tyrone Williams awaits trial on two felony weapons charges. Defensive tackle Christian Peter has a sexual assault conviction on his record, while receiver Reggie Baul has been convicted for possession of stolen property.
But right now, the one who can’t beat the rap is Osborne, who is using Homer Simpson as his model for tough love.
He banished Phillips (who had been in previous trouble) from the team, then back-tracked and left the door open for his return. Washington continues to practice. Williams, Peter and Baul all play - Baul because he passed a lie-detector test before entering his guilty plea (huh?) and Peter because he’s been “a model guy,” in Osborne’s words.
And now Lancaster County Attorney Gary Lacey has put himself in the running for Least Popular Politician by suggesting to Sports Illustrated that Osborne interferes in investigations and intimidates witnesses.
See, Osborne is loved here not just for being a Holy Joe but because last year he finally won the big one. Huskers fans waited 23 years between national championships and thus can forgive a few felonies, if necessary.
A trip to a Michigan or a Nebraska sheds a whole new perspective on college football.
Underneath the west stands of Memorial Stadium is Husker football’s monument to itself. There’s the “strength museum,” which includes the program’s original dumbbells - 35 pounds, 40, 45 and Lawrence … no, that’s too easy. There’s the lavish training table, where it’s interesting to note that for dinner Friday night, the team’s “alternate” entree was prime rib.
There is a wall of portraits devoted to the program’s many Academic All-Americans - the graduation rate here for athletes is over 80 percent.
But what first greets any visitor are trophy cases devoted to Nebraska’s many Heismans, Outlands and Lombardis.
As it should be. Let the physics department build a trophy case for its studs.
But it shouldn’t be forgotten that Lincoln police once had to arrest that first Heisman winner, Johnny Rodgers, for robbing a gas station. The talent that it takes to win a national championship, the ‘90s have taught us, comes with risks.
Neither Nebraska nor any other school should stop taking them, even if some don’t pan out.
But what grates here is Osborne’s ability to rationalize from here to the Orange Bowl about surrogate parenthood and the notion that keeping his troubled players in the program is not only the best way of helping them, of keeping them in line, but also somehow beneficial to the victims. He actually said that about Phillips and McEwen - that “it certainly makes her situation better than if he’s simply detached from the program completely.”
Any chance Nebraska could revoke that Ph.D. in education psychology it conferred on Dr. Tom 30 years ago?
Coaches, police, sociologists will all point out that 20-year-olds get in trouble, and some do. Most of them aren’t football players. But the ones who are have been granted an extraordinary privilege, privilege that must be revoked for severe transgressions.
Let them have their second chances without prejudice, but without scholarships or indulgence, as well.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo
The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Blanchette The Spokesman-Review