Interesting Pat Forde take on Nebraska's recruiting struggles

per Forde:

THE NEBRASKA COROLLARY

The hurricane of response to Bo Pelini (11) and his potty-mouthed, two-year-old dissertation on Nebraska fans has blown over. But what’s left behind is the bigger-picture reality: Can Pelini (or anyone) ever win again at a Tom Osborne, national-title level?

Using the recruiting criteria discussed above, the odds are against it.

Osborne worked a miracle in Lincoln, growing a powerhouse out of a talent puddle. He raided bigger states for skill-position players and ran them behind corn-fed (and sometimes steroid-fed) linemen from the heartland. Nebraska could sell America’s first deluxe weight room, built in an era when ticket revenue was a differentiating factor in terms of what schools could afford in terms of facilities.

Today, thanks to TV money and deep-pocketed boosters, all the power programs have great facilities. Nebraska doesn’t have anything special to sell in the Sun Belt, and those kids are too far removed from Lincoln to make all-important unofficial (unpaid) campus visits where the early recruiting foundation is laid.

Combine those factors with some clear recruiting misses in recent years – especially on defense – and the Cornhuskers are held captive in good-but-not-great territory. Which is not where the passionate and loyal fan base aspires to be.

Heading into their game against South Dakota State, the starting lineup averaged a 3.0 star rating and was frightfully young on the defensive side with five players from the 2012 and ’13 recruiting classes. Just seven starters are Nebraska products, including walk-on twins Jake and Spencer Long. The rest are a hodgepodge from eight different states.

The Cornhuskers don’t have a Louisville-style pipeline to Florida or anywhere else. What they mostly have are a core of moderately-sought-after Midwestern players and a few expatriates from warm-weather hotbeds who may be good enough to compete in the Big Ten, but aren’t likely to revive the Osborne glory days anytime soon.

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/ncaaf-...nd-where-they-get-their-talent-044110856.html

Go Gophers!!

Perhaps an up and coming program northeast of Nebraska can restore order to the universe, just as Nebraska enters the B1G, to maintain the head to head victory advantage?

I think you could apply the same logic to recruiting challenges facing teams located north of the Mason-Dixon line.

Nebraska never recruited THAT well. Their program peaked before Rivals etc really got going but they were never pulling in classes similar to Ohio State, Michigan, Texas or the SEC teams these days.

They invited just about every big body from the state of Nebraska to walk on, (allegedly) fed them steroids and locked them in the massive weight room. They never had a "pipeline" state because they recruited just about every state, and took many academic risks. The Huskers thrived off taking the "prop-48" partial qualifiers from other states to fill their skill positions and land elite level linemen.

Here's a snippet from an eerily prescient article by Tim Layden from SI in 1996:

"In the Fiesta Bowl, Nebraska started four partial or non-qualifiers (cornerback Michael Booker, defensive tackle Christian Peter, cornerback Tyrone Williams and defensive end Jared Tomich), and two others, wideout Reggie Baul and outside linebacker Jamel Williams, played almost as much as the starters. According to Nebraska officials there were at least 12 partial or non-qualifiers in the program last fall. "Among elite schools Nebraska is a true haven for partial and non-qualifiers," said the coach of another elite school.

Osborne's view on partial and non-qualifiers—he calls them "Props," harking back to Proposition 48, which created the aforementioned eligibility guidelines that affected incoming freshmen in 1986—is similar to his reasoning for reinstating Phillips, who was suspended from the team after he was arrested for assaulting his former girlfriend on Sept. 11. (Phillips eventually pleaded no contest and was restored to the team on Oct. 24.) In both cases, the argument goes, kids were given academic opportunities they might not otherwise have found. And Nebraska landed impact players."

When the Big 12 was formed, Texas wasn't going to allow so many partial qualifiers (duh, they knew if they could shut down that gravy train, then the northern schools couldn't compete with their Texas talent.) Tom Osborne was very irked by this and many people believe it was a major catalyst toward his 1997 retirement and was a big reason that as AD he was so quick to put Nebraska into the Big Ten (not because we allowed qualifiers, but because we didn't include Texas.)

But yeah, Nebraska fans feel that they're entitled to their spot at the big boy table and three losses isn't going to cut it in Lincoln. The '90s pushed their expectations sky high, and if they can't accept just being a "good" program, they might just end up rotating through too many coaches trying to find the next Tom Osborne.

This wouldn't be a bad thing for Minnesota!

NateDawgUM said:

The '90s pushed their expectations sky high, and if they can't accept just being a "good" program, they might just end up rotating through too many coaches trying to find the next Tom Osborne.

This wouldn't be a bad thing for Minnesota!

Click to expand...

Sounds eerily similar to our programs history since the 60's. I'm far from an official historian.

Nate, you make some excellent points. I did want to point out a couple of observations though. Nebraska football has had more academic all-Americans than any other program, so it is not like Osborne was turning a blind eye to academics. Did some players play who probably shouldn't have due to their poor academics? Absolutely. Was Nebraska following the rules? Absolutely. Was it indicative of the overall academic culture around Nebraska football? Apparently not, given the number of AAA football athletes that Nebraska has consistently pumped out.