Bowl Business:
If Thaddeus Bowl, the man who thought up the idea of playing football in warmer climes five or six weeks after the regular seasons had ended, had never been born, chances are Nebraska would have been exiled from the collegiate game and told to go play on Sunday afternoons.
In September, October and November, the Cornhuskers are stupendous, and it has been that way for years and years. Take the coaching record of their leader, Tom Osborne, for example.
During the past 22 seasons, the Huskers have had eight bad seasons. Bad for them, that is, finishing 9-3. They have had seven 10-win seasons, two 11-win campaigns and, including this year, three 12-win seasons. The Osborne Era averages out to 9.9 wins per autumn, 11 Big Eight titles (or ties) and 22 straight bowl appearances, 17 classified as "major."
What school or coach can match such figures, regular season only? Notre Dame? Its record of 178-63-5 isn't even close to the Nebraska/Osborne blitz of 218-47-3. And certainly worthy of mention is the fact Osborne took over from Bob Devaney, who won the national championship his last two years at Nebraska, where his coaching record was 101-20-2.
Look at the combined mark: 319 wins, 67 losses, five ties and a winning percentage of .826. Unbelievable. Until bowl results are factored in. Darn that Thaddeus Bowl and his idea for games memorializing roses, oranges, sugar and cotton.
Osborne, whose No. 1 Cornhuskers play No. 3 Miami (10-1) Sunday night, has seen his team win just one of eight appearances in the Orange Bowl.
Nebraska's on a seven-bowl losing streak, a Citrus and a Fiesta joining five Oranges. Twice before, Osborne teams came to Miami unbeaten and ranked No. 1, only to miss the brass ring as the result of a missed two-point conversion (1984) and a %J field-goal attempt that went wide on the game's final play (last year). In 1982, Nebraska was beaten in the Orange by Clemson, 22-15, as the Tigers were on their way to the mythical title.
No wonder Joe Paterno, while desperately wanting his 12-0 Penn State team to whip Oregon in the Rose Bowl and finish No. 1, says he's pulling for Osborne to finally win the big prize.
It's beyond Tom's deserving it. Just think how often he has heard and read how bad he and his team are in the big game. In his very first year, Osborne took a team to the Orange Bowl and slaughtered Notre Dame, 40-6. Unfortunately for him, the Irish didn't even make the top 10 that season.
* Speaking of Notre Dame, a couple of weeks ago, when it was named to beat Colorado in the Fiesta Bowl, quite a stir arose.
Those spokespersons who take upon themselves responsibility for pointing out all perceived injustices, asked why in the world the Irish were handed this high-profile and lucrative assignment on Jan. 2 while the only booking Kansas State could get is the Aloha Bowl in Hawaii on Christmas Day?
It's not known if the Wildcats, who ended the regular season with a 9-2 record and the No. 11 ranking, were stampeded into taking up the complaint, but everyone, including the band members, howled about this scheduling transgression.
One player went so far as to say the team had planned on winning a "major bowl" on New Year's Day and ending up in the top five in the final (post-bowl) poll.
At long last, Boston College, K-State's opponent in Honolulu, had heard enough. B.C. coach Dan Henning, tired of hearing about State's dilemma, groused it was as if the Big Eight team didn't want to play his Eagles. After all, they had just a 6-4-1 record playing back East where everyone knows the football is, well, inferior.
Henning, a man with years of pro coaching experience and perhaps confident that he could come up with something to befuddle quarterback Chad May and K-State's heavy reliance on the pass, answered in kind.
At a big luncheon, attended by both teams, the coach reminded that his opponent had "played just two good teams [Nebraska and Colorado] and lost to both of them." When it was time to put up or shut up, B.C. did. K-State didn't.
The Eagles were no great shakes on offense, but didn't have to be in their 12-7 victory. The lone score by the losers was the result of a blocked punt in the end zone. The Wildcats ran the ball 23 times for minus 61 yards. The Eagles were all over Chad May. They put forth a defensive effort similar to the one that crushed Notre Dame, 30-11, the fourth week of the season. It made you wonder how the team had lost four games and been tied by Rutgers.
One saving grace for Kansas State: Christmas Day games generally don't draw a lot of attention, before, during or after. Chances are the folks back in Manhattan, Kan., haven't heard about it yet.