We all know Frost's formula to bring Nebraska back to prominence. A lot of it is the way Osborne did things. It seems today, based on the TT, there's some discussion on why fully bringing back the walk on program, and its numbers, isn't really as big of a deal as Frost is making it. So, as someone who was alive during the glory days, doesn't remember it, but has done all the research I can, other than schematics, what specifically has changed during that time and today's football world that makes some people think that those old concepts either won't work anymore, or aren't as big of a deal? And what kind of data or anything literally visible does anyone have to back up their opinion?
What specifically has changed?
- Thread starter Jhollenbeck41
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JMO....kids that were walking on for TO are now going to places like South Dakota St, Wyoming, Colorado State on full scholarship. While a walk on now can certainly develop, modern recruiting has allowed the "diamonds" to be discovered more easily by smaller schools.
Understood, and most definitely true. That just means we need to get back to the point where that walk on offer from Nebraska is too good, and means more, than those other schools.
I also think the talent and schemes being run in today's NE high schools is different. In some locations, Tom's schemes were emulated by the high school coaches. As we have wandered around in the wilderness the past several years with different schemes, the high schools are no longer in sync with the University.
SF needs to establish our program's identity, and then the HS programs will eventually begin to mirror and be incubators for future talent that fits our scheme.
SF needs to establish our program's identity, and then the HS programs will eventually begin to mirror and be incubators for future talent that fits our scheme.
The formula for winning national titles is highly rated recruiting classes and high level coaching.
No team over the last 15+ years has won a national title with less than 50% of their last 4 recruiting classes being 4 and 5 star recruits. There isn’t data for walkons but I highly suspect that walkons weren’t a prominent part of any of those teams
Your recruiting classes have to have more 4-5 stars than other recruits. So far that has held true for every national champion for the last 15+ years. When a team wins the national title without fulfilling this criteria it will be the exception rather than the rule.
No team over the last 15+ years has won a national title with less than 50% of their last 4 recruiting classes being 4 and 5 star recruits. There isn’t data for walkons but I highly suspect that walkons weren’t a prominent part of any of those teams
Your recruiting classes have to have more 4-5 stars than other recruits. So far that has held true for every national champion for the last 15+ years. When a team wins the national title without fulfilling this criteria it will be the exception rather than the rule.
It's unclear how much of our success historically was due to the walk-on program. Did it make an impact? No doubt. It provided depth and a number of really good college players. But to name just one complication, how do you quantify the impact walk-ons made apart from Nebraska's strength and development program? Part of what made the walk-on program effective is that Nebraska had significant advantages in these areas, over other schools, at that time. It wasn't necessarily because we were getting walk-ons who were great athletes.
I'd have to go back and look, but we maybe had 1 or 2 really solid walk-ons getting good playing time back in the day. The walk-ons "forced" the scholarship players to "earn" their spots. Unfortunately, Riley cut the roster size and only wanted to play/practice the starters/2-deep, removing "earn" from the equation. I hated the idea of Cav being our o-line coach, I hated the nutbags on here more for defending him.
Our program is really in a bad place right now. We're not in some backwater conference where we can swing from the bottom to the top with a little good coaching.
Our program is really in a bad place right now. We're not in some backwater conference where we can swing from the bottom to the top with a little good coaching.
- Walk-ons before the 85 man roster were 2 and 3 star athletes that are now playing for G5 schools and smaller schools.
- Cost of college - You can't always afford to walk-on now. We can't all have former NFL QBs for dads
- Analysis - Everyone does more recruiting and research now. It is easier to communicate and travel.
- Close-to-home-options - Every single natty since the Huskers and Michigan last split one have been won by schools in the south or southern CA with the exception of OSU. Every single team playing for one is also from the south with a very few exceptions (Oregon, OSU, ND, Nebraska, etc).
Tons of great points so far.
In regards to recruiting rankings, let's not kid ourselves. In the late 1980s and 1990s, Tom was hauling in some absolute ballers. He was getting today's equivalent of top 10 to top 15 classes for a significant period of time.
If you follow the timeline of when the Internet really took off (in households) worldwide in the very-late 1990s to early 2000s, Tom Osborne retired right when the Internet was in its toddler and teen stages. You can find film on any kid in the country now on Hudl, XOS, Youtube, etc. It is much harder to keep talent a secret now from other programs.
If anyone hasn't noticed, the RPO is ran nationwide now. LSU switched to it this year. Having said that, I think Scott has what it takes to continue to innovate that offensive style. We are going through a lot of growing pains right now, especially on the O-Line. I will say, though, not to forget that we moved the ball really well the last 6 games of the 2018 season and went 4-2. He has been around some of the best minds in the history of the game, not to mention he spent considerable time with Phil Knight at Oregon. For a couple decades we did not have that mindset in Lincoln. It's going to take a lot to dig Nebraska football out of the hole that it was in.
In regards to recruiting rankings, let's not kid ourselves. In the late 1980s and 1990s, Tom was hauling in some absolute ballers. He was getting today's equivalent of top 10 to top 15 classes for a significant period of time.
If you follow the timeline of when the Internet really took off (in households) worldwide in the very-late 1990s to early 2000s, Tom Osborne retired right when the Internet was in its toddler and teen stages. You can find film on any kid in the country now on Hudl, XOS, Youtube, etc. It is much harder to keep talent a secret now from other programs.
If anyone hasn't noticed, the RPO is ran nationwide now. LSU switched to it this year. Having said that, I think Scott has what it takes to continue to innovate that offensive style. We are going through a lot of growing pains right now, especially on the O-Line. I will say, though, not to forget that we moved the ball really well the last 6 games of the 2018 season and went 4-2. He has been around some of the best minds in the history of the game, not to mention he spent considerable time with Phil Knight at Oregon. For a couple decades we did not have that mindset in Lincoln. It's going to take a lot to dig Nebraska football out of the hole that it was in.
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He wants more late-bloomers to do their blooming here under our guidance instead of at SDSU, NDSU, D-II or wherever they might have gone in the past.
He also wants the backups to be getting way more reps than they would have in the past. So they are getting better at the actual game of football instead of just standing around. Even if those backups never see the field, if they are giving our top units a better look in practice it is a positive.
If the extra numbers give us just 1 extra guy then it's worth it given our recruiting disadvantages.
He also wants the backups to be getting way more reps than they would have in the past. So they are getting better at the actual game of football instead of just standing around. Even if those backups never see the field, if they are giving our top units a better look in practice it is a positive.
If the extra numbers give us just 1 extra guy then it's worth it given our recruiting disadvantages.
I think maybe the biggest change has been the shift in the way the game is played. Less smashmouth, less fullback/TE, no more base 5-2, fewer WRs known more for their blocking than catching, etc. Even if you look at the Big Ten, more of the teams are switching to the spread concepts. This does not favor the type of walk-on we get at Nebraska.
Just look at the mid-90's walk-ons that were playing. Fullbacks, some linemen, not a lot of skill position guys.
I dunno? Maybe one of the greatest college football coaches to ever walk the sideline?
It all comes down to recruiting in the end and then managing/program development and then coaching. You have to have players that can execute at the highest level. Until T.O. starting recruiting elite players, he went 4-12 when OU was good, 0-3 vs. Miami when they were good and 0-6 vs FSU when they were good.
Team identity
Conference Realignment
Poor Coaching hires
Staff Turnover
No Recruiting Footprint
Fractured Adminstrations with lack of vision
Will elaborate later
Conference Realignment
Poor Coaching hires
Staff Turnover
No Recruiting Footprint
Fractured Adminstrations with lack of vision
Will elaborate later
Think of what Nebraska football was before Devaney and after Osborne, probably about where Nebraska should be historically. Bottom line is this, Devaney and Osborne were stratosphere coaches who elevated Nebraska to way beyond what it maybe should ever have been, and now we’ve seen 5 coaches since then that have been good occasionally, fair occasionally, and bad.
Frank Solich was lucky to have rode the wave post Osborne for a few years and then he was gone. Devaney and Osborne recruited well, chose solid assistants and let them do their jobs, and coached even better for the most part, but they too had their share of bad losses amongst all their success, it’s going to take their kind of overall coaching talent to bring back what was, and so the beat goes on.
Frank Solich was lucky to have rode the wave post Osborne for a few years and then he was gone. Devaney and Osborne recruited well, chose solid assistants and let them do their jobs, and coached even better for the most part, but they too had their share of bad losses amongst all their success, it’s going to take their kind of overall coaching talent to bring back what was, and so the beat goes on.
Another thing that jumped out at me when I looked at 90s recruiting classes was the number of elite NU players who came to Lincoln to play a different position originally.
They especially had success getting highly-rated option QBs and then moving them to other positions. They'd get guys who were flat out athletes and find a place for them.
I would place my bet on a highly-rated QB who doesn't win the starting job transferring elsewhere to keep playing QB these days rather than move to wingback or safety or return kicks.
They especially had success getting highly-rated option QBs and then moving them to other positions. They'd get guys who were flat out athletes and find a place for them.
I would place my bet on a highly-rated QB who doesn't win the starting job transferring elsewhere to keep playing QB these days rather than move to wingback or safety or return kicks.
Yeah, I think that's got some truth to it. "But" since more & more programs are leaning that way I would think a really good smashmouth running game would be even more successful.
My take is that copying what everyone else is doing isn't going to bring us back to being a annual top10 program. Getting an annual top 5 to 10 recruiting rankings would take close to miracle. I hope HCSF will lean more on what worked for decades at NU. Let's do it our way.....
Can't take partial qualifiers
Limit on scholarships
Steroids
No Tom Osborne (genius)
Weaker assistant coaches
Limit on scholarships
Steroids
No Tom Osborne (genius)
Weaker assistant coaches
So we took a super-duper double-secret formula no one else was taking at the time? Yah, that must be the ticket.
Very true. What was alarming with Bo was the instate talent that left. Why’d we offer Sam Cotton but not Drew Ott?
I don't think the walk-on program will be really helpful until HCSF's first walk-on class are Seniors. That said, it has to be hard to give these kids a good look without taking away valuable reps from our scholarship kids.
1: After Solich you had coaches who had no clue how Nebraska was successful and they destroyed it all.
2: Fewer scholarships
3: Other programs caught up on facilities and S&C
4: In-state pride faded the longer it was since the TO era. You had in-state guys going to Iowa, Dakota schools, Wyoming, Stanford, etc.
5: Coaching turnover has been non-stop since Solich. You had kids that played their entire career at Nebraska with a new coach at their position every year from the day the arrived to the day they graduated.
6: You aren't going to find any hidden gems in recruiting anymore like you could in the 70's 80's and 90's. These days everything is instant. A RB rush for 500 yards in a game and every FBS head coach will know that night or the next day.
7: A loser mentality took over the program and the infection runs deep.
What will it take to get back to winning? Recruiting at a high level, in-state pride comes back (not all the way back yet considering a kid is going to ND when he could have easily committed to Nebraska), a winning mentality comes back, and a killer mentality becomes the foundation - a refusal to lose.
It's impossible to take what happened since Solich to today and flip the switch overnight. We all know Frost knew things got bad, but it was even worse than he figured it was.
I think in 3 years this program will be a complete 180 from what it is today and all of the dumbos that have meltdowns every Saturday after games will not be found anymore.
That is a pretty good summary, although I don't think it is reasonable to expect people to keep their cool when the team is as garbage as it is right now.
Nearly all Nebraska fans want to give Frost the time he needs and realize he walked into a terrible situation. They can still vent their frustrations without being anti-Frost.
First, "back in the day" kids would wait for 2, 3 or 4 years to get their shot at playing time. In the day, there were enough blow outs that by the time the kids got their shot, they had significant playing time because of seeing the field doing mop up duty.
This is a spectacular post, particularly hit the nail on the head in regard to developing an identity. Multiple is not an identity unless you’re Michael Keaton.
Offensive Identity, we've had I formation Option football, West Coast Offense, West Coast/Spread Hybrid, Spread, Multiple, Pro Style Offense, and now Spread Zone Option in the span of 17 years. So on average we've changed schemes every 2.5 years, how the hell do you recruit kids to a scheme when you change what you're doing that often?
Conference realignment. In the Big 8 we were smack dab in the middle of the conference we recruited the same kids as our opponents in the same areas. We had long histories with our opponents and played like schools and teams in our area. The Big 12 changed the focus of the conference to Texas and we became the northern most school in a Texas conference. We lost our rivalry with Oklahoma and we left for the Big Ten where we have no history, no rivals, and we're isolated from other schools that have completely different cultures than our school.
Poor coaching hires. When the Nebraska job was at the peak of college football as a committee of one Tom hired his running backs coach with no D1 head coaching experience when Bill Byrne could've gotten us just about anyone in the country. Solich's staff got lazy with recruiting, the world of college football was changing and we got passed by. Pedersen saw Texas and OU passing us up and made the decision to make a change. His plan A fell through and he settled for Bill Callahan, an NFL coach who hadn't coached in college in 20+ years and was a poor cultural fit. We run Callahan out of town and the boosters and Tom have their heart set on a Bo Pelini, a bad guy with no head coaching experience and serious issues, while we could've had Gary Patterson. Tom covers up a lot of Bo's warts for the first few years and he has success with another guys players but Bo insists on hiring only his friends to coach for him and things don't pan out. Then SE hires a has been from Oregon State who was featured in his favorite book who was in way over his head at his age and it obviously doesn't work out. Meanwhile Dan Mullen was just sitting there at Mississippi State waiting for an opportunity like Nebraska.
Staff turnover. Tons of OC's DC's position coaches coming and going makes it extremely difficult to have group cohesion and build the team you want.
No recruiting footprint. In the Big 8 we recruited the midwest with some kids from Florida and Jersey. Callahan went all on in Texas Florida and California and did well there but he was out before his recruits ever really got in. Bo started with recruiting Texas but once we moved to the B1G we didn't have any leverage down there. We didn't have a place to go and get kids. Frost has abandoned any kind of recruiting footprint and goes anywhere and everywhere to find kids, which I have my doubts about how well that will work. But we are completely isolated from our conference foes where can we go in and grab kids nowadays? I don't see anywhere other than Nebraska but they only produce about 3 kids a year.
Poorly run administrations. Harvey hated that we were known as a football school. Pederson Osborne and Eichorst were all in way over their heads.
A lot has changed, Scott sure is sure that the old ways will bring us back. I wish I was as sure as he was there are a lot of things that need to change to get us back to being respectable.
Conference realignment. In the Big 8 we were smack dab in the middle of the conference we recruited the same kids as our opponents in the same areas. We had long histories with our opponents and played like schools and teams in our area. The Big 12 changed the focus of the conference to Texas and we became the northern most school in a Texas conference. We lost our rivalry with Oklahoma and we left for the Big Ten where we have no history, no rivals, and we're isolated from other schools that have completely different cultures than our school.
Poor coaching hires. When the Nebraska job was at the peak of college football as a committee of one Tom hired his running backs coach with no D1 head coaching experience when Bill Byrne could've gotten us just about anyone in the country. Solich's staff got lazy with recruiting, the world of college football was changing and we got passed by. Pedersen saw Texas and OU passing us up and made the decision to make a change. His plan A fell through and he settled for Bill Callahan, an NFL coach who hadn't coached in college in 20+ years and was a poor cultural fit. We run Callahan out of town and the boosters and Tom have their heart set on a Bo Pelini, a bad guy with no head coaching experience and serious issues, while we could've had Gary Patterson. Tom covers up a lot of Bo's warts for the first few years and he has success with another guys players but Bo insists on hiring only his friends to coach for him and things don't pan out. Then SE hires a has been from Oregon State who was featured in his favorite book who was in way over his head at his age and it obviously doesn't work out. Meanwhile Dan Mullen was just sitting there at Mississippi State waiting for an opportunity like Nebraska.
Staff turnover. Tons of OC's DC's position coaches coming and going makes it extremely difficult to have group cohesion and build the team you want.
No recruiting footprint. In the Big 8 we recruited the midwest with some kids from Florida and Jersey. Callahan went all on in Texas Florida and California and did well there but he was out before his recruits ever really got in. Bo started with recruiting Texas but once we moved to the B1G we didn't have any leverage down there. We didn't have a place to go and get kids. Frost has abandoned any kind of recruiting footprint and goes anywhere and everywhere to find kids, which I have my doubts about how well that will work. But we are completely isolated from our conference foes where can we go in and grab kids nowadays? I don't see anywhere other than Nebraska but they only produce about 3 kids a year.
Poorly run administrations. Harvey hated that we were known as a football school. Pederson Osborne and Eichorst were all in way over their heads.
A lot has changed, Scott sure is sure that the old ways will bring us back. I wish I was as sure as he was there are a lot of things that need to change to get us back to being respectable.
There's a lot more to it than just recruiting a bunch of 4 and 5 stars. There's a lot of teams that do that and most of them don't win a national title. It's an exception to the rule to win a national title. 1 team out of 120 wins the national title each year. When you only have 15 years of data on a game that's been played for 150 years, it's asinine to say that there's only one way to win.
Agreed. I can't imagine that in 2019 a QB like Newcombe would have stuck around after losing the starting job. And there are several other examples of this back then.
Completely forgot I posted this over the weekend so I apologize. I believe the old ways still work. I believe that because nothing else has really worked. Bo did well and used bits and pieces of the old ways but anything else we've tried has been garbage. I believe Nebraska is a very unique place because of strictly where we're located, that we have to use out of box concepts like Osborne did to reach potential. There's really no reason why it can't work to be honest. We've just been away from it for so long that it will take a while for those concepts to take a firm hold again for that stuff to work again. I'm beating a dead horse here but you need players with that Nebraska type of mentality that are also stars. Those kinds of kids will be attracted to playing for Frost because he has that same mindset. And they do exist. You can also make an argument that they're better suited for the NFL because, as we've all seen and talk **** about, those pre-madonna players are normally the ones making the negative headlines. Those are the ones that transfer out when things don't go their way.
I think this is true to an extent. I think the big change for TO was moving to the 4-3 and moving players and athletes to different positions. OLB's to DE and Safeties to OLB made it so hard to attack those defenses. I honestly think that if this switch was made a little sooner, TO may have had a couple more titles.
I would have loved to seen the 1986-1992 defenses run a 4-3, with dudes like Boderick Thomas, Mike Croel, Kenny Walker at DE and dudes like Reggie Cooper, Curtis Cotton and Brian Washington at OLB. Man that would have been a wrecking crew. When Steve Taylor was QB, those teams were good enough to win at National Title.