Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame Tom Osborne for Nebraska Losing the 1983 National Championship

January 2, 1984: The University of Nebraska, ranked Number 1 in the nation, plays the University of Miami, ranked Number 5, in the Orange Bowl. The game was played on January 2 because January 1, New Year's Day, fell on a Sunday.

Nebraska had put together one of the greatest seasons in college football history. They began it ranked Number 1, and opened in the Kickoff Classic at the Meadowlands, against Number 4 Penn State, and won 44-6.

The Cornhuskers scored more points than anyone had seen in the modern era. They beat Minnesota away 84-13. They beat Iowa State 72-29. They beat Colorado 69-19. They beat Kansas 67-13. They beat Syracuse 63-7. They beat Wyoming 56-20. They beat Kansas State away 51-25. They beat UCLA 42-10.

Not all their games were easy. They went to Missouri and beat them "only" 34-13. In what was then their biggest rivalry, they went to Oklahoma and beat them 28-21. Aside from Penn State, the only ranked team they played was Number 20 Oklahoma State, away, and escaped with a 14-10 win. Still, they were 12-0, scoring 624 points and allowing just 186, for an average score of 52-15.

How good was that opposition: Minnesota went just 1-10, beating only Rice, who also went 1-10. Kansas State went 3-8. Kansas went 4-6-1. Iowa State and Colorado both went 4-7.

But Penn State went 8-4-1, won the Aloha Bowl, and finished ranked Number 17. Oklahoma went 8-4, and probably would have been ranked and gotten a bowl bid, had they not been on probation. Oklahoma State also went 8-4, won the Bluebonnet Bowl, and was ranked Number 18. UCLA went 7-4-1, won the Pac-10 and the Rose Bowl, and was ranked Number 13. Wyoming went 7-5. So did Missouri, who went to the Holiday Bowl, but lost. Syracuse went 6-5. So the 'Huskers were doing more than just running up the score on weak opposition.

Head coach Tom Osborne was named National Coach of the Year. Running back Mike Rozier won the top 2 Player of the Year awards, the Heisman Trophy and the Maxwell Award. Guard Dean Steinkuhler won the top 2 Lineman of the Year awards, the Outland Trophy and the Lombardi Trophy. Rozier, Steinkuhler and receiving Irving Fryar were named 1st team All-Americans; quarterback Turner Gill, 2nd team. Each of those was named to the All-Big Eight Conference 1st team, along with offensive tackle Scott Raridon and center Mark Traynowicz.

Mike Rozier

Rozier and Steinkuhler would go on to become All-Pros with the Houston Oilers. Fryar would go to the Pro Bowl with the New England Patriots, the Miami Dolphins and the Philadelphia Eagles, and get to a Super Bowl with the Patriots. Running backs Doug DuBose and Tom Rathman would go on to win a Super Bowl with the San Francisco 49ers. (Rathman would win 2 with them.) Defensive end Jim Skow would reach a Super Bowl with the Cincinnati Bengals. Gill is now an administrator at the University of Arkansas, after winning conference titles as head coach at the University of Buffalo and Liberty University.

The Hurricanes, then an independent, were no slouches. Their previous 3 seasons saw them go 9-3, 9-2 and 7-4, and they were 10-1 this season. After losing their opener at Number 16 Florida, they had shut out Purdue and Number 13 Notre Dame, held Number 12 West Virginia to 3, and held 4 teams to just 7 points: Houston, Mississippi State, Cincinnati and East Carolina (and only the last of these was at home).

But they only had 2 games that compared to Nebraska's blowouts, winning 56-17 away to Duke and 42-14 at home to Louisville. Their last game before the Orange Bowl was away to arch-rival Florida State, and they escaped 17-16 winners.

Unlike later Miami teams, coach Howard Schnellenberger's '83 'Canes were not loaded with future NFL talent, but they did have Bernie Kosar, a redshirt freshman quarterback, who would later make some noise. And they would be playing the Orange Bowl game in the Orange Bowl stadium, their home field. Nevertheless, Nebraska went into the game favored by 10 1/2 points -- maybe the greatest insult an 10-1 team playing at home had ever received.

The day's other bowl games played into both teams' hands. In the early game, the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, Number 2-ranked Texas lost to Georgia. In the afternoon, the Rose Bowl in Pasadena saw Number 4 Illinois lose to UCLA. And, while the Orange Bowl was going on, Number 3 Auburn was struggling against Michigan in the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans.

So the National Championship was likely to come down to the winner of the Orange Bowl: Nebraska would have won the title with a win, anyway; while, if Miami won, and Auburn lost, or if Auburn didn't win convincingly, Miami could jump from 5th to 1st.

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And, just as the New York Jets had done to the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III on the same field, 15 years to the month earlier, the 'Canes shocked everybody. They held Nebraska to a field goal attempt by Mark Hagerman on the 1st possession of the game, and blocked it.

With the momentum on their side, and with a key interception later, the 'Canes jumped out to a 17-0 lead in the 1st quarter. Only Colorado and Iowa State had managed more than that on Nebraska in 3 quarters, before the backup defenders had been put in.

Nebraska settled down, and closed to within 17-14 at the half. Early in the 3rd quarter, a Miami fumble gave Nebraska the ball deep in Hurricane territory, but, again, the 'Canes held the 'Huskers to a field goal attempt, which Hagerman made, to tie the game at 17.

Before the quarter ended, Kosar engineered 2 more touchdown drives, to make it 31-17 Miami. Rozier, the best player in the country all season long -- he got 482 1st-place votes for the Heisman Trophy, and Brigham Young quarterback Steve Young was next-best with 153 -- had to leave the game with an ankle injury, taking the 'Huskers' best weapon away. And Jeff Smith, subbing for Rozier, got off a 40-yard run, but was stripped of the ball at the 1-yard line, and Miami recovered.

Early in the 4th quarter, Nebraska was held to another field goal attempt, and, unlike the early blocked attempt, Hagerman simply missed this one. Nebraska later scored a touchdown to make it 31-24, and then it was Miami's turn to miss a field goal attempt.

With less than 2 minutes to go, Gill passed to Fryar, who got inside the Miami 35-yard line. On 2nd and 8 from the Miami 24, Fryar was wide open in the end zone, but dropped Gill's pass. It went to 4th and 8, and Gill threw to Smith, who got into the end zone. That made it 31-30.

Now, Osborne had a decision to make: Kick the extra point, make it 31-31, and settle for a tie -- or, maybe, go for the onside kick, hope you get into field goal range, but also risk Miami winning it with a field goal -- or go for a 2-point conversion and a 32-31 win, with Miami still having time to maybe get into field goal range. Earlier in the week, he was asked about this very situation, and said, "I hope it doesn't come up."

It now had. With overtime not available (and this would remain true for college football until the 1996 season), Osborne decided to go for 2. The ball was placed on Miami's 3-yard line. Once again, Gill rolled to his right, and looked for Smith. But Smith was double-covered, and Kenny Calhoun knocked the pass away.

A recent photo of Kenny Calhoun, "Throwing the U"

Nebraska kicked off, and Miami ran out the clock. Auburn ended up winning the Sugar Bowl only 9-7, and, when the Associated Press and United Press International released their polls the next day, they both awarded Miami the National Championship. The AP (the sportswriters) gave 11-1 Miami 47 1/2 1st-place votes, 11-1 Auburn 7, and 12-1 Nebraska 4 1/2. UPI (the coaches) gave Miami 30, Nebraska 6, and Auburn 4.

Bernie Kosar, on an NBC screen capture

With a little bit of irony, Jeff Smith, rather than Mike Rozier, was the man on the cover of Sports Illustrated after the season-opening win over Penn State. Therefore, when "The Dreaded SI Cover Jinx" hit Nebraska, it was the player who had the chance to clinch the National Championship, 4 months later, that it gave a delayed hit.

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This would begin a run for Miami of 12 seasons in which they were, effectively, in 6 National Championship Games, winning 4 of them (in the seasons of 1983, 1987, 1989 and 1991). They would win another in 2001 and come very close in 2002.

The '84 Orange Bowl would haunt Nebraska, which last won the National Championship in 1971, and had some other close calls. They would lose the Orange Bowl to Miami again in 1988 (thus blowing a shot at the title and letting Miami win it), and lose it to Florida State in 1994 (again blowing the title to a team from Florida).

Finally, on January 1, 1995, they again went to the Orange Bowl, again played Miami, and beat them 24-17, to win the 1994 National Championship, finally getting the monkey off Osborne's back. (He had been an assistant to Bob Devaney when they won the title in 1970 and '71.)

They would win the National Championship again in 1995, and share the 1997 title with Michigan, the last "split poll" title. That 1995 team is considered by some to be what the 1983 team should have been: The greatest team in college football history.

Osborne then retired, with a career record of 255-49-3, having coached 53 All-Americans, 13 Conference Championships (the last in the Big 12, the others in the Big 8), and 3 National Championships. In 2000, '02 and '04, he was elected to Congress from Nebraska as a Republican. He retired rather than run again in the 2006 election, to accept the post of the University of Nebraska's athletic director, a post he held until 2013. The playing surface at their Memorial Stadium is named Tom Osborne Field. He is still alive, 82 years old.

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Did Osborne make the right choice in going for 2 in the '84 Orange Bowl?

Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame Tom Osborne for Nebraska Losing the 1983 National Championship

5. Miami Stepped Up. In situations like this, it's easy to make Reason Number 1 "The opposition was better." Only the most deluded of Hurricanes fans would say their team was better than the Cornhuskers'

But if the Hurricanes hadn't played so well, becoming college football's answer to the 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates, to Nebraska's Yankees -- or, to use an earlier-cited example from the same stadium, the Jets to the Cornhuskers' Colts -- Nebraska wouldn't have been in the position where Osborne had to make the critical decision.

4. Nebraska Blew It. All season long, they had gotten the job done, until now. And they had come back from 17-0 and 31-17 to get to 31-30. There was plenty of reason to believe they could gain 3 yards on this one play. But, between the missed field goal, the blocked field goal, the fumbled sure touchdown, and the dropped passes on the last drive, they had their chances, and they blew them.

Think about it: Had either of Hagerman's missed field goals gone through, that last touchdown would have made it 33-31 Nebraska. True, there was enough time left on the clock where the conversion would have been more meaningful at 35-31 than at 34-31, but not by that much. Had Hagerman made both of those misses, it would have been 36-31, and Miami would have needed a touchdown no matter what.

Even Osborne blew it: If he had gone for 2 on the preceding touchdown, and made it, that would have made the score 31-25, and he could have won the game 32-31 with an extra point kick on the touchdown in question. Nobody talks about that choice.

3. Principle. If you can't gain 3 yards on 1 play to win 1 game, you don't deserve to win the National Championship.

2. Ara Parseghian. As head coach of Notre Dame in 1966, he went for a tie against Michigan State, knowing it wouldn't cost him the National Championship, whereas a loss would have. But, in the ensuing 17 years, the words had been spoken many times: "Parseghian had no guts."

Osborne was not going to be accused of having no guts. He knew that, for all Parseghian had achieved, that 1966 10-10 tie was the thing for which he was most remembered. "We were trying to win the game," Osborne said at the time. "I don't think you go for a tie in that case. You try to win the game. We wanted an undefeated season and a clear-cut National Championship."

Clear-cut. Because...

1. America Hates Ties. Long ago, though the identity of the coach who first said it depends on who's telling the story, a coach lost a game on a 1-yard run attempt rather than kick a tying field goal, and explained to the reporters, "A tie is like kissing your sister."

It's not like in European soccer, where a win is worth 3 points to your team in the league standings (or "table"), and a tie (or "draw") is worth 1 point. A tie that gave Nebraska the 1983 National Championship would have satisfied very few people -- outside the State of Nebraska, anyway. America hates ties, to the point that the NHL no longer has them.

Sure, with a tie, Nebraska would still have been National Champions. But any pretense to "Greatest Team Ever" status would have been gone.

After all, as Herman Edwards, then still playing cornerback for the Philadelphia Eagles, would later put it while coaching the New York Jets, "This is what the greatest thing about sports is: You play to win the game!"

VERDICT: Not Guilty. A lot of people would have understood it if he had gone for the tie and, presumably, still won the National Championship. But 32-31 and 13-0 would have been better than 31-31 and 12-0-1.

Besides, the '95 Orange Bowl win over Miami, and the resulting National Championship, was all the sweeter because of the '84 Orange Bowl loss to Miami.

A Tie Is Like Kissing...

U.S.A. 1, England 1. Kind of like the War of the American Revolution: By not losing, we gain in reputation; by not winning, never finishing us off, England look awful.

An old saying in American football is, "A tie is like kissing your sister." (I know of at least 4 different coaches to whom it's been attributed.) For America, this tie was like kissing your sister's really hot best friend. For England, this tie was like kissing your mother-in-law.

It wasn't a very good game, and both teams missed plenty of opportunities to finish the other off.

I am disappointed that Wayne Rooney didn't do anything to get himself a red card, or that he, or John Terry, or Steven Gerrard, got called for diving; but that just makes it more likely that "Shrek," "Captain Adultery"/"Captain Chav" or Stevie G will do some such thing in a win-or-go-home game.

Did anybody else think of Bill Buckner when seeing replays of Robert Green's misplay of Clint Dempsey's shot?

On the other hand -- almost literally -- the man of the match was North Brunswick, New Jersey's own Tim Howard. What a performance he had in goal.

How are the ravenous English tabloid media handling this?

The Daily Mirror, a good liberal paper, does a takeoff of the Diego Maradona line "Hand of God," calling poor Green "THE HAND OF CLOD." The News of the World also chose that as their headline.

The Sun, Rupert Murdoch's bundle of lies despised all over the world, especially on Merseyside for the way they treated the victims of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, didn't go for an embarrassing headline, but, connecting Green's goof with past Three Lions goalkeeping goofs, said, "ENGLAND were struck by the curse of the keepers as Robert Green's clanger handed the USA a point."

The Times, London's supposedly repsectable paper, but also tainted by Murdoch, gives the somewhat understated headline, "Green horror show hands draw to USA."

The Daily Express, a right-wing rag more obvious than any U.S. paper except maybe the New York Post, the Washington Times and New Hampshire's Union Leader, has already released its June 13 editions (it's 9:22 PM as I type this, making it 2:22 AM London time), and the front page says, "HIT AND MISS," the "hit" being Stevie G's goal; while the back page says, "CAPELLO TO AXE CLOWN GREEN." Secondary headline: "England won't keep calamity keeper." This, after David James, England's longtime Number 1, has frequently been called "Calamity James," and is knocking on the door of 40 years old. He is probably still a better option.

The Daily Telegraph, another right-wing rag, a.k.a. the Torygraph, quotes Bob Wilson, the English-born but Scotland-playing goalkeeper who backstopped Arsenal's 1971 Double-winning side, and later became one of the world's foremost goalkeeping coaches. Bob called Green's goof "a basic schoolboy error, a howler."

As an Arsenal fan, I have to admit, along with "Bill Buckner," I thought "Lukasz Fabianski."

"There are no excuses," Wilson said. "There were a couple of bounces en route, but it was just down to poor technique. It was a howler.

"You always need a second barrier as a goalkeeper. He almost shovelled it in with his hands. You can't blame the ball for this goal, or the pitch. It was awful, a basic schoolboy goalkeeping error.

"We always teach and talk about a second barrier in goalkeeping and he led with his hands and scooped it past him. A horror moment."

But Wilson doesn't blame Green alone. He goes after England's Italian-born manager, who must have had flashbacks of Italy's disastrous 1974 World Cup, the only one in which he played:

"It creates a huge problem for Fabio Capello, and lots of fingers will now be pointing at the manager.

"He still doesn't know who is the best of his three 'keepers. Rob Green was trusted with the Number 1 jersey and now the critics will be saying he should have gone with Joe Hart because statistically he had the best season.

"You could see the look of horror on the faces of all the players, but everyone will have spoken to him at half-time and given him their full support. The fact that it happened in the first half gave him the chance of redemption in the second 45 minutes.

"The error reminded me of Dan Lewis letting in the goal in the 1927 FA Cup final when Cardiff beat Arsenal, the only time the FA Cup went out of England. Lewis allowed the ball to slip out of his shiny jersey and into the net. The shot was almost identical."

Having recently gone over the Arsenal: The Official History DVD, that particular gaffe was fresh in my mind, and I thought of that, along with Buckner and "Flappy-handski." Supposedly, Lewis' shirt was new and slippery, and the ball just plain skidded under his armpit and into the net.

In the tradition of ESPN Classic, I give you...

The Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame Robert Green for England Failing to Defeat the U.S.A. at the 2010 World Cup

5. David James and Joe Hart. England's other choices weren't obviously better in the run-in. Making Green the choice of...

4. Fabio Capello. He picked Green.

3. England's Attack. In 97 minutes, one of the world's supposedly best teams scored only one goal.

2. The U.S. Defense. The game went 97 minutes, counting each half's injury time. They stopped Steven Gerrard for the last 93 minutes, and for the entire 97 minutes, they stopped Wayne Rooney and Frank Lampard; for most of the game stopped Emile Heskey; and ,for the last few minutes, stopped Heskey's replacement, the 6-foot-7 Tottenham bastard Peter Crouch.

1. Tim Howard. The opposing goalie was an absolute beast.

So... England are facing the same old story: Before the World Cup, the homeland press are calling them champions-to-be; after one bad group-stage game, they're spitting blood, or saying the sky is falling, or both.

But if I know the U.S. team (and I think I do), they'll be so proud of themselves over this that they'll clown their way through the Algeria and Slovenia games, and either blow a chance to finish 1st in their group, or even miss 2nd and fail to advance at all.

If the U.S. can beat Algeria, as they should, they'll advance no matter what happens against Slovenia. If they only get draws against both, and England beats both, and they draw against each other, that will leave the group standings as...

ENGLAND 7
U.S.A. 3
ALGERIA 2
SLOVENIA 2

And we advance, most likely to play Germany in the first knockout round. I don't want to lose to the Krauts... but we probably will.

But we proved a point to the English. And by the way, it's "soccer," not "football." You got a problem with that? Come and beat us!

As for those other Yankees, they beat the Houston Astros today, 9-3.

The Healing Begins

Yankees 15, Royals 6. Where were all these runs when we needed them in Minneapolis and Anaheim?

That's 16 wins for Mike Mussina. Who would've thought at the beginning of the season, after all the hype about The Great Johan Santana, that the best starting pitcher in New York this season would be the Moose?

A-Rod hit Number 544. Only 219 more to go. Not that this matters as much as any hits he may get between now and October 30 (which is when Game 7 of the World Series would be played, if it goes that far).

Hideki Matsui may be back tomorrow night as the Yankees begin a three-game set at the SkyDome -- excuse me, the Rogers Centre -- in Toronto. Joe Girardi says he'll limit Matsui to DH duty to save wear and tear on his knee. Man, I would love to see him come back and smack some horsehide around.

Phil Hughes and -- gasp, this is the big one, I'm coming, Elizabeth -- Carl Pavano both pitched yesterday. One or the other may start on Saturday night in Baltimore. If we can get anything out of either one the rest of the way, it's a plus. Much more so with Pavano, because Hughes is young and can bounce back more easily.

With Boston and Tampa dealing with their own injuries, there's still a chance. This old buzzard ain't givin' up on the 2008 Yankees.

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A lot of slobbering in the Tri-State media over Brett Favre's debut with the Jets. I guess they forgot that, A, the Jets lost; B, it was an exhibition game and didn't count anyway; C, there was a season a few years back where the Jets went 5-0 in the preseason and started the regular season off 1-4; and D, it's the Jets -- if the quarterback doesn't get hurt, his linemen will.

Favre may have made Jet fans hopeful, but he hasn't made the Jets relevant.

And the regular-season opener? Against the Miami Dolphins, with Bill Parcells as GM and the newly-signed Chad Pennington as starting quarterback. Uh-oh...

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The Olympics in Beijing have been everything the Chinese government wanted: Splashy, successful for their own athletes, and without major controversy.

Literally splashy, in the case of American swimmer Michael Phelps: Having won 6 Gold Medals in Athens, Greece in 2004, he has achieved his goal of winning a record 8 this time, surpassing the 7 won by another American swimmer, Mark Spitz, in Munich, Germany in 1972.

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The Great Premiership Experiment continues:

Newcastle United 1, Manchester United 1. At Old Trafford. That's an embarrassment for the defending chumps.

Chelsea 4, Portsmouth 0. As the saying goes, my "upset special" turned into an upset stomach.

Aston Villa 4, Manchester City 2. Not a surprise.

So my first-ever weekend of picking Premiership games ends 5 wins, 4 losses and 1 tie, counting Newcastle's tie of Man U as a loss.

Still, if "A tie is like kissing your sister," then Newcastle must feel like they kissed their sister's really hot best friend, while Man U must feel like they kissed their mother-in-law.