I'm not putting a whole lot of effort into this. The year Osborne reinstated Phillips after hitting his girlfriend, weren't Damon Benning and James Sims also arrested for domestic abuse, wasn't Riley Washington charged with attempted second-degree murder, and wasn't Tyrone Williams charged with firing shots into an occupied car?
"Then was beaten in its bowl game" -- Nebraska's record in its last 15 Bowl games as a Big 8 team was 5 and 10, wasn't it? Trying to find the figures, but weren't 8 of those 10 losses to teams with worse rankings in the AP?
Nebraska was a very,very good football program in a conference that was sometimes a two-program conference (although both very good program), and sometimes only a one-program conference, otherwise filled with very, very, very mediocre teams at best. It never had to prove itself five or six times a year against very good opponents. It never had to play teams with the speed of a Miami, FSU, or PAC 10 team until a bowl game (and then we all know what generally happened, until the criminals hit the field).
For the past 25 year, Nebraska can't win its bowl games with the regularity a good team should. A great state. A great university. 99+% of the kids on the teams over the last twenty years are probably the salt of the earth. It has a great program. It just gets overrated because people consider its regular season romps against Our Lady of the Cornfield instead of looking at its record against ranked opponents and bowl game opponents.
I need to bump for later refutal or acknowledgement.
before 1988 Nebraska had a winning bowl record, from 1988 to 1994 they lost 7 in a row all to Florida teams, except for Georigia Tech which is whee NU got its stigma from. 4 of them were for the NAtional Championship or produced the national champion.
Nebraska is 21-21 in bowl games. They won 5 national titles and played for 6 others, other losses produced the national champion even if NU wasnt playing for it. How many teams can claim that in the last 42 years? I would rather lose to the national champion than anybody else,if I was to lose.