What Bob Devaney Saw in Tom Osborne

If you wanted to make the case that God’s a Cornhusker, there might not be a better place to start than here: Tom Osborne arrived on Nebraska’s campus as a young graduate student in pursuit of a PhD within a month of Bob Devaney taking over as the Huskers’ head football coach.

Call it luck, call it fate, call it divine intervention: the partnership of Devaney and Osborne would transform Nebraska football forever. 

This week, on the Common Fan Podcast, we launched a series of episodes focused on Osborne’s coaching career. The first episode, The Fateful Promotion, focuses on Osborne’s time as an assistant to Devaney, with a specific focus on Devaney’s decision to promote TO to offensive coordinator in 1968. One could argue that one decision did more to influence the next 50 years of Nebraska football than anything else. More on that in a moment. 

Thanks to Omaha World Herald reporter Henry Cordes for joining us for this episode. Henry’s books, Devaney: Birth of a Dynasty, and Unbeatable: Tom Osborne and the Greatest Era of Nebraska Football, are definitive works about Nebraska’s best teams, and must-reads for any die hard Husker fan. We were also joined by Brandon Vogel of the Counter Read Newsletter, which is some of the best Husker content you can find anywhere. 

This article will dive into the significance of Osborne’s promotion to offensive coordinator in 1968. We hope you’ll watch the entire episode, during which we discuss Osorne’s time in the NFL, his early days straddling graduate school and football coaching, and his ultimate elevation on Devaney’s staff. 

The Early Years

Part of the secret sauce that made Devaney so successful was that he was a great evaluator of people. That trait would serve him well, not just when it came to football talent, but also when it came to coaches. 

Osborne, meanwhile, wasn’t totally sure he wanted to go into coaching. He’d played in the NFL, then returned to Lincoln to pursue a doctorate in educational psychology. But he wasn’t ready to let go of football, and he wrote Devaney a letter asking if there was some way he could help the team. As Henry told us, Devaney didn’t have any assistant coach openings, but he offered Osborne a deal: move into a dorm full of rowdy Husker players, restore order, and in return, he could eat at the training table.

That was the start.

Osborne would spend his first few years helping the team in numerous capacities, while also pursuing his PhD and teaching undergraduate courses. As his studies concluded, he was even approached about an administrative position with the University. Thankfully for all Husker football fans, he decided to pick football.

The Fateful Promotion

Osborne clearly distinguished himself early on; Henry shared that Devaney once said he had identified Osborne as a potential successor as early as 1964. TO was just different. He was deliberate. Analytical. Open-minded. And he devoured film study, like a hungry Midwesterner attacking corn on the cob at a summer picnic. 

His first role as a full time assistant was coaching ends and receivers. But the defining moment came in 1968. 

The Huskers had suffered back-to-back 6-4 seasons in 1967 and 1968, failing to get to a bowl game in both years (there were a lot fewer bowl games in those days). Compared to Devaney’s first five seasons, during which the Big Red went an incredible 47-8 and went to a bowl game every year, there was significant grumbling among the fan base after consecutive mediocre seasons. 

Henry even mentioned the legend about petitions being circulated in Omaha, urging the firing of Devaney as head coach. While the existence of such petitions has been discussed but never confirmed, Devaney knew the status quo could not continue, and he completely overhauled every aspect of his program. Perhaps the boldest among the many changes he implemented were to the coaching staff. He elevated two of his youngest assistants—Osborne and Monte Kiffin—to be Nebraska’s offensive and defensive coordinators.

It’s incredible to think that Kiffin, one of the greatest defensive minds of all time, and Osborne, widely acknowledged as an offensive genius, were both already on Devaney’s staff. Credit to Devaney for pulling the trigger. While they would both go on to have highly successful coaching careers, they were completely unknown to anyone outside of Lincoln.

TO’s Impact

Osborne was given carte blanche over the offense. He made numerous changes, and took over play-calling duties as well. He started recruiting nationwide. And, in an era when football coaches were skeptical of weight lifting because they believed it would make players slower, he was instrumental in convincing Devaney to hire an injured pole vaulter named Boyd Eppley as the first ever strength coach in college football history. 

The results were immediate. The 1969 team improved drastically on both sides of the ball, and bounced back with a 9-2 record and a share of the Big 8 title. The 1970 and 1971 teams, of course, would win national championships. 

What Devaney saw in Osborne was a rare combination: intellectual rigor, competitive fire, and a willingness to experiment and try new things. He wasn’t loud, but he was a leader. He wasn’t flashy, but he was an innovator. As Henry told us, “There are five national championships at Nebraska. The first one happened two years after TO completely overhauled the offense, and probably does not happen if that had not occured.” He went on to say, “I can make a strong case that the national championship era of Nebraska football can largely be traced to one man, and we know who that is.” 

Devaney, of course, deserves significant credit for all that he accomplished at Nebraska, up to and including making the right decisions with his coaching staff. But perhaps Brandon summed it up best: “It’s quite clear that in terms of coaching, Bob Devaney was a master craftsman. It just so happened that his apprentice was even better.”

Let us know what you think, Common Fans. We’d love to hear your contribution to this discussion. Send us an email at commonfangbr@gmail.com, or message us on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. 

PODCAST EPISODE: TO: The Fateful Promotion

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