Morris: Pelini’s progress is new history lesson

ORLANDO

MORE THAN A few major programs would happily embrace Nebraska’s irrelevancy of late on the national college football scene. Its opponent Monday in the Capital One Bowl is one.

When it comes to Nebraska football, it is all about perspective.

USC enters the game in a celebratory mood having posted the second 10-win season in program history. The Gamecocks are talking about making more history by winning 11 games in a season for the first time.

Nebraska is in search of its 10th win, but that mark represents the standard for the Cornhuskers over the years. That is the minimum number of wins expected each and every season for Nebraska, which already counts 26 seasons of 10 or more wins in its storied history.

Yet the most common refrain from coast to coast is that Nebraska no longer is among the nation’s elite programs. It no longer resides in the upper tier of college football with the Alabamas and LSUs, and to a lesser extent the Penn States, Wisconsins and Oregons.

Certainly those who did not live through Nebraska’s glory years recognize the program’s slide of late. That came through with the comments of USC quarterback Connor Shaw when he first learned the Gamecocks would play Nebraska.

“When you think of Nebraska, you think of tradition,” Shaw said. “They used to be a powerhouse and still are a very good ball team.”

Heck, even the Nebraska media guide suggests the Cornhuskers program under fourth-year coach Bo Pelini is “resurging.” The implication is that Nebraska fell completely off the college football map as the result of an infestation of losing football.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

What essentially happened is that Nebraska became like every other program in the country. The Cornhuskers found it impossible to sustain a level of success that few had ever attained in the history of the sport.

From 1962 through 1972 under coach Bob Devaney, Nebraska won two national championships and 101 games against 20 losses and two ties. His hand-picked successor, Tom Osborne, went 255-49-3 from 1973 through 1997. His final five teams won 60 of 63 games and captured national titles in 1994, ’95 and ’97.

Then came the mighty fall, if you want to call it that. Under coaches Frank Solich and Bill Callahan from 1998 through 2007, Nebraska suffered through a 7-7 season (2002) and a pair of losing seasons (5-6 in 2004 and 5-7 in 2007). Those seasons somehow overshadowed a 12-1 record in 1999 and an 11-2 mark two years later when Nebraska lost to Miami for the national championship.

Enter Bo Pelini, who, following practice Friday at Freedom High, said part of the allure to being the coach at Nebraska was returning the Cornhuskers to being a national power.

Pelini knew he had an ever-faithful fan base at Nebraska, where 318 consecutive home games have played to sellout crowds. He sold those fans on the idea that returning the program to the Nebraska of old meant going through a “process.”

“We talk about how success is a process every day,” Pelini said. “You’ve got to earn it every day. We talk about it all the time. There are signs up all over our facility, ‘Do What You Have to Do,’ ‘Compete Every Day.’

“It can’t be a some-of-the-time thing. It’s an every day thing. That’s our motto, that’s our attitude and our players live it. It’s not just on the football field, it’s off the field, in academics, socially, how you represent the program in everything.”

So far, so good. Pelini’s first three Nebraska teams earned at least a share of a Big 12 Conference division title, once losing the conference championship game to Texas and another time to Oklahoma. Those teams went 9-4, 10-4 and 10-4.

Nebraska moved to the Big Ten for this season and found the new terrain somewhat difficult to navigate with a 5-3 conference record that included a quality win over Michigan State and blowout losses to Wisconsin and Michigan.

It appears Pelini’s process has Nebraska inching closer to regaining national prominence. Once attained, Nebraska’s future will finally meet its past.