USA Today: 25 years later, Tom Osborne’s Gutsy Call Still Stands Up

Mike Lopresti revisits the classic 1984 Orange Bowl in today’s USA Today:

"

Earlier that day, No. 2 Texas and No. 4 Illinois both lost their bowl games. That night, No. 3 Auburn, already with a loss, struggled to get past Michigan 9-7. So the Orange Bowl would settle everything.

Miami jumped to a 17-0 lead, Nebraska pulled even. Miami went ahead 31-17, with Rozier injured and out of the game.

The Cornhuskers rallied, and when Jeff Smith took an option pitch from Gill on fourth and 8 and ran 24 yards for a touchdown to make it 31-30 with 42 seconds left, the smart move seemed clear.

This was the age before overtime. Kick the PAT. Take the tie. A 31-31 score on Miami’s home field, with your Heisman winner injured and your 12-0-1 record the only one in the land without a defeat — the voters would forgive. That’d be good enough.

“Our goal was to go 13-0,” Gill said. “I would have been shocked or stunned if we had not gone for two.“

The play was a rollout right, with Gill looking for a quick pass to Smith. But Miami safety Ken Calhoun batted it away. You can still see it today on YouTube.

On that night, Tom Osborne had never won a national championship. He understood the emptiness of coming close. No one could have really blamed him for taking the tie.

He never even blinked.

“It wasn’t an excruciating decision. I always felt if you were going to play for a championship, you had to win the game,” he said. “I voted in the coaches’ poll and I would not vote for a coach who settled for a tie.“

And his players?

“I know they had a lot of confidence in their abilities. They would have always wondered if we hadn’t tried.”

“I’m not saying that out of stubbornness. Sometimes you take a point of view and you’re unwilling to ever say, ‘I was wrong.’ But I’ve always believed there’s more to the game than winning. I think I probably would have regretted settling for a tie.”

It took 11 more years for Osborne to win a national championship. He retired as a football saint in Nebraska with a hat trick of titles and a 255-49-3 record. Got himself elected to Congress. Now is back as athletic director.

His victories make him immortal, out there among the silos in the corn belt. But the gamble he took and the price he paid is crucial to his legacy, or should be.

When the mail poured in afterward, some supported him, some did not. “There were many people devastated we didn’t win the national championship,” he said. “But it wasn’t anything I couldn’t live with.”

Twenty-five years later, there has still never been a more honorable defeat.

"