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The only
Husker in the Nebraska Football Hall of Fame as both a player and a coach was in
his office Tuesday afternoon in Athens, Ohio, and he probably shouldn’t have
been there. He was sick. So sick even his co-workers barely could hear him
speak. But that’s okay. Frank Solich
is still in great shape and still tough-minded, so no one was suggesting he go
home. And besides, even if he could talk, he would be the last guy in America to
toot his own horn, especially when it’s an historical day in a storied program.
It's extra meaningful, isn’t it, when an understudy becomes the first-ever coach
doubly anointed in the Nebraska Chapter of the National Football Foundation’s
Hall of Fame?
In some
ways, Solich’s silence was golden because he would not have covered the same ground Nebraska Athletic Director Tom Osborne chose to cover. Osborne was the one who
called Ohio’s head football coach to tell him that he was a member of Nebraska's 2012 Hall-of-Fame induction class, but this time the honor was as a coach. Twenty years earlier, Solich was in the 1992 HOF class as a player. That was six years before Solich succeeded Osborne as head coach, and the man who laid the groundwork for that was
more than willing to frame both the context and the result. “Frank had six good years here as a head coach,” Osborne
said. “He was very valuable as an assistant. He was a big part of whatever
success we had. He recruited such players as Mike Rozier, Irving Fryar
and many, many others. Sometimes, a head coach gets all the credit and sometimes
all the blame. But in reality, the assistant coaches make a huge contribution,
and the reason I felt Frank would be a logical successor was because of the
contributions he made over a long period of time.”
Most Spirited Standing Ovation in
Southeast History
Solich was a
key cog in the Nebraska football machine for 29 years – four as a player and 25
as a coach. A member of Bob Devaney’s
first recruiting class in 1962, Solich set Nebraska’s single-game rushing
record with a 204-yard game against Air Force in 1965, the same year he became
an All-Big Eight fullback. Osborne watched Solich coach 13 highly productive
seasons as a high school coach in Nebraska. He won back-to-back state
championships at Lincoln Southeast in 1976 and ’77 and when he returned last
January to become a member of Southeast’s Hall of Fame, about 230 of his most
loyal supporters gave him the most spirited standing ovation in the history of
that event.
Of course Nebraska
fans would give Solich a Memorial Stadium roar this fall if he could skip one of his own games and be
introduced with the 2012 Hall-of-Fame class when Nebraska
hosts Idaho State. But that isn’t going to happen after Solich led Ohio to its
first-ever bowl win with a 24-23 escape from Utah State in Boise’s 2011 Potato
Bowl.
Osborne was
glued to his television set watching that game in Lincoln. Solich coached Nebraska’s
freshman team to a 19-1 record while working for Osborne. Once he was promoted
to NU’s full-time varsity staff, the Huskers led the nation in rushing nine
times in Solich’s 15 seasons as Nebraska’s running backs coach. Solich also coached at
least one first-team all-conference running back in 13 of those 15 seasons.
Osborne’s Right-Hand Man for Three
National Titles
Don’t forget
that Frank Solich was also Osborne’s assistant head coach for all three of his
national championship teams. “Frank understands football, and he relates to all the players,” Osborne told me last week before leaving for a well deserved
fishing vacation. “Frank’s a hard worker, and he has great organizational
skills. When he was here, he ran our football camps and that takes some doing.
He also ran our coaches’ clinics, and I thought he had the ingredients to be a good
head coach.”
Osborne
still marvels at Solich’s 58-19 record in his six seasons as NU’s head coach
after replacing Osborne. “That’s a winning percentage very near 76 percent
(.753 to be exact),” Osborne pointed out. “Frank coached six bowl teams,
including two in what would now be BCS bowls (one Rose and one Fiesta, plus two
Alamo Bowls, one Holiday Bowl and one Independence Bowl). He won a Big 12
championship, and he played for the national championship.”
And that brings
us to Osborne’s core message regarding Solich’s rightful place in Nebraska
football history. “If you look across the world of college athletics in a
6-year period, Frank was in pretty fast company,” Osborne said. “His winning
percentage would be the equal to what Bear Bryant, Woody Hayes and some of the
great coaches in the game achieved.”
Since
Osborne was the one who set the bar that created the greatest of expectations, it’s only
fitting that Nebraska’s Hall-of-Fame coach and soon to be 6-year
athletic director explains what he
understands, but very few others don't.
Osborne Knows What It’s like Following
a Legend
“The
unfortunate thing was Frank followed five years that were pretty unusual,”
Osborne said, figuring I had a full grasp of his unprecedented 60-3 record from 1993 to ’97
– an almost unfathomable prelude to Solich taking over those golden reins.
“That 5-year
record wasn’t going to replicate itself no matter who the coach was,” Osborne
said. “The odds of that happening were very, very slim. So that was the
yardstick by which many people measured Frank.”
If anyone
can empathize with that, Tom Osborne can. “It was a little bit like it was when
I took over for Bob Devaney,” he said. “In Bob’s last three years, he only lost
a total of two games, and he won two national championships, plus three
straight Orange Bowls. So that was the yardstick.”
In This Business, It’s what Have You
Done Lately?
Osborne has
known for half a century what business he’s in and what business Frank is still
in. “This is always the business of ‘What have you done lately?’” Osborne said.
“When you’re measured against what was done lately before you get there, it’s
difficult. By almost any measure, Frank did a very good job at Nebraska, and
he’s done a very good job at Ohio. That was not an easy job that he took over. Yet he’s done things there that haven’t been done before. So
there’s no question in my mind that Frank is a very, very good football coach.”
By whatever
yardstick you choose to measure.
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