Coaching changes are one, but not the only, cause of college power shifts.
By TOM JONES
Published November 25, 2004
Ten years ago - the 1994 college football season - the debate was who should be No. 1.
Undefeated Nebraska or undefeated Penn State?
This was pre-BCS, meaning the top two teams did not necessarily meet for the national championship. Nebraska won the Orange Bowl and was voted No. 1. Penn State won the Rose Bowl and finished second. Colorado was third. The debate over who should have been No. 1 helped steer the NCAA to a national championship game.
Still, think back 10 years, who was better: Nebraska or Penn State?
Ten years later, today, the question about Nebraska and Penn State isn't which program is better, but which is worse.
Hard times have come to Lincoln and State College. These two mighty programs, along with others such as Colorado, Notre Dame, Alabama, Washington and UCLA, have fallen from the ranks of the elite. Suddenly, finishing above .500 and qualifying for a mid December bowl game is considered a success where it once would have been an embarrassment.
Penn State finished its season last week with a 4-7 record, its fourth losing season in the past five and a year after going 3-9. Nebraska sits at 5-5, including a 70-10 loss to Texas Tech, the worst in the 114-year history of the program. The Cornhuskers could miss a bowl and likely won't finished ranked for the second time in three seasons.
How does it happen? How does a program so dominant for so long fall so far?
"It's not sudden, it's a gradual erosion," said former Alabama coach Bill Curry, an analyst for ESPN. "The magic that was perceived begins to slip away. You lose the magic, and there might be several reasons. But once it's gone, it's hard to get back."
Coaching changes have stalled the Cornhuskers, Crimson Tide and Irish. Scandal has ripped through Colorado and Washington. And what was once the unthinkable - calling for the head of legendary Penn State coach Joe Paterno - is now a topic of conversation from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia.
"When the glamour starts to slip a little bit," Curry said, "the top players you used to get start to get syphoned off by other programs."
It's easy to see what happened with Nebraska. Tom Osborne, on the short list of all-time great coaches, left to go into politics and left shoes too big to fill. Despite compiling a 58-19 record, Osborne's successor, Frank Solich, was fired after six seasons because his teams couldn't live up to Osborne's legacy.
In 25 seasons, Osborne's teams finished in the top 10 of the AP poll an incredible 18 times, including two national championships and three undefeated seasons. Pound for pound, year in and year out, there might not have been a better program in the country than Nebraska during Osborne's reign (1973-97).
Since Osborne left, Nebraska has managed to keep its head above water, but it clearly isn't the dominating program of the 1980s and 1990s.
"It used to be that everyone was down on Osborne, saying he couldn't win the big one," said Curry, who came after Bear Bryant at Alabama and knows what it's like to coach after a legend. "Then he wins and now he is treated like a god in Nebraska. Coming after him is difficult. It's difficult to change human perception, and the perception is no one can be like coach Osborne. That makes things tough at Nebraska."
Penn State's fall has been even more profound, shocking and puzzling. Unlike Nebraska or Washington or BYU, which lost long-time successful coaches who were the heart, soul and face of the program, the Nittany Lions still have Paterno.
Penn State went 5-5 in 1966, Paterno's first season. But then the Nittany Lions went 30-2-1 over the next three seasons, including back-to-back undefeated seasons in 1968 and 1969. That was the start of one of the most impressive runs in college football history.
From 1967 through 1999, Penn State had one losing season. It went undefeated five times and could have argued for three or four national championships instead of the two it won. Five other times, it lost only once.
During that 33-year span, Penn State finished in the AP Top 10 26 times, including 12 times in the Top 5. The program churned out All-Americans, Heisman candidates and first-round NFL picks.
Then: thud.
It's rare that the fall of a sports dynasty can be traced to one moment, but Penn State's demise can be found on Nov. 6, 1999, homecoming at Beaver Stadium. The Nittany Lions went into the game as the top-ranked team in the nation with a 9-0 record, including a gutty last-minute win at Miami. But Minnesota upset Penn State 24-23 on a last-second field goal, and Penn State lost its next two.
Starting with that Minnesota game, Penn State has gone 27-36. That includes 2002, when it went 9-4 and finished 16th in the AP poll, but that is deceiving. That year, Penn State played five teams that finished ranked in the Top 25 and went 1-4, beating only Virginia, which finished 22nd.
It hasn't beaten a ranked team since, and many blame Paterno for hanging on too long and running the program he built into the ground.
"I know a lot of people have blamed it on coach Paterno, that the game has passed him by, but I don't think that is the case," said former Penn State quarterback Todd Blackledge, now an analyst for CBS. "He can still coach as well as ever. I just don't think they have the horses to run with the Michigans and Ohio States. ... Ultimately, it might come down to recruiting."
The recruiting game has changed for Penn State. Not so long ago, Penn State scooped up most of the talent from football-rich Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and parts of Ohio. But then Penn State moved to the Big Ten in 1993.
"That opened up Pennsylvania and other places that Penn State used to own to other Big Ten schools like Michigan and Ohio State," Blackledge said. "Penn State started losing kids to other schools."
It's also likely that Paterno's age (he turns 78 next month) is used against him by schools recruiting against Penn State.
"You know recruiters," Curry said, "go in there and say, "Hey, we all love coach Paterno, but do you know long he is going to stay? Do you want to take that chance of him leaving?' That gets the kid and mom and dad thinking."
But Blackledge isn't buying that Paterno is to blame.
"No one - not the fans, not me, not anyone who has played at Penn State - cares more about that program than coach Paterno," Blackledge said. "He still has that enthusiasm. He wants to leave the program in good shape, and I think that he sees next season as being his best chance to have that type of team."
There is hope in Happy Valley. The Nittany Lions and Auburn are the only Division I-A schools who have not allowed more than 21 points in a game this season, and most of Penn State's defense will return. The feeling is that Penn State should be good, and Paterno plans to stick around to pull it out of the mire.
"I am looking to get this program back to where it belongs," Paterno said earlier this season.
Also giving Penn State hope is other powerhouses that have hit the skids and rebounded to glory.
The best examples are the teams that would play for the national championship if the regular season ended today. Oklahoma hit a pothole in the 1990s, going 23-33-1 from 1994-98, none of them winning seasons. Southern Cal didn't finish a season ranked in the Top 25 from 1996 through 2001 before it returned to elite status under coach Pete Carroll.
Some schools have had brief hiccups: Miami went 5-6 in 1997. Some schools are on a year-by-year roller coaster: Alabama, for example, went 10-3, 4-7, 7-5, 10-3, 3-8 and 7-5 from 1996 to 2001. Other schools such as Colorado, Washington and BYU are consistently inconsistent, but then again, those programs don't have anything close to the tradition of Nebraska and Penn State.
"I'm not sure, though, that Penn State can ever have that dominance again," Blackledge said. "Not if they continue to not get the same talent they used to get."
But Paterno marches on.
"I don't want to hang around here and pull Penn State down," Paterno said earlier this season. "I could walk out of this thing. ... It has nothing to do with Joe Paterno unless Joe Paterno feels he can't get the job done. I think about it, but I really feel comfortable as long as I can go to practice and have some enthusiasm. I don't see any reason to say, "I am going to get out of here this year, next year or what year.' I don't mean that to be cocky, stubborn or anything like that. I am just trying to do what is right."
Information from Times wire services was used in this report.
