News Article: Which Dynasty Is More Impressive - Alabama Or Nebraska?
- Thread starter selmaborntidefan
- Start date
I never quite got the number of Heisman Trophy winners argument. Alabama did not have a Heisman Trophy winner till 2009 and Mark Ingram. Did that lessen Alabama's football program up until that point???
Notre Dame's Paul Hornung won the Heisman Trophy on a team with a losing record, but that adds to Notre Dame's mystique or is it just their public relations machine's capability.
TideFan, this got me to thinking. Does this same way of thinking apply to Texas 2005 as how good they were as they beat a great USC team going for an unprecedented three-peat as national champion?
http://www.espn.com/college-footbal...e-football-national-champions-20-years-ranked
Does it make ANY sense that the greatest program of all-time didn't have the best player in CFB at LEAST once?
That's not true in the concrete, but it IS in the abstract view of things.
Heisman's prior to about 15 years ago were disgusting jokes. Now they're sometimes disgusting jokes, sometimes amusing jokes - and occasionally they get the right guy.
Does the name Troy Davis ring a bell with anyone? No? Troy Davis is the only CFB running back to top 2,000 yards rushing in consecutive seasons. He finished 5th in the Heisman voting to Eddie George in 1995 despite having about 100 yards more rushing for a terrible team that didn't have 1/10 the offensive line George did. (I'm not arguing George was the wrong selection, I'm just pointing this out to set up the finisher). In 1996, he topped 2,000 yards again and finished second to Danny Woeful from Florida.
He was never a serious contender in large part due to playing for 3-8 teams in Ames, Iowa.
However.....take those same stats and put Davis on a 3-8 Notre Dame.......and bet the mortgage he wins the Heimsan. Hell, Manti Teo proves that. He wasn't even the best player on that defense - but he got the hype, and he played for Notre Dame.
Troy Davis was also the first 2000 yard rusher to not win the Heisman. I remember him well, and the debate over him deserving it.
You are correct about him being a sure Heisman winner if we could have placed him on a losing Notre Dame team.
Ive never got the love for the 90's Nebraska teams. Part of me believes makes me believe it I believe is because the 80's and early 90's must have been just terrible with Miami running the show so they needed a "classy" team to rule the decade. The 90's Nebraska run is just that.. a run that has one championship that Osborne was gifted (94) and one in which a horribly illegal play results in a championship (97). Nebraska's run has no business being compared to Alabama's dynasty.
The problem with Davis, of course, is......"well despite all that, his team was still 3-8."
TRUE!!! I'm okay with that argument..........but that argument never applies to Notre Dame.
Well I guess Lawerence Phillips and Christian Peter were the face of the “classy image” CTO promoted. I’m sure there were probably 90% of players who did the right thing but like OU in the 80’s and NU in the 90’s, they had plenty of thugs like Miami and FSU did. They were just in the Midwest where nobody gave a crap. It seems like Tom Osborne was like the Bobby Bowden of the Big 8/12.
Everyone tended to try ignoring anything negative about Osborne or Nebraska, but put Miami on full blast.
Bobby and Tom were just those guys that couldn’t get by Miami in the 80’s and people tended to feel sorry for them to the extent of not harping as hard on things they had in common with Miami.
Last edited:
Miami likes to play the victim there......the part they forget is that there is a mammoth difference in:
a) talking trash in the huddle or down on the field where nobody hears it
VS
b) getting up in front of a national audience and doing the same thing
Nebraska didn't show up at the Fiesta Bowl wearing combat fatigues and then walk out.
Nebraska wasn't flagged for over 200 yards in penalties in a one-sided Cotton Bowl.
There's ONE point where I agree Miami got a raw deal.
Nebraska or OU would go hang 60 points on teams routinely - "wow, what a great team!"
Miami would win, 46-14, and the press would say, "Why did you run up the score?"
Prior to the Fiesta Bowl against Florida, Osborne was asked about that whole thing. He said that he had 140 model athletes and six.....well, he didn't use the term but "bad apples" that influenced what the rest of the country thought about his program. Right up until Lawrence Phillips, Osborne was "this is what college football should be" in the punditry.
I'm willing to spot Osborne those two guys simply because otherwise they were decent enough guys.
OK, Irving Fryar.......
And Osborne DID at least banish Phillips from playing for several weeks. By contrast, Jimmy Johnson would defend his players's behavior as normal and basically suggest you were a racist if you didn't agree.
Neither of these dudes, though, has anything on the enabling of Joe Paterno.........
Well Iowa State was and still is basically like a Mississippi State. You could make a case that Dak Prescott deserved the Heisman also.
Heck even when Nebraska went 60-3 from 1993-1997 they didn’t produce a single Heisman winner.
1994- Phillips losses out to Rahsaan Salaam. Finishing 8th place.
1995- Tommie Frazier finishes 2nd behind Eddie George and obviously ahead of Troy Davis.
1997- Amhan Green has 278 carries for 1877 yards and 22 TD’s & not a single Heisman Vote. Scott Frost doesn’t even have a single Heisman vote either yet somehow Eric Crouch manages to win it 4 years later.
I really wasn’t talking about on the field antics. I was more talking about how if one Miami player got arrested “ they are all thugs”, but if a Nebraska player like Phillips got arrested “ Phillips is a huge exception to the players at Nebraska”.
Then if there was a pay for play player at Miami “ they are all paid” but if it was at FSU “ some coach was just paying for a guy’s meal ticket.”
My point is Osborne and Bowden got a hell amount of more leeway than Johnson and Erickson in the media for things.
Osborne got torched on Lawrence Phillips......after he had sat him for seven weeks.
Bowden DID suspend Peter Warrick for two games that probably cost him the Heisman.
Johnson got on the media's bad side for running up the score against Notre Dame in 1985. I'm not saying he SHOULD have.......but he did.
Furthermore, the NCAA investigation DID prove rampant cheating at Miami.
Violations included more than $223,000 of impermissible financial aid dispensed among 141 football players and $188,000 in the three other sports as well as extra benefits totaling more than $212,000, the NCAA said.
The NCAA also found that Miami football players from 1986 to '92 were paid between $20 and $200 for touchdowns and vicious hits.
Nothing like that ever came out of Nebraska or FSU.
I'm not disagreeing with your basic point that Osborne (and Paterno as well) got some slack from the media, but the situations were also quite different.
Another school that got NO SLACK from the press was Colorado. Just weeks before Sal Aunese was diagnosed with terminal cancer, SI ran a story (2/27/89) titled "What Price Glory" that documented the arrest of two dozen Buffs players in three years. (The fact Rick Reilly wrote the article and despises Christians like Bill McCartney suggests to me that that was the motivation of the story......because we've had our own trouble with arrests even under the disciplined Saban).
Osborne kept a gun that was used in a felony from the police in his desk.
From:
https://www.si.com/vault/1995/09/25...y-in-the-man-who-runs-the-program-tom-osborne
[FONT="]"When the chief of police and I learned that a gun wanted in[/FONT]
[FONT="]connection with a felony shooting was in Osborne's possession[/FONT]
[FONT="]when it should have been immediately turned over to the police,[/FONT]
[FONT="]then you have evidence that is being withheld," Lacey says.
[/FONT]Another article that brings up Christian Peter abusing women and kept right on playing for Nebraska.
From:
https://sports.vice.com/en_us/artic...d-the-cornhuskers-team-that-no-one-could-beat
Selma, how is Paterno enabling when the courts ruled there was no conspiracy at Penn State? Sandusky was no longer on his staff in 2001 when McQueary told him about what he heard.
All the charges related to a cover-up against Penn State administrators were either dropped, dismissed, or adjudicated not guilty. All cover-up related charges were not guilty. On Jan. 22, 2016, the PA Superior Court dismissed a total of eight charges, including charges of perjury, obstruction of justice & conspiracy against both Spanier & Schultz, and charges of obstruction & conspiracy against Curley.
The time they got in prison was for child endangerment not a cover-up. What is mind boggling to me, is they went to the CEO of The Second Mile, Dr. Jack Raykovitz, a child psychologist and a mandated reporter, Curley told him what they knew, and Raykovitz, as Sandusky's boss with The Second Mile, told Sandusky to wear swim trunks next time. How does a mandated reporter who was told the information and didn't do anything not get charged but three school administrators do?
There was also another mandated reporter involved, Dr. Dranov, a family friend of McQueary, and McQueary told his father and Dranov what he heard, before being advised to go to Paterno, and Dranov doesn't get charged with anything? Mandated reporters who were told what supposedly took place and no charges against them? No charges against the Second Mile who were funneling kids to Sandusky? How do they skate unless politically protected?
You may remember Coach Saban said he would have done what Paterno did and report it up the chain and what Paterno did is now the NCAA guidelines for handling sexual assaults.
https://onwardstate.com/2014/09/05/...-investigations-paterno-supporters-criticize/
Check out this story, written by Sara Ganim, the reporter who broke the news about the Sandusky scandal. She praised Paterno.
https://www.pennlive.com/midstate/2011/11/paterno_praised_for_acting_app.html
The PA deputy attorney general, Frank Fina, who led the investigation into the Sandusky scandal said there was no evidence that Paterno participated in a cover-up.
https://onwardstate.com/2013/09/04/...-no-evidence-paterno-participated-in-coverup/
http://www.bigtrial.net/2017/04/federal-agent-no-sex-scandal-at-penn.html
I don't buy that a guy who yelled at kids and professors to not walk on the grass, made his football players go to classes and kept starters from playing in games and bowl games for missing classes (that's hardly a win at all cost coach), would cover up or enable a pedophile to protect his football program. Paterno didn't care for Sandusky personally and I doubt Paterno's ego would let him think Sandusky was irreplaceable.
New Posts
-
SIAP there was an article that Joe K interviewed for assistant coach
- Latest: CrimsonTitles
-
-
-
-
Latest threads
-
-
SIAP there was an article that Joe K interviewed for assistant coach
- Started by mlingerfelt31
- Replies: 11
-
Final Home Midweek for Alabama Brings Samford to The Joe- Started by Diamond Tide
- Replies: 0
-
-
-
