Our Honor Defend

I have avoided this whole expansion discussion as if it were the plague.  However, after watching Dan Beebe willingly and repeatedly sending signals that he would like to destroy the conference over which he presides, it was hard not to take notice of the recent reports that Nebraska will very likely leave the Big 12 and join the Big Ten.  It is a move that could be official by Friday.  This move, by itself, should be the first domino to fall in what will invariably be the ultimate destruction of the Big 12, complete with the suggestion that the Pac 10 is wanting to pilfer six of the conference’s college football moneymakers.  A major realignment of college football and the BCS will likely follow.  Those consequences are important, but I focus on a different topic altogether.  Preliminary expansion discussion made reference to programs that I wasn’t too thrilled about, namely Rutgers and Syracuse.  Notre Dame was always the pipe dream and Missouri entered discussion as well.  These may eventually happen.  Nebraska is a bit of a surprise.  One may wonder if it is a logical fit for the Buckeyes to be playing in the same conference as a program that will be the most remote conference opponent.  Actually, plenty events and people link the Buckeyes and Cornhuskers in the college football landscape and I discuss these connections below.

The matriculation of Nebraska to the Big Ten comes not too far removed from recent articles discussing the connection between the programs as they stand now.  For one, Bo Pelini, the current head coach of the Cornhuskers football program, is an Ohio State graduate.  The Youngstown Cardinal Mooney grad was one of Earle Bruce’s last recruits and a special teamer on the 1987 team.  He finished as a starting safety, graduating after the 1990 season.  Pelini became a graduate assistant under Hayden Fry, took a few assistant jobs in the NFL and later established himself as a defensive coordinator at Nebraska and LSU.  He left the bayou after the 2007 season to take over the program at Lincoln.  These topics, and more, came up in this article detailing Osborne’s invitation to Tressel to come tour the program and give a speech at a Fellowship of Christian Athletes function.  Pelini later returned the favor, giving a speech at a coaching clinic at Ohio State.

The two programs have only met twice on the actual field of play, even though this was a dream matchup in early November of the 1995 season¹ when Tommie Frazier and Eddie George were running wild over college football.  These clashes occurred in the 1955 and 1956 season.  Both games were in Columbus and both games were Ohio State victories (28-20 in 1955, 34-7 in 1956).  The first game of the series is worth highlighting.  The 1955 game against Nebraska was the season opener and proved to be every bit the thriller that college football fans would want.  Nebraska appeared to have the upper hand early.  Coached by Lancaster, Ohio native Bill Glassford, the Cornhuskers took the early lead.  The Cornhuskers intercepted an option pitch in the Ohio State backfield and housed it 87 yards later.  Though the Cornhuskers made the Buckeyes pay with a turnover here, Nebraska’s four turnovers on the game — the last of which was a game-ending interception — was crucial in lifting the Buckeyes to the victory.  A fellow by the name of Howard “Hopalong” Cassady was also important here.  He scored the Buckeyes’ first three touchdowns and broke off a 47 yard run to the Nebraska 2 yard line that eventually gave the Buckeyes their fourth touchdown of the game.  His 170 yards were more than Nebraska’s combined efforts for the game.  His three touchdowns also broke Chic Harley’s career rushing touchdown mark for the Buckeyes.  It proved to be an important stepping stone for Cassady.  He finished the 1955 season with the Maxwell Award, the Big Ten Player of the Year award and the Heisman Trophy.

The most important link between both programs is clearly Tippy Dye, who may be the only the person that will ever hold the distinction of being not just involved, but legendary, in the lore of these two tradition-laden programs.  His Ohio State credentials are readily apparent.  He was a three sport athlete for the Buckeyes, lettering in football, baseball and basketball.  He was all conference in basketball, returning to Ohio State after his pro football days to coach the Buckeye basketball team before leaving for Washington in 1950.  His football credentials may ring a bell.  He quarterbacked the Buckeyes from 1934 to 1936, famously holding the distinction to be the first Buckeye quarterback to beat Michigan three times.  This was a point of conversation during the 2006 season, as Troy Smith was able to match this feat during his successful Heisman campaign.

His Buckeye credentials are obvious, but many may not know how he acquired heralded status in the Nebraska Cornhuskers program.  He arrived in Lincoln in 1962 after a stint as Wichita State’s AD, a position for which he retired from coaching the Washington Huskies basketball team.  He inaugurated his tenure by hiring Bob Devaney to coach the otherwise mid-level Cornhuskers program.  The turnaround was immediate.  In the ten years that Devaney led the Huskers, the program won eight conference championships and two national championships.  One of those national championships, 1970, comes as a result of a Buckeye loss in the Rose Bowl.  It may be fair to wonder how much of that is attributable to Dye.  He was obviously not coaching the team and I think Devaney was even his second or third choice in that particular hiring position.  However, Dye is revered because the success that Devaney was able to achieve comes because of a culture change that Dye brought to Lincoln.  He came to Lincoln to preside over a program that he fully expected, and demanded, to be a national power.  Dye stepped down after 1966 and the Cornhuskers success continued under Devaney and, later, Tom Osborne.  Nevertheless, Dye’s lofty expectations were accomplished and he, the Ohio State graduate and football legend, was instrumental in shaping Nebraska’s winning tradition.

Tippy Dye (b. 1915) is fortunately still with us, as is Bill Glassford (b. 1914) aforementioned.  Two programs — operating in separate conferences, in different and removed stretches of the heartland, and seemingly on different frequencies — have an important mutual history.  Importantly, these connections between Lincoln, Nebraska and Columbus, Ohio may be cemented permanently in a mutual conference as early as this weekend².

1. We’ll ignore how that month and season ended. [↩]
2. I definitely look forward to regaling to my kids, in Dana Carvey crabby old man parlance, that, back in my day, the Big Ten used to be 11 members.  And wee liked it… weeeee loved it. [↩]