Limitation of scholarships will do that....still boils down to Good speed and good arm are God given.....who can recruit them, and coach them. Still gotta be sold on the program.
So what....we also played good enough to beat a Florida team, in Florida, to make that a moot point. And as Mike Ditka said after the game..."Nebraska got screwed"....
AJ, Nebraska '94 and '95 make up for that year in spades. Those Huskers were damned good. Not sure that the '93 schedule proved much about the '93 team though. Those Husker teams of the 90s were loaded anyway.... stockpiled with talent.... sort of like what Alabama and now Ohio State are doing today.
This just in.... http://nebraska.247sports.com/Bolt/Barnett-commits-to-Nebraska--34745601 It's happening Dave...
Heh, heh...AJ... The only thing that caught my eye in Dave's posted article was that Ohio State did it with "SEC type players." Gag me.
When a conference wins 7 NCs in a row, plays for an 8th and plays in the final 4 for another one I guess scribes write those kinds of things Stu. It took a special kind of team with special players to deny Alabama a shot at the final. Those Buckeyes were big, fast and physical but more importantly when it counted they played like they were big, fast and physical. That's the difference with this Ohio State squad.
All but 6 or 7 starters vs. Bama were Meyer recruits including Zeke Elliot and Cardale Jones and Meyer was the HBC during those senior's career at Ohio State even so. It's a pretty big stretch to say Tressel had much if any influence on this team. A little comparison between Tressel's 2003 NC game vs. Miami and Meyer's semi-final game vs. Alabama ( similar opposing defenses ) 2003 Miami 369 tot yds 4.8 yds per play 2003 OSU 267 tot yds 3.7 yds per play 2014 OSU 537 tot yds 6.9 yds per play 2014 Ala 407 tot yds 5.8 yds per play
Well while it would be a stretch to say he was playing with Tressel recruits, he did inherit a football team that was well stocked with good players from JT's regime. JT was an excellent recruiter, and while the year before he took over with an interim coach the record wasn't very good I don't think that record reflected that JT had left the cupboard bare. But also make no mistake this 2014 Buckeye team had Urban's recruits all over the place in key rolls. Urban is one of the great recruiters in college football. There are those who remember him from his ND days and said he loved recruiting and worked very hard at it. I think that is something not every HC does, more than a few don't really like the whole process. But Meyer does and it shows, Saban does and it shows, Pete Carroll did and it showed. Mack Brown did and it showed. There are reports that at one time Bob Stoops did but that the last few years he's slowed down and the roster at OU reflects that, not terrible but not stocked to the hilt with top ranked players. ND recruiting guru's say that Brian Kelly does not like recruiting, and tends to want to be the closer which is great when you have a staff setting it all up for you, but if you don't then you are at the mercy of that staff's efforts or lack there of. Urban and Nick just won't let that happen.
To be honest with you Doc, prior to posting that statement, I had already done the math in my head, and figured that the majority were Urban's kids. I just like it when Dave goes on his stats rants. I was enjoying a beer waiting while he was doing all the work. But now I know.
STU!! :lol: :lol: Here's some stats from that '95 Big 8 SEC team To Honor the Old Big 8, Eight Dominating Facts (from an article about the ’95 team, I LOVE #4)… 1) Nebraska’s smallest margin of victory in 1995 was 14 points in a 35-21 win over Washington State. It was the only game in which Nebraska trailed all season before taking a 28-7 lead into the fourth quarter and letting its subs get meaningful snaps. Reserve freshman I-back Ahman Green, who would go on to become the Green Bay Packers’ all-time leading rusher, finished the Washington State game with 176 yards rushing and one touchdown on 13 carries. The Huskers out-rushed the Cougars, 428-72. And get this: In the fifth game of the season, Washington State came into Lincoln with the nation’s fourth-ranked rushing defense, giving up only 69.7 yards per game. 2) In 1995, Nebraska averaged 400 yards rushing per game while allowing only 78 yards rushing per game to its opponents. The Huskers scored 51 rushing touchdowns in ’95 and gave up only six rushing TDs. Nebraska averaged a Division I-A record 7.0 yards per rushing attempt for the entire season, including the bowl game shellacking of Florida. 3) Question: With an offensive line anchored by 1995 All-America center Graham, guess how many quarterback sacks Nebraska gave up in that remarkable 12-0 season? Answer: If you said zero, you would be right. 4) Want to talk special teams? Kris Brown, one of college football’s and one of the NFL’s best kickers ever, connected on 13 of 16 field goal attempts whenever Nebraska’s offensive juggernaut hit a skid mark. And get this, the Huskers tied an NCAA record in ’95 by allowing only five punt returns all season for a grand net total of 12 yards. Yikes! 5) Nebraska’s average margin of victory in 1995 was more than 38 points, the largest average of any Division I-A team since World War II. The margin exceeded a six-touchdown average despite Nebraska resting its starters in the second halves of most games. 6) Here’s something to chew on. Nebraska averaged 29.8 points per first half in 1995. That’s a higher scoring average in one half than at least three national championship teams averaged in a whole game – Alabama (1992), Ohio State (2002) and Florida (2006). 7) For the 1995 season, Nebraska averaged 53.2 points per game and allowed only 14.5 points per game. When you think about making a big deal out of Florida State’s 2013 team having the possibility to win every game by at least 14 points like Nebraska did, this particular stat screams rather loudly that the Huskers should stand alone in this spotlight. 8) I saved my best stat for the last stat. In the final rankings from the 1995 season, Nebraska beat four teams that finished in the final AP Top Ten rankings – national runner-up Florida (62-24), No. 5 Colorado (44-21), No. 7 Kansas State (49-25) and No. 9 Kansas (41-3). There you have it – eight crystal-clear facts that helped frame a Big Eight powerhouse as the most dominant college football team of all-time. The Huskers did, after all, beat four schools in the ‘95 final Top Ten by an average of more than 30 points a game. If that’s not living in a league of your own, what is? Yes, I know what you’re thinking. Someday, someone will make another serious run at Nebraska’s lofty status, but let’s hope that doesn’t happen in the next seven years. Why? Because we think this ’95 team deserves a Silver Anniversary celebration in 2020 – a vision that seems not only realistic, but highly probable.
It truly was an amazingly dominant team with season-long statistics perhaps never to be equaled. The '95 Nebraska team set the standard for dominating excellence.
There is certainly not any Gator fan out there that would argue against '95 Nebraska as one of the most dominant teams ever in college football. But things have changed for Big Red. Of course things changed for Alabama too until they reeled in Nick Saban and who knows where Ohio State was headed before Meyer came in to recharge the program. I do believe that Jim Harbaugh will be that kind of savior for Michigan. So it helps that Nebraska has pedigree but there are no guarantees and the Big Ten is just getting tougher to navigate.
Dick Vermeil was on local morning drive time sports and he was talking about the Oregon/OSU game. He said he was at the Rose Bowl and got to see the Oregon team up close and also had seen the Ohio State team up close as well and said it was men vs boys. That Oregon just didn't have the physical players to stand up to Ohio State. Said that some of the Oregon players could but that Ohio State was 2 deep in physical players. But he never said they were SEC level players!
Well with all due respect to Neb, they went about 10 years or more having great regular seasons only to lose in the bowl games. In those games they looked big and slow. I forget when the worm turned but Osborne changed some things and they got over the hump and no longer looked slow.