LINCOLN -- When it comes to the greatest Husker football triumphs, the 1976 Astro-Bluebonnet Bowl is probably not one that immediately jogs the memory.
It was a lower-tier bowl game broadcast on syndicated television, still a few years before ESPN set out to take over the world. It featured a Husker team with three losses and a tie. One of the Husker assistants was named Monte Kiffin.
The bowl game had some drama: The Huskers rallied for the game’s final 13 points and recovered a late fumble. A 23-yard touchdown pass gave NU the deciding points in a 27-24 victory against Texas Tech that perhaps was more pivotal than anyone could ever realize three decades ago.
The contest hardly brings with it the goose bumps of going for two in 1984, of Cory Schlesinger rumbling for six in ’95, of so many others. But the game has occasionally come up in speeches given by Tom Osborne since he’s taken over as NU athletic director. He even mentioned it when he addressed the media just hours after Bill Callahan was fired.
He’s mentioned the game because of what a regent said to him after the victory.
As best Osborne can remember, there was some sort of post-game gathering at the team’s hotel in Houston. Some NU regents were there and one pulled Osborne aside and said: It’s a good thing you won tonight.
“It was with words to the effect that you might not have been around if you hadn’t,” Osborne said this week. “Of course, that got my attention.”
It’s one of those interesting tales that -- three national titles, a statue and an Osborne-named building later -- seems to warrant a note in Husker history. If there was any validity in what the regent told Osborne, one could consider NU’s comeback in a now-defunct bowl game to be among Nebraska’s more significant victories.
Osborne cautions that he heard this from only that one regent and no one else, certainly not from then-athletic director Bob Devaney, who always was strongly behind his former assistant.
“It could have been a little bit of an offhand remark or it could have been something that was dead serious,” Osborne said. “It wasn’t like the president of the university or Bob Devaney called me in and we set a meeting and said this is what has to happen or you’re going to be fired. That didn’t happen. But I gathered that there was enough smoke out there that there probably was some heat.”
It was the heat that came with following in the footsteps of Devaney, who, much like Osborne did in 1997, retired in about as grand of fashion as a coach can. Devaney won two national titles in his last three years and destroyed Notre Dame in his final game.
The bar was set high and Osborne was the guy who was going to have to somehow jump over it every season.
By the end of the 1976 regular season, after four years as NU coach, Osborne had a very respectable 37-10-2 record, but he hadn’t yet beaten Oklahoma, and defeating the Sooners was considered about as important as breathing.
“After winning a couple national championships, anything other than that was just a disappointment to a lot of fans,” said Don Bryant, NU’s sports information director emeritus. “That’s just the psychology of people.”
Perhaps based largely on the fact they had touted quarterback Vince Ferragamo, the Huskers entered the 1976 season ranked No. 1 in the Associated Press poll.
“We were ranked up there probably a little higher than we should have been,” Osborne said.
The Huskers tied LSU 6-6 in the opener, a night game in Baton Rouge, La. They came back to rattle off five wins, then lost at home to Missouri by 10 points in October. NU finished the conference season with losses to Iowa State and Oklahoma.
And so the team that was preseason No. 1 found itself tied for fourth in the Big Eight Conference, 8-3-1 going into the New Year’s Eve bowl game played at the Astrodome.
There were no message boards then, but losing still led to angry letters and a good deal of grumbling.
“You felt terrible when you lost,” Osborne said. “Losing was like dying, and particularly if it was the last game of the year, you had to live with it for the whole year. That was really hard. But you immediately tried to focus on the future and recruiting. I remember losing a bowl game here and there, where the next day I was in someone’s living room recruiting. So you never stopped.”
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