Tag: Bob Devaney

Bob Devaney was John McKay’s contemporary and a fellow CFB icon

When John McKay restored #USC in the 1960s, Bob Devaney built a Heartland empire in Lincoln with the #Huskers. #B1G

If you asked anyone under 50 years old to name the best coach in Nebraska football history, you would regularly get one answer more than others: Tom Osborne. That answer would be correct, if only because Osborne presided over a top-10 program for 25 years, from 1973 through 1997, winning three national championships and a bunch of Orange Bowls.

Osborne’s predecessor was really good, but this predecessor coached for only 11 seasons. He did win multiple national championships, but if one coach produces elite, national championship-level quality for 11 years and another guy does pretty much the same thing over 25 years, it’s hard to pick the 11-year coach over the 25-year coach.

Osborne is the best head coach Nebraska has ever had.

However, he’s not the most important figure in Nebraska football (and sports) history.

It’s that predecessor we have referred to.

His name: Bob Devaney.

Nebraska had some really good teams in pre-World War I times, and coaching legend Dana X. Bible spent almost a decade at the school in the first half of the 1930s, when Howard Jones was building USC into a national football power. Yet, when Bob Devaney came from Wyoming to take over Nebraska in 1962 as head coach, the Huskers were a nobody in college football. In the 21 seasons preceding his arrival — from 1941 through 1961 — Nebraska had a losing season 17 times. The program wasn’t average; it was bad and completely irrelevant.

Devaney won nine games in his first season in 1962. By the time he stepped down as head coach following the 1972 season, in order to become full-time athletic director at Nebraska, he had produced nine seasons with nine or more wins. He won two national championships. He coached a Heisman Trophy winner, Johnny Rodgers, in 1972. He cultivated Osborne as an assistant and promoted him to head coach when he moved into the AD chair.

There’s no Tom Osborne without Bob Devaney. There’s no Nebraska football golden age without Bob Devaney, who made Nebraska a national juggernaut after a decade of disappointment in the 1950s, a clear parallel with John McKay at USC.

McKay watched USC slide into irrelevance in the 1950s while he was an assistant coach at Oregon. McKay seized an opportunity in 1960 and never looked back, launching USC’s greatest dynastic period and making himself the greatest football coach the Trojans have ever had.

Though Devaney is second to Osborne on the list of all-time Nebraska head coaches, he is number one on the list of the most important people in the history of Nebraska sports. He is the restorative 1960s figure John McKay proved to be for USC, a fellow icon and traveler in an era when the Huskers and Trojans both rose to the mountaintop in college football.

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Sixty years ago a new head coach would change Nebraska Football forever

Three other coaches had to turn down the job for this future Hall-of-Famer to get the offer.

It was 60 years ago this season that the new head football coach for the University of Nebraska took the sidelines for the first time. The school had dismissed head coach Bill Jennings who accumulated a 15-34-1 record after five seasons on the job. He would be replaced as head coach by the man who would make Nebraska Football a household program. That man would be College Football Hall of Famer Bob Devaney.

Devaney would begin his career coaching high school football in Michigan at spots like Alpena, Big Beaver, Harbor, and Saginaw. His success at that level would lead to him being hired as an assistant coach at Michigan State under head coaches Biggie Munn and Duff Daugherty in 1953. Devaney would remain in East Lancing until 1956, when he would be hired to lead the Wyoming Cowboys. In five seasons, he would finish with a 35-10-5 record and would win a Skyline Conference title his last four years in Laramie.

Following the 1961 season, Devaney would leave Laramie to become the head coach at the University of Nebraska. The Wyoming head coach would only be offered the job after Utah’s Ray Nagel, Utah State’s John Ralston, and Devaney’s former employer, Michigan State coach Duff Daugherty turned down the job. Daugherty would recommend his former assistant to Nebraska athletic director Tippy Dye for the job.

In his first season as the head coach of the Cornhuskers, he would finish with a 9-2 record and a victory over the Miami Hurricanes in the Gotham Bowl. Devaney would finish with nine wins or more each of his first five seasons on the job. Then, after back-to-back, 6-4 seasons in 1967 and 1968, Devaney would promote one of his assistants, Tom Osborne, to become the team’s offensive coordinator. The next four years would see Devaney finish with 42 wins, four losses, and two ties. He would also secure a share of the 1970 National Championship and the outright title in 1971.

Devaney would retire as head coach in 1972 but would continue as Athletic Director, a position that he held since 1967. He remained the school’s AD until his retirement in 1992 and would serve as AD Emeritus until retiring from public life in 1996. His career record was 136-30-7 with a 7-3 make in bowl games. He would end his Nebraska career with a 101-20-2 mark with eight Big Eight titles (1963-1966, 1969-1972) and two National Championships (1970, 1971).

Below is just a small collection of some of Devaney’s big moments as Nebraska head coach.