had about as much to do with the coaching mess as I did honestly. Osborne went on, Bill Byrne (now at A&M) came in. Oz picked his lil buddy and we saw what it’s like to hand a five-year-old a chainsaw. Honestly I think you’re forgetting one combatant: the boosters. Money talks, my friend and it ways you couldn’t even imagine in college football.

I’d agree with that, I don’t think Spanier had a lot to do with the coaching mess. OTOH, he had a lot to do with the screw job we got out of the formation of the Big 12 conference.

On top of that, he was a horrible Chancellor for us. Spanier was all about style, not substance and that doesn’t fly in Nebraska. I’m glad he left.

My impression of Spanier is that he’s spineless, so I doubt there will be much of a battle about JoePa that comes from Spanier. Someone else will be pushing those buttons.

I haven’t heard anything about Penn State in 2014, 2015. It’d be nice. We’d like to pay you back for that ass-kicking you laid on us our last trip to Happy Valley.

The way some PSU message boards put it, you’d think Spanier was some evil genius that single-handedly caused the demise of Nebraska football and is about to do the same to Penn State.

Interesting that you’d call Spanier spineless. I’ve posed this question on a few Nebraska boards and it seems like he stood up to Osborne naming Byne the AD.

got it right. Spainer knew how to look the other way and left us sans an annual Oklahoma game and I greatly prefer Harvey.

The rumors they do swirl regarding Penn State but nothing’s official…yet.

By the way in terms of standing up to Osborne much like in several if not most instances, T.O. had the final say.

Tom Osborne thought he’d eventually retire from coaching and became athletic director. When Bob Devaney retired, Spanier went outside the athletic department to hire Bill Byrne rather than choose Osborne or an interim guy from within the department (such as Al Papik) to take over. That blocked Osborne’s path to the AD’s office, and sent him into politics after he retired from coaching.

When Byrne left for A&M, Steve Pederson was hired instead… and Pederson (and Harvey Perlman) came up with the bright idea of hiring Bill Callahan as head coach. Something that wouldn’t have happened if Spanier hadn’t chosen Byrne.

Mike always cracks me up with his poring over the past so he can point fingers at everyone who’s to blame for all the ways that he’s been wronged as a Husker fan.
But just think…if all that stuff hadn’t happened, we could still have Solich as our coach (he of middling MAC success)! That would be awesome…damn you Spanier!!

This “Grand Conspiracy of the Undoing of the Glory of the Nebraska Way™” simply must receive greater visibility! Surely, it must go even deeper still. Did Dave Hergert have anything to do with this mess we’re in? I’ll bet so. I’m gonna go ahead and just give him the distinction of “conduct unbecoming a Husker” anyway…that guy’s a slimeball regardless, so he’s got it coming. But who hired Spanier, anyway? I went to UNL with a guy whose father was a regent at the time…I’ll bet he was in on it. Regent John Payne was once under review by the Attorney General’s office for violating the open meeting law. That does it…seems like a pretty open and shut case to me. Who voted for that guy anyway? This conspiracy is so broad that it now can include the individual members of the Kearney voting community who elected regent Payne to his office in the first place. You heard it here first…they’re in on it, I just know it…they must be held accountable for this outrage—I’ll bet a few of them even have the audacity to still call themselves Husker fans.

But it doesn’t stop there—are you kidding me?! If the geography of the region wouldn’t have allowed for a river to fork at 41 degrees north and 100 degrees west, the city of north platte would cease to exist and therefore so also would Steve Pederson. So thanks a lot, celestial creator of the universe!

But in all seriousness…All I know about Spanier is that he was at UNL at the same time I was (91-95) and when I started college, we had keg parties on the roof of our fraternity house…and by the time I was done, we had rent-a-cops policing all communal areas of the house for any signs of fun being had. I don’t really know much about his involvement in any administrative behind-the-scenes athletic department machinations…but he was definitely not a popular dude with early 90’s UNL greeks.

...but I’m not making this story up either.

Osborne and his mentor and predecessor, athletic director Bob Devaney, had a succession plan already worked out when Spanier arrived from Oregon State in 1991.
That plan: Devaney would retire as AD in 1992. Their mutual friend and longtime Nebraska compliance guru, Al Papik, would take over and keep the seat warm for five years or so. Then Osborne would retire at around age 60 and slide into the AD’s post.
Spanier heard of that plan. Then he implemented his own. He instead launched a nationwide search for what he fervently believed the post urgently required—not just a store manager from the retired-coach football pipeline but a vital financial rainmaker who could raise the school’s athletic brand and pump its budget.
He ended up plucking Bill Byrne from his old school’s rival, Oregon.
“The decision was made to hire Bill Byrne, and Al was left out of the loop,” Osborne told The Omaha World-Herald in December. “That ended any thoughts I had about becoming athletic director. When my coaching career was over, it left me with a lot of loose ends.”

You are right, we need to move beyond the whole Pederson/Callahan years. And we will, but we’ve got to get the next era started first. But in this case, the question was raised as to how Spanier handled things in Lincoln.