What If....the Tom Osborne/Lawrence Phillips Incident Happened Today?

Osborne was darn lucky to have gotten away with bringing Phillips back when he did. He was probably one of the only coaches that had the reputation that allowed him to make that decision and survive.

 In the current era, the situation is resolved by Phillips being booted from the team. Osborne stands in front of the camera bemoaning a young man’s terrible decision and doesn’t take the reputation knock he did for bringing Phillips back. LP never gets back on the field and pretty much everything else unfolds as it did anyhow that year.

Phillips goes on to the NFL but probably gets drafted in Round 2 or 3 due to not having the Fiesta Bowl boost from his performance vs. Florida. No doubts he still gets drafted on the first day though. He still squanders the god-given talents he possessed. Nebraska still goes on to a dominating national championship performance over Florida (the Gators were overmatched regardless of whether Phillips plays or not). With the re-distribution of Phillips 22 carries in that game, Tommy Frazier sets a Fiesta Bowl rushing record and Ahman Green cements himself on the national stage by rushing for 150ish yards as a freshman.

the Neb. fanbase was supportive of the ruling. So, 16 years later, I am not so sure that Osborne’s decision would have changed. Everybody knew about this nationwide. Neb was the defending NC, Phillips was a Heisman candidate, already tons of attention. It was big news regardless of the existence of twitter and fb.

Having said that, Osborne really should have, at least, suspended him for the year. In retrospect, it looked so cheap, suspending him for, what, 6 games? And I will buy the fact that Phillips needed the structure of football like Osborne said, that’s fine, then give him the option to come back his senior year.

agree with how Osborne handled the Phillips situation, but if it happened now, it’d be out of his hands.

And it should be, because times have changed, and allowing a football player like Phillips to stick around after such a severe incident would damage the reputation of the University, regardless of what Nebraska fans think, or what anybody thinks of Tom Osborne’s reputation.

Every single word that Osborne spoke would be dissected, along with every facial movement, everything. And Osborne wasn’t that great with the media in the first place. The Bernie Goldberg incident would have been youtube’d and put everywhere….

And then maybe like everything else, it’d die off because we tend to have an incredibly short attention span.

Look there’s something shiny over there!

Hey! It’s the glare off Bill Hancock’s head! What’s he talking about….????