Buffs Bounce Nebraska To End an Unmerciful Season, Possibly Callahan's Career
Coach's plan to blast away at CU backfires with second-half meltdown
by Samuel McKewon
November 23, 2007
Courtesy CUBuffs.com
Colorado turned the game around with a key interception return in the third quarter.After it was over, this violation against the sanctity of college football, a weary Nebraska Coach Bill Callahan briefly addressed the Saturday morning meeting that awaited him with Athletic Director Tom Osborne.
Expect that chat to be a quick, costly execution for Callahan's crimes, including NU's 65-51 loss to Colorado Friday.
"I'm just gonna wake up tomorrow and deal with whatever we have to deal with," Callahan said, "and move along."
Apt choice of words.
If Osborne does the deed, Callahan greased his exit out of Memorial Stadium with a coaching performance that served as a perfect microcosm for this lost 5-7 season. Abandoning most of the core principles of his ball-control West Coast Offense, the coach stuck quarterback Joe Ganz in the shotgun for the entire game and tried to play basketball, while crossing his fingers that NU's defense could get enough stops to turn this into the rout he so clearly wanted.
For a half - mission accomplished.
Ganz played like a Midwestern version of Tim Tebow, skillfully executing the spread option, and chucking the ball around to NU's talented receivers. Colorado's insistent-yet-plodding ground game was just no match for the Cornhuskers' track meet. Nebraska sprinted into the locker room with a 35-24 lead and 400 total yards. It was a spectacular display of mercenary football, as Callahan threw his game plan away and decided to see how many points and yards he could run up for his system. If CU dropped 38 of its own - eh, so what? The season's already ruined for the defense, right?
"I thought the game was almost over (at halftime)," NU linebacker Bo Ruud said. "We had the momentum and usually when we get that, it was just like K-State. I thought we were gonna put 70 on them."
But these boys out for blood got a shiv stuck in their guts instead.
That's what happens when you're up 11 and you start trying to convert third-and-long inside your own 20-yard line with deep post patterns against eight defensive backs. Just when you think you're bulletproof, the opponent does something funny.
It adjusts and intercepts a wayward Ganz pass for a Pick Six and instant momentum.
Nebraska's response? Put another magazine in the shotgun, and blast away spasmodically.
So Ganz promptly threw another interception that led to a quick CU touchdown. It wasn't a horrible pass - it glanced off the hands of a receiver - but this stuff happens when you try to imitate Hawai'i.
Here, NU had a two-score lead, and it was stuck in Callahan's vaunted "catch-up mode." Why? Because of what happened at Texas? Because a four-point win wasn't spectacular enough? Because Ganz, at halftime, seemed within reach of 600 passing yards? It was just foolish football. Read Ruud's quote again. You know what the Huskers were smelling in that locker room when Callahan stressed to them an 11-point cushion wasn't enough.
The Buffs, meanwhile, stuck to their plan of power running and play action passing. The Huskers' defense either caved in or panicked or quit or did just what it's expected to do. CU ran the same end around nine times. Quarterback Cody Hawkins rolled out toward the same receivers running the same routes. Hawkins executed the same play action passes.
"We just wanted to win," Colorado Coach Dan Hawkins said. "The most redeeming thing for me was that we were down at halftime and struggling a little bit to stop them, and then coming out in the second half and showing incredible resolve. I thought that our offense did a great job in the second half, and stared wearing on them."
It was a safe, simple, durable style of football, and it eventually overwhelmed the Huskerpalooza. that Callahan specially designed for 12 days.
This isn't even what he believes in, is it? You had to cringe a little when he said afterward "this is a new era of college football," because he seemed to be suggesting that this nonsense points to the future of the sport, instead of acting as an aberration. Hopefully coaches everywhere wise up long enough to know that a 65-51 loss is the same as a 21-7 loss. In other words: It ain't a win.
Playing four-hour marathons that expose your players to exhaustion and increase their risk for injury isn't any different than going through four relief pitchers in a 17-13 slugfest. In the long run, it's antithetical to success. Might this game-show football win Missouri or West Virginia a national title? Sure. Brigham Young went through the back door once, too. That didn't mean Tom Osborne suddenly flung it around 60 times a game.
This goes back to one of those failures of the Callahan Era: The lack of consistent identity. It's not that Nebraska was unrecognizable on Friday; it's been that way since 2002. It's that Callahan seemed in disguise.
What a strange way to end his career as a Husker.
