How Tom Osborne's Consistency Carried the Nebraska Football Dynasty

Author

TJ Birkel
July 24, 2025

by T.J. Birkel

He was never a yeller. Even in an era when it was much more common for football coaches to cuss and scream, to berate players for making mistakes, Tom Osborne took the opposite approach. 

Through nearly three decades, 255 wins, 13 conference titles, and three national championships, perhaps Osborne’s most defining trait was consistency. It was the steadiness with which he led his team, through trials, defeats, and even tragedy, that marked his incredible tenure as Nebraska’s head coach. 

That theme of consistency ran through Episode 5 of our series about TO on the Common Fan Podcast, released earlier this week. We covered the final three seasons of Osborne’s legendary run, from 1995 through 1997, with college football hall of famer Grant Wistrom and longtime Omaha World Herald writer Tom Shatel. We revisited a stretch of football brilliance marked by controversy, tragedy, and triumph—and how, through it all, Osborne never wavered.

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