What Bob Devaney Saw in Tom Osborne

If you wanted to make the case that God’s a Cornhusker, there might not be a better place to start than here: Tom Osborne arrived on Nebraska’s campus as a young graduate student in pursuit of a PhD within a month of Bob Devaney taking over as the Huskers’ head football coach.

Call it luck, call it fate, call it divine intervention: the partnership of Devaney and Osborne would transform Nebraska football forever. 

This week, on the Common Fan Podcast, we launched a series of episodes focused on Osborne’s coaching career. The first episode, The Fateful Promotion, focuses on Osborne’s time as an assistant to Devaney, with a specific focus on Devaney’s decision to promote TO to offensive coordinator in 1968. One could argue that one decision did more to influence the next 50 years of Nebraska football than anything else. More on that in a moment. 

Thanks to Omaha World Herald reporter Henry Cordes for joining us for this episode. Henry’s books, Devaney: Birth of a Dynasty, and Unbeatable: Tom Osborne and the Greatest Era of Nebraska Football, are definitive works about Nebraska’s best teams, and must-reads for any die hard Husker fan. We were also joined by Brandon Vogel of the Counter Read Newsletter, which is some of the best Husker content you can find anywhere. 

This article will dive into the significance of Osborne’s promotion to offensive coordinator in 1968. We hope you’ll watch the entire episode, during which we discuss Osorne’s time in the NFL, his early days straddling graduate school and football coaching, and his ultimate elevation on Devaney’s staff.