Tom Osborne hears you Husker fans, and he’s not loving what you have to say.
It’s not that Nebraska’s athletic director has anything against rivalries. He just isn’t too interested in them.
“I get all these suggestions for what we should name the rivalry with Iowa, what kind of trophy we should have,” Osborne said. “It usually revolves around corn stalks or cornfields, stuff like that.”
He’s never been all that into hyping up rivalries or defining them with historic relics, especially not back when he was coaching.
“I was always interested in how good the opponent was, how you block and tackle them,” Osborne said. “Some of the pageantry around the game was never really a part of my experience for all those years. I was always in the locker room.”
So forgive him if he isn’t in a hurry to figure out who Nebraska’s future rivals and enemies will be. He’ll leave that up to NU’s marketing department.
The topic of rivalries does matter a great deal, though, to the rest of the conference. The Big Ten’s reputation as a prestigious conference is rooted in large part to its long history of and passion for trophy games.
The conference has the nation’s oldest rivalry trophy in the Little Brown Jug, a tradition between Michigan and Minnesota that began back in 1903.
The Big Ten also has its fair share of strange relics. The Paul Bunyan’s Axe is more than 6 feet long and goes to the winner of the annual Minnesota-Wisconsin game, and Purdue and Indiana have been battling for the Old Oaken Bucket since 1925.
There are 12 traveling trophies in all, and every Big Ten school has at least one to compete for. Minnesota even has four different trophies on the line every season.
But these relationships have developed over many decades. How will Nebraska fit in to this culture?
To Osborne, it’s a unique new experience. Though Nebraska did have the Nebraska-Missouri Victory Bell rivalry with a tradition that dated back to 1892, he never felt the Big Eight or Big 12 placed a big emphasis on rivalries or trophy games.
The logical first rival will be Iowa, especially since the Hawkeyes will replace Colorado as the Huskers’ Black Friday opponent in 2011 and 2012.
“From time to time, there’s always been that question: ‘Why doesn’t Nebraska play Iowa on a regular basis?’ Huskers Illustrated contributing editor Mike Babcock said. “I think the Iowa game will be a very good rivalry right away. You don’t even have to ease into that one.”
Babcock has been covering Nebraska football for more than 30 years, and he’s skeptical of the idea that Penn State will become another natural rival. Osborne is too, simply because “they’re so far away.”
PSU leads the all-time series 7-6 and is locked in to face Nebraska as its annual cross-division opponent.
“I just don’t know,” Babcock said. “I look at that and say, ‘Can you just designate somebody a rival and then make it be that way?’ I don’t think it’s quite that easy.”
But then again, that’s how the Nebraska-Colorado rivalry began in 1982. When Bill McCartney took over, he proudly declared he was making Nebraska his No. 1 enemy.
“Nebraska people didn’t really buy into that, but Colorado did,” Babcock said. “That was one of the motivating factors as McCartney built that program.”
But Nebraska’s best rival was always Oklahoma, and that relationship forged on the football field and never required a trophy prize.
“That was based on excellence,” Osborne said. “They were always good and we were good.”
That’s why Osborne sees a potential rivalry with Legends Division foe Michigan, and Babcock expects to see one develop with a Leaders powerhouse like Ohio State or Wisconsin.
“If Nebraska is consistently in the running for the Big Ten Championship, whatever team in the other division that’s consistently in the running for it is probably where the rivalry is going to evolve,” Babcock said.
And as for traveling rivalry trophies? Osborne’s heard lots of ideas. He hasn’t exactly fallen in love with any of them.
“Some of them are bizarre, some of them are…interesting,” he said. “We’ll work it out when the time comes.”