Dean Smith, Eddie Robinson, now Tom Osborne. Who's next? Touchdown Jesus?
All the college coaching icons are cleaning out their desks and high-tailing it to the nearest exit as quickly as they can. Some might conclude that winning comes with a much bigger price tag these days, but we all know school presidents, athletic directors and alumni put education above everything else.
THIS HAS BEEN THE CRAZIEST 62 days in recent NCAA history:
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Tom Osborne leaves Nebraska as college football's sixth all-time winningest coach.
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Aside from the emotional charges felt across three separate regions -- Chapel Hill, N.C., Grambling, La., and Lincoln, Neb. -- Smith (October), Robinson (November) and now Osborne (December) have given this thing a certain symmetry. They leave in lock-step with a combined 1,541 victories -- 879, 408 and 254, respectively.
OSBORNE'S DEPARTURE PERHAPS IS THE MOST surprising of all, since he's barely 60 and only 60 minutes away from possibly winning his third national championship in four years. It has been an incredible run -- 24 straight bowl appearances and at least nine victories in each of 25 years -- yet he was able to walk away Wednesday without a whimper.
Health concerns can do that to a man.
Make no mistake about it: Osborne's "stamina and cardiovascular" problems, which stem from 1985 bypass surgery and detection earlier this year of an irregular heartbeat, have thrown a scare into him. You just can't tell it by his poker face.
"I am in reasonably good shape. I'm not going to keel over in front of you right now," said Osborne, never cracking a smile, never lifting his voice above a drone, as he continued without missing a beat during his resignation speech Wednesday.
It's impossible to get a read on this tall, easy-going, soft-spoken man who looks like the town preacher. He handles winning and losing, player suspensions and retirements all about the same way. If you captured his news conferences on video over the years, the only thing that would distinguish one scene from another would be the color of his tie.
"I don't want to overplay (the health issue)," Osborne added. "But at some point over the next year, two years, whatever ... I might have to call a halt to some things I'm doing right now. I wouldn't be able to sustain this pace."
SO COLLEGE FOOTBALL'S SIXTH ALL-TIME WINNINGEST COACH gave himself an early out, a head start, which had to come naturally to him since no coach in any sport, at any level, has provided a better example of game preparation over the past quarter century than Tom Osborne.
And no coach in any sport, at any level, bailed out his players over the past quarter century like Tom Osborne, either.
When Lawrence Phillips ran into trouble with the law by beating a former girlfriend, Osborne -- a deeply religious man -- stuck by his troubled running back and gave him a second chance.
And when Osborne brought Phillips back for the 1995 Fiesta Bowl in which Phillips rushed for 165 yards and three touchdowns, and the Cornhuskers blew out Florida 62-24 to win a second straight national championship, Osborne -- a prolific winner -- was harshly criticized in the media. You couldn't tell that bothered him, either.
So, hopefully, his heart holds out for this gentle man to enjoy his retirement years.
As he put it, "In this business, you want to walk away while you can still walk."
He's leaving early because he wasn't cut out to be a "figurehead" -- and that must have scared him, too. Osborne's worst nightmare would be somebody coming up to him someday and saying, "You're not getting the job done anymore."
That will never happen. Osborne made sure of it Wednesday.
Ray Buck is CBS SportsLine's national columnist.
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