I may be out of my mind but if Dr. Tom never would..

..have retired, I honestly think that we would have easily won 2-4 more national championships, and USC would not be the "power" that they are thought to be.

With the parity in college football, just watching how our team played, if we would have been half as physical as were were in the 90's, I think we could have beat teams so badly they never would have wanted to play against us. Sure, we may have had to make modifications on offense, but if we could have remained that physical and had that mindset, we would still be a team that was in the hunt for the NC annually.

Any thoughts?

 
yes, i think we would of been better, but you have to realize that the main reason for all the parity in college football now a days is due largely in part to the scholarship limits finally starting to have the effect they were desired to have

 
I'd thought of this before..But part of me thinks even Ozzy would've had a hard time in the Big12 getting past the conference championship game with a possible rematch of a previously beaten opponent. (And defenses were catching up..9 in the Box)....Maybe, if he continued to evolve his offensive philosophy.

We probably would have been better, but MNC's are so contingent on Luck.

 
If we completely forget how football has changed I still believe he would have had a tough time. Many of us forget how much he was suffering from fatique. The man gave his all and earned the respect of the fans and with respect I say he made the right decision for him and his family to leave when he did. I also give him credit for being a whole lot smarter than I am. If he felt it was time for him to go then it was.

 
Well, we'll never know what would have been. But, we do know that parity is bandied about as the "cause" of all the upsets and that the changes in scholarships are leading to more parity. But that doesn't explain NUs fall from power. While there are some elements of truth to the parity explanation, I still say that the main reason NU was dominant in the past is the strength and conditioning program and the dedication of the players to become physically dominant and to go out and physically punish opponents. Hopefully that will be item number one for the new coach and something tells me that TO will let that be known very clearly.

 
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It would of killed him by now, he had heart problems his entire life. The job was killing him, I think he would of stayed but he even said if he did they would be taking him out feet first.... Think there was more going on there then we will know.... AD will work out just fine for him.

 
i get what your saying...that an extremely nasty and physical team, along with great coaching and desire could squash a lot of the 'parity'...teams who may be hanging with us now, would still have feared simply playing us and would have been betean by halftime...since Billy made our team soft, no one feared us and saw our vulnerability and have used equal talent to beat our soft players....

even with equal talent, Osborne would never have had our teams soft.

 
A T.O./McBride defense would have squashed all of this spread offense non-sense 5 years ago. Everybody is acting like this system is invincible, but a fast, motivated defense can stop anything. McBride's defenses put the fear in everybody.

So, yes, I believe things would have been different.

 
I dont want to turn this into a Solich disscussion, but if TO would have down some searching outside the program for his succesor instead of handing it to Frank Solich I think we would have been fine. I know he wanted to do it like Devany and keep the job in the family, but just think if he went out and got Monte Kiffin as our HC. We would have gotten the yougner more fiery version of Monte Kiffin, and then we could have had Lane Kiffin on the staff, Bo Pelini probably comes in after Mcbride retired. that would have been money.

I know the past is past, so i should just let it go, but how sweet could that have been.

 
A T.O./McBride defense would have squashed all of this spread offense non-sense 5 years ago. Everybody is acting like this system is invincible, but a fast, motivated defense can stop anything. McBride's defenses put the fear in everybody.

So, yes, I believe things would have been different.
The spread will not be around forever. A new offensive scheme always comes around, is dominant for a while, then defenses catch up. Remember the Run 'n Shoot? Zone blitzes solved it. Defenses will stop the spread in a few years. I doubt T.O./McBride could instantly crush a brand new style of offense

 
A T.O./McBride defense would have squashed all of this spread offense non-sense 5 years ago. Everybody is acting like this system is invincible, but a fast, motivated defense can stop anything. McBride's defenses put the fear in everybody.

So, yes, I believe things would have been different.
The spread will not be around forever. A new offensive scheme always comes around, is dominant for a while, then defenses catch up. Remember the Run 'n Shoot? Zone blitzes solved it. Defenses will stop the spread in a few years. I doubt T.O./McBride could instantly crush a brand new style of offense
I agree with Tigers here. Things are cyclical, that's for sure. New invention leads to new response. But, if I recall correctly, TO and his staff had their share of problems stopping the triple option of Oklahoma. Dont' get me wrong, I got a warm fuzzy when I saw Dr. T step up to the podium as AD. Somehow, the universe started to right itself when that happened. But, let's not go diefy the guy and his staff.

 
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I don't understand why they wanted to level the playing field with scholarship limits, but not go to a playoff system. The BCS worked because the traditional powers in the top 6 conferences, were always the ones vying for a NC every year.. whichever two teams lost the fewest games ended up playing each other for the NC.

With the playing field more or less "leveled", that doesn't work anymore. We need a playoff system now to make it fair.

Anyway, back on topic. Yeah, we probably would have been a top team these past 10 years if TO had stayed on, but.. he accomplished what he set out to do, he built up our program and got us to the top. Solich took us a step down from that, and Callahan drove us into the ground.

HOWEVER; Callahan did lay the groundwork for a system that could be dominant here. With the right coaching staff, we may very well look back on Callahan as the guy that laid the foundation for our return to dominance.

 
HOWEVER; Callahan did lay the groundwork for a system that could be dominant here. With the right coaching staff, we may very well look back on Callahan as the guy that laid the foundation for our return to dominance.
Sorry but I just don't see that. If anything, he destroyed the ground work that had been laid. Maybe he wanted to leave his mark instead of leaning on the past. But, eliminating the walk on program, ignoring the concept of physical dominance, those make up the BC legacy.

 
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