Hollow ground?

Sporting News, The, Jan 15, 1996 by Terry Frei

This all certainly should have been something better for the Cornhuskers, whose --led by linebacker Terrell Farley and cornerback Michael Booker--had been so strong in harassing quarterback Danny Wuerffel and shutting down the Gators, Fun'n Gun. Regardless of how one feels about Osborne's handling of Phillips and the Nebraska administration's hands-off approach, the idea that Osborne sold his soul to the devil (emulating Daniel Webster and "Damn Yankees" protagonist Joe Hardy) for the sake of a national championship is ludicrous.

Why? Reason No. 1: Although Osborne sometirnes appears to protest too much about his lack of concern with winning and losing his pregame comments had a ring of sincerity. "We have this mentality in America that there's only one guy standing at the end, that you,ve got to be No. 1 or you're nothing," he said. "I don't feel that way personally." Reason No. 2: Ahman Green.

By the time Osborne aUowed Phillips back with the team foDowing his six-game suspension, Green, the freshman from Omaha, had made it apparent that PhiDips, loss wasn't debilitating. Behind that line, anybody on the Huskers, depth chart could have been serviceable in a Nebraska Fiesta Bowl rout. As it was, Green got into the game long enough to run for 68 yards and a touchdown on nine carries.

Osborne argued that he wasn't going to cast PhiDips adrift after PhiUips, attack on McEwen on September 10 and his suspension, and that PhiDips needed the structure of a football team to help him rehabilitate himseU. A better decision would have been to take PhiUips back, put him at the bottom of the depth chart and not play him another down the rest of the season. It would have been a test for PhiDips, one he says he could have accepted "just to stay in shape and be around the guys."

Osbome's stance was that once PhiDips was considered to have sened his suspension and was back in uniform, he had to be treated like aD members of the team--rising or faUing on the depth chart on his own merits. The goals at that point clearly were to help showcase him for the NFL because it appeared certain, even then, that PhiUips, a junior, would end up entering this year's draft; but also to help him get his life back on track. There is no way PhiDips can be aUowed to duck accountability for his actions, but it's not as if he came to the Huskers off a tranquil farm in central Nebraska or from an affluent Chicago suburb featured in aJohn Hughes movie.

Phillips grew up in southern California and at age 11, his parents deserted him. He was raised as a ward of the state. Apologists invited him to use that childhood as a rationalization--or at least an explanation--for his behavior.

"Blame it on that?" he says about his background. "Where I grew up wasn't that bad. It was rough, I was in a boys, home, (but) it's not like they deprived us. I was well taken care of and had guidance and things like that."

So after he was charged with assaulting McEwen, dragging her down stairs by the hair in the early-morning hours after the Huskers, victory over Michigan State on September 9, Phillips felt he had let down some of those folks in his past--and his teammates. "They try and make it seem like Nebraska is like a prison or something, that they just harbor criminals," he says of hus critics. "That's not the case. I was mostly embarrassed for my foster parents and my friends. I knew before they were talking about how great I was, and then it was a slap in the face when something like this happens."