The Wall

Walk into almost every sports field or arena and you'll see it. Banners hanging from a railing. Maybe it's a tarp stretched over a fence or numbers cut into bricks, but there's always a wall of some kind littered with numbers and years. Championships, conference titles, playoff appearances. Walk into any arena, find this wall and you instantly know everything you need to know about the history of that team.

The era's of dominance, the droughts, even the "alright" years.

Say you walk into the gym of a high school basketball team you've never heard of. A quick glance at this wall shows you they won state 4 times in the 70s. Then the next one isn't until 2002. The other sections tell you they won a few conference titles in the 80s & made the playoffs regularly. There was a drop-off, but they were doing alright. But then there's a huge void where the 90s should be. Nothing until that 2002 season.

What you have is a snapshot of that team's history. They were a dynasty in the 70s, pretty good but not great in the 80s, had a nasty drought in the 90s before experiencing a dramatic resurrection in that 2002 season.

Even what's included on The Wall reveals crucial information about that program. What they decide to include & what is left off determines how they define success. A college football Blue Blood like Nebraska only lists National Championships & Conference Championships on its West press box, because that's what Nebraska defines as success.

A program with a weaker history might list their division championships and bowl victories. Hell, I've even traveled to a few stadiums that list out the individual years of their bowl appearances because their history is really that abysmal. But that's what they have defined as success.

Every team wants to do one thing: Add to The Wall.

Coaches are defined by how much they've contributed to the wall. Their legacies are, quite literally, etched in stone there.

The Wall reminds us that Bob Devaney and Tom Osborne are not the only coaches to have massive success at Nebraska. Frank Crawford won Nebraska's first conference title in 1894. It's right there on The Wall. Ewald "Jumbo" Stiehm and his "Stiehmrollers" won a conference title all 5 years he was Nebraska's head man. Frank Dawson almost repeated the feat by winning 3 conference titles in his 4 years of coaching. And then of course there's Dana X. Bible, the College Football Hall of Fame inductee who contributed 6 titles to the wall in 8 years.

All told there's 46 conference titles on Nebraska's Wall. That's good for the 2nd most in all of college football, just 2 behind Oklahoma. So why do people seem to think Bob Devaney and Tom Osborne are the only 2 massively successful coaches in school history?

You'll find your answer on The Wall.

Of course Devaney and Osborne are the only coaches to contribute anything to the more prestigious national championship portion of The Wall, but smack dab in the middle of the conference championships is a 22 year gap between 1941 and 1963, the longest conference title drought in school history. The dark age of Nebraska football is prominent on The Wall because of its absence, the deep void right in the middle. In the midst of the triumphs of Devaney and Osborne, not many remembered the prosperous time before the void.

Just the void and the gleeful emergence from it.

Thanks to The Wall, the legacies of those coaches are not forgotten as they are clearly visible to any visitor of Memorial Stadium, but that's not the only reason The Wall is important. The void in the middle reminds us any drought can be ended, any void escaped. If we had accepted mediocrity, bought into the false belief that we could never be consistently great again. If we had stuck with the mediocre coaches because we thought they were the best we were ever going to get our wall would have ended at 1940. Currently we are in the second longest drought at 19 years and I think the lesson learned from the first drought is more relevant today than it's ever been.

In case you were curious. What's the third longest drought?

4 years.

Nebraska is a winner. Always has been. It wasn't just a 40 year fluke with Devaney and Osborne and The Wall reflects that.

Frank Solich was the last coach to contribute anything to The Wall by winning the Big 12 in 1999. He didn't contribute much, but at least he contributed (and I personally believe he would have contributed more had he not been let go).

Bill Callahan, Bo Pelini and Mike Riley did not contribute anything to The Wall. Their legacies are not reflected anywhere in Memorial Stadium, because according to what Nebraska defines as success, the only legacy they left is an absence of one.

While Pelini still has a few defenders, he was not a successful coach according to The Wall. If The Wall is what defines success and a coach fails to attain that success even once, how can that coach be considered a success? Nebraska's current wall moved to the West press box sometime in the early days of the Pelini era. If you look closely you'll see the vast majority of the conference titles are listed on the left side of the wall with plenty of open space on the right. Pelini was expected to add to The Wall. Make no mistake about it.

He had 7 years and plenty of chances. At the end of 2014 it was apparent he never would add to The Wall.

And The Wall must grow.

The Wall doesn't care conferences are bigger today than they were in 1928. The Wall doesn't listen to excuses. The Wall is indifferent, because The Wall doesn't think nor does it feel.

The Wall only reflects the truth.

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