You never panic, you never give up
On eve of NU-USC, Pillen recalls epic win over Bama, says NU can beat Trojans
By S. Harrison Herley
BIG RED BOARD CORRESPONDENT
They hang on the wall of his office, framed black and white snapshots of an old football game played in a bygone era.
One is a photo of junior Husker safety Jim Pillen snagging one of his two interceptions on the day in front of Crimson Tide All-American receiver Ozzie Newsome. The other is one of Pillen shaking hands with Alabama coach Paul “Bear” Bryant. In the latter photo, the legendary Bryant notably has his famous houndstooth hat vacant from his head, as if in respect to the performance of not only Pillen – who earned the ABC-Chevrolet Defensive Player of the Game for his performance – but the entire Nebraska team that day.
That day was when unranked Nebraska defeated fourth-ranked Alabama 31-24 on September 17, 1977. It ranks as one of the greatest wins in Husker history and one of the biggest wins of the early Tom Osborne era. Fans and writers who saw it at the time described it as one of the best-played football games, on both sides, that they had ever seen in Lincoln. Notably for this week 30 years later, it remains the only game played at Memorial Stadium in which a Nebraska team ranked outside the Top 10 has ever managed to topple a foe ranked inside the Top 5.
“Yeah,” says Pillen, glancing once again over the photos. “That was pretty awesome.”
Almost 30 years to the day of that pretty awesome moment, a new yet distantly familiar challenge looms for the Big Red. No. 14 Nebraska once again will face a similarly awesome opportunity against a similarly vaunted opponent, this time the top-ranked USC Trojans.
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Pillen, who earned All-Big Eight recognition in his junior and senior years, was listed at six-feet tall, 193 pounds. His older brother, Clete, a six-foot, 205-pound linebacker as a senior, was a co-captain and second-team All-American for Nebraska in 1976. Clete still holds the Nebraska record for racking up 30 tackles in a game against Oklahoma State that year. Fans probably best know Jim – who had an uncanny ability of being in the right place at the right time in the biggest games – for his recovery of Billy Sims’s fumble at the 3-yard line to preserve Nebraska’s 17-14 win over top-ranked Oklahoma in 1978 (Jim is always quick to downplay the moment and remind fans that there were over a hundred Husker players who won that game and that there were over a hundred plays they had to play in order to win it). Hailing from Monroe, Neb., both Jim and Clete grew up in the 1960s – they occasionally watched Bryant’s Alabama teams get the best of Nebraska in the Orange Bowl – dreaming of playing for the Huskers. Their blood runs as Husker Red as anyone’s.
Today, Jim Pillen is the president and Clete Pillen the personnel manager for Progressive Swine Technologies, a high-tech pork producing business based in Columbus, Neb. Jim Pillen smiles as he marvels at how the time has gone. Thirty years. It seems like it was only yesterday when he was out there donning the Scarlet & Cream and giving it his all, he says. Yet he also marvels at how enormously the game has changed in that time. The size and athleticism of the players. The complexity and diversity of the schemes. Even the technology of it all and how nowadays it seems nearly every game is televised, whereas in 1977 being on TV was a rare treat. And when you were on, as the Huskers and Crimson Tide were that year, the whole nation watched.
Pillen still watches Husker games every opportunity he gets. While he inevitably has gotten older since he last played for Nebraska all those years ago, his passion for the game hasn’t changed. Last Saturday, he watched his alma mater grind out an ugly 20-17 win at Wake Forest. As with most any Nebraska fan, the game left Pillen feeling that his team has plenty to work on.
Still, while many might doubt Nebraska’s chances to topple college football’s most dominating program in the Trojans this Saturday, he remains calm about the Big Red’s capabilities.
“I think the thing fans forget is that kids in college are resilient,” Pillen said after the victory over the Deacons. “A week goes by quickly for you or me, but a week’s a lifetime to them. In college football, what happened seven days ago, you better get it out of your mind quickly – whether you won or lost.”
Pillen knows what he’s talking about firsthand. In fact, there are few better examples in the Husker annals to amplify his point than the early weeks of his junior year, his first as a Husker starter. The Huskers began that year, 1977, with a stunning 19-10 home loss to unranked Washington State, coached at the time by Warren Powers, a former Husker assistant who had left Nebraska after the 1976 season. Nebraska and its new defensive staff in particular faced an uproar of criticism over the loss. As the Huskers plummeted out of the rankings, it looked to many as though the Huskers were headed for a blowout loss against a rolling Crimson Tide team loaded on both sides of the ball.
“Nobody but those of us inside our own locker room gave us a shot,” Pillen recalls.
As it turned out, those were the only people who mattered. From the start, it was there – something in the air, a buzz around the stadium perhaps, that seemed to foretell of what was to come. The more the game wore on – with each play, with each three-and-out, with each turnover, with each score – that “something” only got stronger as the Husker win that was so unthinkable to so many outside the team gradually unfolded on the field.
“I just remember a confidence. We really thought we could win,” Pillen says. “It was just a very special day.”
SEASON OF TURMOIL AND TRIUMPH
Confidence was something the 1977 Huskers had to build on their own. It was a team that earned everything it got. There were no undue pats on the back, no hype showers from the media. The team began the year ranked No. 15, Nebraska’s lowest pre-season ranking in eight years. Many prognosticators doubted the team’s ability to overcome the graduation of several star players, including All-Americans in quarterback Vince Ferragamo, defensive tackle Mike Fultz, defensive back Dave Butterfield, as we all as Clete Pillen.
Furthermore, the offseason was one of the most tumultuous in modern Husker history. Several assistant coaches, for various reasons, went looking for other jobs or simply quit. Monte Kiffin went to Arkansas. Bill Myles went to Ohio State. Warren Powers went to Washington State. Even Jim Ross, a holdover from Devaney’s first staff who in fact had coached with Devaney at Wyoming and all the way back at Alpena High in Michigan, decided to hang it up.
“All Nebraska fans forget that. On defense, it was a major change,” says Pillen, who sympathizes with the Husker players who endured the more well-known staff changes between 2002 and 2004.
“That ’77 team was the only team in the last 40 years that could relate.”
Coach Tom Osborne hired a new defensive coordinator, Lance Van Zandt, who brought in new defensive schemes and strategies. Far from everyone was happy. Many players, particularly defensive backs, found it difficult to adjust. Pillen remembers that Nebraska had some 38 players playing a cornerback or safety position in the spring of 1977. By the time the opener against Washington State rolled around for the 1977 season, only 12 defensive backs remained on the roster.
When Nebraska lost 19-10 to the unranked Cougars – yes, the team coincidentally coached by the very Warren Powers who had just left the Husker staff – it was a particularly bitter pill to swallow, Pillen said. All of Husker Nation felt a tidal wave of disappointment. Outside the locker room, there was worry. If the Huskers could blow it at home against lowly Washington State – a team that had been 3-8 the year before – how bad was it going to be when Alabama, one of the most feared teams in the country, came to Memorial Stadium? It was little comfort to many fans that Nebraska had played well for much of the game or dominated the Cougars aside from the final score.
“Nebraska fans are tough,” Pillen says. “As Lance Van Zandt said, ‘We gotta circle the wagons.’”
He pauses, then starts to crack another smile.
“We really came together.”
THE MATCHUP
Some fans, particularly younger fans, might not fully appreciate what Pillen and his Husker teammates faced on that day 30 years ago. In some ways, Alabama was then what USC is today. The Tide won more games (103) and national championships (three – tied with Southern Cal, although some lesser known organizations credit Alabama with a fourth national title for 1977, a year when no major school finished unbeaten) than any program in the 1970s.
Even with the incredible number of dominant teams Bear Bryant produced at Alabama, it is safe to say that the 1977 Tide were one of his best. A wishbone team, they combined an outstanding offensive line with superior skill talent. Defending them was the supreme test. Unlike Oklahoma’s wishbone, which could go an entire game throwing a handful of passes (occasionally none at all), Alabama’s frequently launched the ball downfield.
As a safety, specifically the “monster back” in Nebraska’s scheme that year, Pillen – along with NU’s other safeties, including Kent Smith, Larry Valasek, and Jeff Hansen – was under extreme pressure facing such an attack. As is the rare case when facing a powerful running offense with potent receiving threats, the challenge for the safeties was to diagnose plays quickly enough so as to effectively stop the run without getting beaten deep by the pass.
The Tide threw the ball with devastating efficiency in 1977 in particular because they had Ozzie Newsome, a consensus All-American wide receiver who later played in three Pro Bowls as a tight end in the NFL and eventually was elected into both the College and Pro Football Halls of Fame. In addition to a star quarterback in Jeff Rutledge, the Tide featured a bevy of future NFL running backs, the most dangerous in 1977 being Johnny Davis and Tony Nathan.
“They were very, very good,” Pillen says.
The Tide’s ferocious defense was hardly any less star-studded, having several players who went on to the NFL. In 1977, they were led by a pair of juniors, linebacker Barry Krause and junior defensive end Marty Lyons, both of whom eventually were selected in the first 14 picks of the NFL draft.
And who were the 1977 Huskers? This was no Scoring Explosion. Rather, relatively speaking, they were the blue collar bunch of the Tom Osborne era. There was no Mike Rozier or Ahman Green. There was no Tommie Frazier or Eric Crouch. There was no Johnny Rodgers or Irving Fryar.
Including their bowl game – a comeback 21-17 win over 14th-ranked North Carolina in the Liberty Bowl – the 1977 Huskers outscored their foes by an average of only 26-17. The 9-point average margin of victory was the smallest of the 25-year Osborne era at Nebraska, and the offensive scoring average was the second-lowest. It was a team that eventually produced four all-conference players for that year, tied for the fewest of any of Tom Osborne’s teams. By the end of the year, they had one All-American selection, center Tom Davis, and only one major organization, the Football Writers, had made him their first team selection.
When Husker fans talk about the all-time great Husker teams, they don’t talk about the 1977 Huskers. Many fans these days might even be hard-pressed, off the top of their head, to name a single starter from that year. The team lacked star power, a point that Pillen not only willingly but pridefully admits, because the team made up for it in tenacity.
“We just had a lot of heart. For the most part, it was just guys who went out and played their tails off,” he says.
Make no mistake, though, there were some excellent players with some excellent talent on that Husker team. I-back Rick Berns had another strong season. Greg Jorgensen and Kelvin Clark emerged as anchors alongside Davis at offensive guard and tackle, respectively (Clark went on to be a consensus All-American in 1978). Lee Kunz, one of the best tacklers in Husker history, provided steady play all year at linebacker. Ted Harvey went on to earn postseason honors at cornerback, and Ken Spaeth already had proven to be an excellent threat at tight end the year before. 1977 was also the year that – starting with the Alabama game – I.M. Hipp became a household name across Nebraska. There were plenty of others among the cast, too.
When a group of players starts functioning as a single unit, the teamwork becomes infectious. And, as Pillen can attest, when a team can do so while commanding some solid core talent, it can – when playing at its best – become something greater than the sum of its parts and prove capable of beating anyone.
Against Alabama in 1977, the Huskers knew they would have to be at their very best.
THE GAME
The game turned out to be all that college football fans always hope to see and never tire of. It was the kind of seesaw, momentum-shifting, emotional slugfest that defines the game. It had everything. Spectacular catches and hard hits. Sharp passes and tough runs. A brutal war in the trenches. Gutsy play calling. Short plays, big plays, trick plays. A final, defining drive. A last-minute defensive stand.
There were four lead changes in the first half, as each team seemed determined to one-up the other. Nebraska opened with a Billy Todd field goal on its first drive. The Tide came right back with a touchdown run by Rutledge to lead 7-3. The Huskers answered. The Husker faithful went into pandemonium after they saw quarterback Randy Garcia somehow thread a pass off a fake field goal in between Tide defenders to Berns for a 10-7 lead.
After Alabama got into scoring position thanks to some terrific throws by Rutledge to Newsome, the Tide’s Nathan scored from the 7 to retake the lead, 14-10. Again, the Huskers had to find a way to answer. Nebraska utilized the passing game to its running backs much of the game in a way that any West Coast offense coach could appreciate in order to move the ball in space against Alabama’s aggressive defense. The biggest such play came in the second quarter when Garcia swung a pass out to Hipp, who then – with Tide defenders over-pursuing and then swarming all over to get back to him – laced his way through traffic for a 53-yard gain.
Berns scored two plays later from the 2-yard line to put Nebraska up 17-14 with three minutes to go. But the unshakeable Rutledge managed to pass his team into scoring position again. With ten seconds to go, Bama kicked a 37-yard field goal to tie the game at 17-17.
The second half was more of the same, although the Huskers never trailed again. Alabama was simply like the movie monster that wouldn’t die no matter how many times it got shot, stabbed, or beaten. Every time Nebraska made a play, it seemed, the Tide would roll right back.
In the third quarter, Kunz intercepted Rutledge at the Alabama 39-yard line to put Nebraska in business. Berns went for a quick 22, and Craig Johnson went 17 on the next play put NU up, 24-17. After an impressive Alabama drive capped by a Nathan TD run tied the game with just over 12 minutes to go, the Huskers took the kickoff and marched forward 80 yards with one of the classic drives in school history.
Using up a solid five minutes of the clock, Garcia managed the offense like a multi-year starter. The Huskers made it to the one-yard line. On fourth and goal, Berns leapt over the pile for the final go-ahead score. 31-24, Huskers. The Blackshirts, including Pillen with his interceptions, made sure it stayed that way.
As the final seconds ticked away, the crowd crescendoed, and the two exhausted teams flooded across what a generation later became Tom Osborne Field. Cameras erupted everywhere.
Somewhere, one managed to capture a perfect glimpse of Pillen and the Bear.
AFTERMATH
The Huskers went on to a 9-3 record that season and a final No. 10 ranking in the Coaches Poll, losing again only to Iowa State and Oklahoma. The comeback win in the Liberty Bowl, of course, meant nine straight seasons of nine or more wins, a streak that eventually reached 33.
The Crimson Tide did not lose again that year. They became more dominating as the season went along and finished No. 2 in both polls. In the Sugar Bowl, they handed an excellent Ohio State team a 35-6 whipping, one of the worst losses in Woody Hayes’s career. In fact, immediately after its loss to Nebraska in 1977, Alabama went on one of the most dominant runs in college football history, winning 40 of its next 41 games and back-to-back national titles in 1978 and 1979.
It is also worth noting that from 1971 to 1979, the Tide went 97-11 (including 1-2 against Nebraska). In those 108 football games, they gave up 30 points just twice. Once was in the Orange Bowl in a 38-6 loss to the 1971 Nebraska Cornhuskers, a team many experts still consider to be the greatest college team of all time. The other, of course, was to the 1977 Nebraska Cornhuskers.
‘NEVER GIVE UP’
Like most any college football fan, Pillen doesn’t live in the past. The win over Alabama will always evoke fond memories for him. But this week, he has other matters on his mind. He, along with some of his 1977 teammates, will be at Memorial Stadium Saturday when the Huskers take on USC.
If his observances of college football this year, of this year’s Nebraska’s team, and of his own experiences as a Husker have shown him anything, it’s that he would not be surprised in the least if Nebraska finds a way to win.
“No, not at all. Obviously, USC is extraordinarily talented, but if Nebraska wins Saturday, that’s not an upset,” Pillen says. “There is enough talent for Nebraska to beat anybody. We’ll be in the hunt, and I wouldn’t count us out.”
He added, “I know this: these kids are going to compete their tails off.”
Having played for a coach famous for his approach and consistency in playing one game at a time, Pillen knows that one game is just as important as the next. Yet he also knows that, against certain opponents, it can be all the more crucial for players to keep their poise. Despite all the changes Pillen has seen in the game in his lifetime, some things about football and athletics in general stay constant. If there is a lesson for today’s Huskers to learn from their predecessors of 30 years ago in how to play this Saturday or any Saturday, it’s a simple one, Pillen says.
“No matter what happens, you never panic, you never give up,” he says. “No matter how many times you get run over, you get up.”
Do that, and maybe someday, thirty years from now, another Husker or two, marveling at how quickly time has passed and how much the game has changed, will be able to point to a photo of himself making the game-clinching play in front of a Trojan receiver or shaking hands and accepting congratulations from Pete Carroll.
Or maybe he’ll be able to point to it on a youtube video.
Either way, that would be pretty awesome.
EPILOGUE
Pillen: Callahan has NU on right track
While some might feel Husker Coach Bill Callahan has to prove himself by beating USC Saturday, former Husker defensive back Jim Pillen said this week he has seen all the proof he needs.
“I just think the program is rock-solid,” Pillen said this week at his office in Columbus, Neb.
Pillen, who earned All-Big Eight honors for the Huskers in 1977 and 1978, said he feels as good about the football program as ever. As a former player, he has received invitations to events at the program’s football facilities. He said such first-hand visits with the staff and players have convinced him that there is ample reason to be excited about the future.
Pillen even went so far as to compare Callahan to the man who won three national titles at Nebraska.
“He’s Tom Osborne 30 years ago,” Pillen said of Callahan. “He’s a brilliant football mind, a fine disciplinarian, an excellent teacher.”
Pillen made no specific prediction for the USC game. But he does foresee a strong future for the Nebraska Football program that goes deeper than winning a game here or losing a game there.
“I’d love to see Nebraska go 12-0 every year. But I don’t lie awake at night and worry if they win or lose,” he said. “Win, lose, or draw, Nebraska Football is Nebraska Football. They’re going to compete in every game.”
While he sees the product on the field improve, there is something else that impresses him more these days, and he said it’s something that he hopes the fans appreciate.
“The thing is, they’re not just recruiting football players,” Pillen said. “They’re recruiting kids we can all be proud of at Nebraska – kids who, no matter how good they are on the football field, their best days are going to be after wearing that helmet with the ‘N’ on it.”
