re: This year marks 30 years since the most dominant college football team of all-time...

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Programs rise and fall all the time.

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No one in the old Big 8 was nearly as formidable against Nebraska as when Barry Switzer was at OU.

Osborne was collectively 71-3-1 against “top ten” Kansas, Colorado, and Kansas State. He was 5-12 against Switzer teams that were always competing on the national scene.

Nebraska and Oklahoma used to beat the rest of the Big 8 so badly so frequently that Switzer’s phrase “Hang half a hundred on ‘em” became well known.

By 1995, Switzer was long gone and even Bill McCartney (responsible for the 3 losses in the 71-3-1 record against Kansas, Kansas, and Colorado record) had left.

There was no elite team in the Big 8 to challenge Nebraska anymore, so they beat the shite out of all seven conference opponents instead of just six.

OOC, 1995 Nebraska’s schedule was a joke. No one with more than six wins and mighty Pacific even folded the program after the season.

Several of Osborne’s previous teams lost to some really good Alabama, Penn State, Washington, and UCLA teams. Teams that competed for and won national titles.

No one like that on the 1995 schedule.

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Oklahoma may have been in a slump but Nebraska defeated a 10-1 and Top 3 ranked Miami team, in the Orange Bowl, to win the national title just the year before.

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But 24-17, not 62-24. And Miami easily could have won the game. Nebraska had to bleed for it.

And that was a Nebraska team with a better OL and FB (Corey Schlesinger, who scored two touchdowns) than the 1995 team had.

When you have to play two NFL Hall of Famers on D and a coaching staff that is familiar with you, style points are harder to generate. The 1992-1993 FSU D that beat Nebraska had Derrick Brooks, who is also in the NFL Hall of Fame. They also had Mickey Andrews,

So Nebraska goes from playing three HOF defensive players (and some great defensive minds that faced them often) in bowl games from 1992-1994 to no-name guys on a team that only cared about offense and the passing game.

Makes it a little easier to score; especially for a run-oriented team.

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You are also ignoring the fact that Tom Osborne changed his recruiting methodology in the early-90s to be able to compete with the Florida States and Miamis of the college football world. His teams in the mid-90s were faster than those he fielded in the 80s as a result.

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But were they really?

Could Tommie Frazier, Lawrence Phillips, and any of the no-name receivers in 1995 outrun Turner Gill, Mike Rozier, and Irving Fryar from the early ‘80s teams?

What speed demons on D did the 1995 team have that were so much better than previous years? Neil Smith, Broderick Thomas, Trev Alberts. Nebraska had plenty of All-Americans on D.

Osborne’s kryptonite wasn’t teams throwing it all over the field and blowing up the scoreboard. That’s a myth. Rarely did opponents score a ton on him in the ‘70s and ‘80s. It was teams with All-Americans and NFL guys on defense that were the most problematic.