Game Of The Year -- Washington Vs. Nebraska -- Big Dread Machine

TOM OSBORNE enjoys bieng able to concentrate on football now that his Nebraska team has recovered from the controvlersy caused by earlier players' trangressions, but the longtime coach knows it can happen again.

It could happen again. On an early-autumn day on the prairie, where anticipation crackles across the cornfields and cattle ranches of Nebraska, the man with the most to gain, and most to lose, the man whose thinly veiled exterior barely conceals a silo of emotions, knows this is true.

It could happen again.

Tom Osborne might have repaired Nebraska's damaged image in two years since Lincoln became the crime capital of college football, but the thin line between sainthood and Satan, between right and wrong, can be breached in the matter of one weak moment.

Osborne, who coaches football like a traveling preacher, has not strayed from this message through the most trying times. His moral compass always points toward spirituality even as society's ever-encroaching corruption circles Lincoln.

Two games into his 25th season at Nebraska, Osborne says coaching is enjoyable again because in the past year the Cornhuskers have not crossed the line.

"That doesn't mean 10 days from now we can't have something else," he said. "You just don't know what is going to happen when you get up in the morning."

Two years ago, the irreproachable Osborne probably didn't want to rise a few times.

Two years ago, defending national champion Nebraska discovered what life at the top cost.

Two years ago, Lawrence Phillips, a talented but troubled running back from a West Covina, Calif., group home, drove to a teammate's apartment in the early-morning hours after a game, broke in and confronted a former girlfriend, basketball player Kate McEwen.

Despite the presence of 6-foot-3 quarterback Scott Frost, an enraged Phillips grabbed McEwen by her hair and dragged her down several flights of stairs.

Phillips was suspended for six games, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault and trespassing, attended anger-management sessions, returned to play in the Fiesta Bowl, and has gone on to score touchdowns for the St. Louis Rams.

Last year, McEwen, who eventually quit the basketball team but remained in school, filed a sexual-assault suit against Phillips. The case was settled a month later.

Phillips' was perhaps the worst of several transgressions exposed after Osborne's first national championship, after the sad-sack, second-place coach finally reached the pinnacle of college football.

But Christian Peter, an outstanding, 6-foot-2, 290-pound defensive tackle from New Jersey, further sullied the program's stainless image.

Peter was arrested five times from 1991 through '93 for exposing himself to a female student, urinating in public and failing to comply with a police officer's orders, among other indiscretions. Despite the problems, Osborne played Peter because the tackle met his requirements after each incident.

He has remained loyal to Peter, critics say, to a fault. "It seems he has blinders on when it comes to the players, even now," said one who refused to be identified.

Osborne continued to stand by Peter even after two women, including a former Miss Nebraska, filed sexual assault and harassment charges against the player. Peter, signed by the New York Giants this year, allegedly groped the pageant winner in a downtown Lincoln bar. He pleaded guilty to third-degree assault.

The other woman, Kathy Redmond of Colorado, left school early after alleging in a civil suit Peter raped her twice. She said the school never supported her allegations, and Osborne reportedly called her family dysfunctional. Redmond's suit was settled before going to trial.

Shortly before he was drafted by the New England Patriots in 1996, Peter was accused of grabbing another woman by the throat at a bar. He was sentenced to 10 days in jail for disturbing the peace.

Phillips' and Peter's actions were strongly criticized by women's groups, who saw Nebraska football as emblematic of broader issues of domestic violence.

By fall of '96, though, Nebraska's problems seemed to subside. The school implemented crisis-management sessions for its athletes and Osborne lectured football players with ecclesiastic zeal.

Then, star linebacker Terrell Farley was arrested for driving under the influence in Lincoln eight days before the Huskers' home opener against Michigan State. It was his second alcohol-related driving incident. The team banded together and insisted on no more transgressions. The school also instituted a campus-wide code of conduct. Students failing to adhere to rules were dealt with by a judicial board.

That took Osborne's staff out of the equation when it came to leveling punishment after criminal allegations. The team still has its rules, but now no one can accuse Osborne of meddling with the judicial system, as a Lancaster County district attorney did in 1995.

As he celebrates two milestones - the silver coaching anniversary and his 60th birthday - Osborne has not forgotten the difficult lessons about reaching the summit.

"Most everything is a trade-off," Osborne said last week. "Certainly I wouldn't trade the confidence and excellence of a couple of those teams. Yet when you have those kinds of teams, you are going to attract more scrutiny."

The flaws, the coach said, are magnified.

"I'm not in any way saying we didn't have some flaws," Osborne said. "There's no question there are some things I wished had not happened, but I would say they probably were accentuated to the point that they were not entirely in balance."

The other side Osborne refers to is the pride in not only winning at least nine games a season as head coach, but the Huskers' stellar graduation record, one of the best in Division I, and the absence of any major NCAA violations.

And as No. 7 Nebraska prepares for its national showdown against No. 2 Washington on at Husky Stadium, the sports-talk shows, newspapers and television coverage are focused on football again.

"It's amazing how fast all that stopped," said Tom Shatel, Omaha World-Herald sports columnist. "It's not like it never happened, but it's pretty close. It's gone from one extreme to the other in two years."

Two marginal players, J.R. Edwards and George Guidry, were kicked off the team before the season without much fanfare. Edwards said he was dismissed for testing positive for marijuana three times, but he denies smoking it. Guidry reportedly caused problems in the dorms.

"Coach Osborne is not going to put up with it anymore," said Grant Wistrom, an All-American defensive end. "We know that and everybody has been on their best behavior."

The cynics say all it took was an "average" Husker season - 11-2 last year after consecutive undefeated seasons - to stop the onslaught of negative publicity.

Nothing in Lincoln is average. Not where football is concerned.

"When they find out you're a football player, they see you in a different light here," said Tommie Frazier, quarterback for the national championship teams who was not drafted by the NFL because of problems with blood clots.

Frazier, a liaison between the governor's office and health and human services, said Nebraskans treat players as if they are "one of the greatest people who ever lived."

Wistrom recalled the moment he realized Nebraska football was special. A fan asked for his autograph one night in Lincoln before he even attended school there.

"You just have to grow up a lot faster if you want to survive," he said. "People for some reason expect us to act differently than other college-age kids. Just because we put on a uniform, people expect us to be adults."

The players as much as Osborne suggest the national media was too critical of Nebraska's problems.

"We learned how devious the media can be," Frazier said.

In his book, "On Solid Ground," Osborne offers a version of events that sometimes leaves out important aspects of the cases to portray Nebraska favorably.

It's not out of character for Osborne to depict himself and his program as a victim even though GQ writer-at-large Tom Junod once called the '95 Cornhuskers, "a precise application of anarchic forces, a snorting, rampaging, gobbling thing bent on pillage . . . simply the most physically dominant college football team yet inflicted on this planet and so, of his twenty-three teams, the one most after Coach Tom's own heart."

Osborne, the stoic Midwestern symbol you'd expect to see in a Grant Wood painting, has risen from the parched earth, the grandson of a Nebraskan preacher. Like his grandfather, and father - and son, Mike, - Osborne attended Hastings College in Hastings, Neb. Afterward, he played in the NFL but then came home to the only job that really mattered.

He succeeded the legendary Bob Devaney in Lincoln and in a quarter century his legend and celebrity has grown well beyond the Great Plains.

"He relies on his faith for a lot of his strength," son Mike said. "No doubt the (criminal allegations) took a lot out of him. He was hounded and it was a big distraction."

Said Frazier: "It's frustrating. You have 150 guys on the team (85 on athletic scholarship) and everyone expects every one of those players to be perfect. But everyone makes mistakes."

Some have suggested the terror inflicted on female students who came forward to complain was more than a mistake. Women's groups have been frustrated by what they view as a cavalier attitude toward the incidents.

But on Saturdays at Memorial Stadium where a sea of 76,000 red-and-white-clad fans turn Lincoln into a high-decibel human tornado, the criticism is muted.

And the man they've come to admire above all other Nebraskans, the man with the most to win, and the most to lose, the man who wants to forget but can never forget, is enjoying the silence.

At Nebraska, like everywhere else these days, Tom Osborne knows it could happen again.