Osborne Out in a Heartbeat

Tom Osborne met with Nebraska players Wednesday and talked about the Orange Bowl, of preparing the No. 2 Cornhuskers to play No. 3 Tennessee, maybe even winning another national championship.

Oh, by the way, he added, I'm retiring after the game.

"Everybody was totally quiet and you could hear a pin drop," quarterback Scott Frost said. "Coach Osborne doesn't usually show any emotion, but there was a tear in his eye."

Osborne figured his body has sent him a message.

Message received.

In his usual low-key way, Osborne, who has never coached anywhere but at Nebraska, said 25 years were enough to work in a job he took 254 wins ago. The announcement came 36 years after he came to the university as an assistant to Bob Devaney, who hand-picked him as the successor.

And it came 3 1/2 weeks after Osborne was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, a heartbeat irregularity that can cause strokes or heart attacks.

Osborne, 60, is no stranger to heart problems, having undergone a bypass in 1984.

"I think it's wise to back off before you leave feet first or somebody tells me it's time to go," he said. "It's important to walk away while you can still walk."

Nobody was going to tell him to go anywhere.

Osborne has a record of 254-49-3 and has been to a bowl game every season he has been Nebraska's coach.

Should No. 1 Michigan find thorns in the Rose Bowl, the Cornhuskers are poised to send Osborne out on top.

He's used to it. Osborne coached Nebraska to national titles in 1994 and '95, and his teams have been ranked in the Associated Press top 10 for 86 consecutive weeks.

"Tom Osborne was one of the great coaches in college football for all time," Miami Dolphin Coach Jimmy Johnson said. "He has a tremendous amount of class and respect from all of his peers."

On Nov. 1, Nebraska beat Oklahoma, 69-7, for its 250th win under Osborne, who achieved the milestone faster than any coach in college football history, 18 games faster than Penn State's Joe Paterno.

Three weeks later came the heart irregularity, after the Cornhuskers had hammered Iowa State, 77-14, and rumors of his retirement began. They grew in intensity over the weekend at the Big 12 championship game in San Antonio, where Nebraska routed Texas A&M, 54-15.

"They said usually after 48 hours, it's not going to flip back over," he said when the irregularity showed in medical tests. "It may happen again, but it may be five years, 10 years, maybe six months."