The train whistles wailing on quiet mornings and the soft breezes blowing across sorghum fields provide a typical backdrop for football practice in Ogallala, a small town in western Nebraska.
But there's something unusual about Ogallala. It has one of the few high school teams in the state running the West Coast passing offense.
That underscores the challenge Bill Callahan faces in his debut as the head coach at Nebraska Saturday night against Western Illinois. By scrapping the Cornhuskers' traditional power-based option and installing the passing-based West Coast offense, Callahan is changing football culture as well as philosophy.
"You have to look at how many generations of Nebraskans grew up, including myself, with option power football," said Ogallala coach Chip Kay, 36, who installed the West Coast four years ago and has studied it at clinics at Colorado, Colorado State and Princeton. "I don't want to say it's ingrained, but when you go to high school games, you see a lot of the same things."
For more than 40 years, the Cornhuskers featured the I-formation, which became as identifiable with the state as cornstalks and Omaha beef. Offenses are geographical and sociological. As Nebraska was winning five national titles, beginning in 1970, with the power option, or something similar, it spread. Kay estimated that 80 percent of high school teams in the state have option-based offenses.
Kay said Callahan should expect some second-guessing in the coffee shops, but that winning would ultimately bring acceptance. The West Coast has been embraced in Ogallala because the team has made the playoffs the past three seasons, but Kay still hears the occasional grumble that his team cannot run the ball.
The Cornhuskers' change has caused a stir. More than 61,000 fans showed up at the spring game, in which Callahan "marketed the product" with 49 pass plays.
"In some ways this brings Nebraska into the modern age," Michael Oriard, an Oregon State professor who has written two books on the culture of college football, said in a telephone interview. "They sort of abandoned their connection to their historical tradition, which went through various versions of the running game."
The Nebraska tradition begun in 1962 by coach Bob Devaney was continued by Tom Osborne from 1973-97 and ended with Frank Solich, who was fired after going 58-19 in his six seasons as head coach.
"We have no pro teams, no beaches and no mountains," said Bob Knowles, president of Nebraska's Touchdown Club, the program's largest booster organization. "Football is so important here. What Frank Solich did here the last few years, having a top-15, top-20 caliber program, is acceptable in 95 percent of America. It's not acceptable here."
Callahan, who coached the Oakland Raiders to the Super Bowl two seasons ago, knows all about high expectations, having worked for Al Davis. He was fired after last season, in which he called the Raiders the dumbest team in America and they went 4-12.
Callahan has gone from pariah to potential savior with the change of address, but he is aware that the changes he is making are drastic. Nebraska, which has never had a quarterback throw for 300 yards in a game, finished 114 out of 117 Division I-A teams in passing last year, averaging only 109.4 yards a game.
"I have to do what I know," Callahan said recently after practice in Lincoln, "and I have to do what I do."
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