AP PHOTO
Osborne: "It's wise to back off before you leave feet first or somebody tells me it's time to go."

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."

He decided not to tempt fate, that the 13- and 14-hour days he spends at work and the extra time spent at home watching tapes were not conducive to a long life.

"It isn't wise to continue to push that hard," he said. "There are no shortcuts. I'm in reasonably good shape. I have no major problems where I'm going to keel over in front of you."

Less than a year ago at the Orange Bowl, Osborne, a daily jogger, had been asked about retirement.

"I had breakfast today with Don Shula, who coached a lot of years, and Joe Paterno is 70 and says he wants to go until he's 75," he said. "Bobby Bowden has to be pushing 70 (he's 68) too, so to say at the age of 59 I'm done might be a little too early."

At 60, it's right on time.

Or maybe too early for others.

"I'm surprised and saddened and I just hate it," Bowden said.

Osborne compiled a 59-3 record the last five seasons but lost some favor around the country because of what many see as a lax approach to off-the-field problems.

In rapid succession two seasons ago, he had to deal with Lawrence Phillips' pulling a former girlfriend down three flights of stairs by her hair; with Christian Peter accused of grabbing a former Miss Nebraska by the crotch; with Tyrone Williams charged with firing a gun into a car occupied by two people; and with Riley Washington charged with attempted murder.

All continued to play for the Cornhuskers.

Said Williams, now a Green Bay Packer cornerback: "He cared about his players to the fullest. He went to war for you. He wasn't the type of coach who, if something happened, he turned his back on you. He was there for you. He's a special man. He's a unique coach."

Osborne paid a price for it.

"Tom has been pilloried by the national media who thought he tried to change the legal system and run interference for athletes in trouble," said Bill Byrne, Nebraska's athletic director. "It's simply untrue."

Said Osborne of the criticism: "It's unpleasant. I guess you've got to be true to yourself. I don't want to do things simply to play to public opinion. Yeah, I'm sorry that people think poorly of me, if they do. But that's the way it goes."

That was about as animated as Osborne gets.

"He never screamed, yelled, hollered, never used curse words," Neil Smith, formerly an All-American defensive lineman at Nebraska, now a Denver Bronco, told the Associated Press. "I remember one time at Iowa State. He came in at halftime and said, 'Dadgum it, we need to play better.' And that's as close as I ever heard him come to cursing. Even still, he caught every eye in the room, because we weren't used to hearing that from him. And we came back out and dominated the rest of the game."

It has always been Osborne's way. Son of a preacher, he went to Hastings College, where he played quarterback, and spent three seasons in the NFL as a reserve receiver at Washington and San Francisco.

He came to Nebraska in 1962 as a graduate assistant under Devaney.

"Most everything I know about coaching I learned from him," Osborne said of Devaney, who died in May.

Longtime assistant Frank Solich will succeed Osborne, pending approval by Nebraska's board of regents.

"I don't know how you replace Tom Osborne as much as you follow him," Solich said. "In his 25 years, nobody has equaled him."

Tom Osborne's career coaching record at Nebraska:
YEAR	W	L	T	PCT.
1973	9	2	1	.792
1974	9	3	0	.750
1975	10	2	0	.833
1976	9	3	1	.731
1977	9	3	0	.750
1978	9	3	0	.750
1979	10	2	0	.833
1980	10	2	0	.833
1981	9	3	0	.750
1982	12	1	0	.923
1983	12	1	0	.923
1984	10	2	0	.833
1985	9	3	0	.750
1986	10	2	0	.833
1987	10	2	0	.833
1988	11	2	0	.846
1989	10	2	0	.833
1990	9	3	0	.750
1991	9	2	1	.792
1992	9	3	0	.750
1993	11	1	0	.917
1994	13	0	0	1.000
1995	12	0	0	1.000
1996	11	2	0	.846
1997	12	0	0	1.000
TOTALS	254	49	3	.828