I'm Nathan Meyer, I'm Assistant Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and I want to thank you for joining us today at the Nebraska State Fair for a special Nebraska lecture with Husker-esque expert and enthusiast Mike Babcock. As part of the university's 150th anniversary celebration this year, UNL is hosting a series of talks about the university's history and its impact on the state. We are excited to bring this speaker series from Lincoln to Grand Island, especially at one of our state's iconic events. And we want to thank Humanities Nebraska and the National Endowment for the Humanities for providing the financial support necessary to help make this expanded programming possible. I also want to welcome the guests joining us via the live web stream and through Facebook Live. If you're using Twitter during this event, share your posts using the hashtag Neb Lecture. We would love to hear about your favorite Husker football moments. After the lecture, I will moderate a question and answer session with today's speaker. And after that, we hope you'll stick around to enjoy some nifty 150 ice cream from the UNL Dairy Store and to attend a reception that's hosted by the Nebraska Alumni Association. Now please help me welcome Chancellor Ronnie Green, who will introduce today's lecture. Well good afternoon and welcome both to the Nebraska State Fair and to our Nebraska 150th lecture for the University of Nebraska. What you may not know is that both the University of Nebraska and the State Fair of Nebraska are celebrating their 150th anniversaries this year. We like the State Fair, then the state kind of grew up together. Our state celebrated its 150th anniversary two years ago, you might remember. For statehood in the state, two years later in 1869, the people of the state established the University of Nebraska. And we've had a great 150 year history since. We've been celebrating it all of this year since our official birthday date of February 15th earlier in the year and we're excited to be here celebrating it together with the State Fair this coming week. So welcome. We have a special treat for you today. As Nate said, we've had a series of what we've called N150 lectures that started in January. We've had one per month. This is the first one we've done off campus at an off campus location in the state. We're going to be at the State Fair doing that together. They've been co-sponsored this year with Humanities Nebraska and we want to thank Humanities Nebraska for helping to support our 12 lectures during the year telling different aspects of the story of the history of the University over these 15 decades. Before I introduce our speaker, I do want to draw attention to this space that you're in. We're very proud of this space. When the State Fair was moving from Lincoln 10 years ago, the 10th year we've been here in Grand Island with the Fair, there was the desire to develop some new kind of learning space for agriculture and for natural resources. And the last building that was put in place on the new fairgrounds here, thinking the third year of the Fair's run, was this raising Nebraska building that you're in. So on the other end is Game and Parks with learning about natural resources and that kind of environment. And in this end, you learn about ag and everything to do with our ag industry as an ag leader here in the state, our state in the industry and the raising Nebraska exhibit that you're in is nothing like it anywhere in the world. It's open year round for school children, staff, our University of Nebraska extension and put in place with partners from across the industry as you see. So surely take it in while you're here and learn about the ag industry as well. It's a real pleasure to introduce our our storyteller.  Mike Babcock to you today. Now, one of the things you may not know is that football and of course, you know the legacy of Hustler football in the state and in the nation and the world has been around for 120 of our 150 years in our history started in the late 1800s as a sport here with a with a huge history as you all know that we're so proud of. Today you have the opportunity to hear from one of the experts, Mike Babcock, who is a 40 year career in Hustler Athletics and knowing about Hustler Athletics and the history and the reporting of that in the media. First with the Lincoln Journal star, then with Hustler's illustrated for many years, more recently with the Hail Varsity. So I'm pleased to welcome to the stage to tell these stories to you. Mike Babcock, please join me in welcoming Mike. Thanks Chancellor, appreciate the opportunity to be here. And I just to sort of establish my credibility. 2008 I wrote a history of Nebraska. It's called the Nebraska football vault and the publisher asked me if I would go out would go to Omaha to for a book signing when the book came out. And I said, I guess I would and he said, well, you know, we're gonna have Tommy Frazer that's gonna be there with you. And, you know, an hour or so signing books at Costco in Omaha. So my wife and I, we went to Omaha, never been to Costco before. We walk in and we say, where's the book signing? Well, just go straight to the back. You can't miss it. So we walked to the back. There's a line of people always getting ready to get book signed. And a young lady comes up to us and she said, can I help you? And I said, yeah, I'm here for the book signing. And she said, well, there's the line right there for the book signing. And I said, no, see, I'm the person that wrote the book. I'm really sorry. This is where we're gonna have you. So Tommy Frazer wasn't there yet. When Tommy got there, I said to Tommy, you'll sit here first and then I'll sit next to you so that when they come through they'll get to you first and so he said, okay, that would work. And so a couple of people come through and probably two or three times that happened, they came through. Tommy signed it and they started to walk away. And Tommy said, this is a gentleman that wrote the book, don't you want his signature? And the response was, no, that's okay, I'm fine. And they took off. So there's my credibility right there, you can see that. And the other thing I guess is that when you're dealing with really old history, there's nobody around to refute whether you're right or wrong, so that's kind of the area where I'm the expert. Although with the internet now it's, you can check those kinds of things. You know, what I would probably say is, and as I was preparing for this, I had typed up about six pages worth of notes and my wife said, wait a minute, you're gonna have to get some kind of focus here. You can't just be going on and on and on. So I'm probably not gonna talk a whole lot about the Devaney Osborne era. I'm probably gonna go back a little further than that to the beginnings of the program. But before I do, I wanna point out some things that you're probably familiar with. But Nebraska ranks currently number six all time among major colleges in football wins, 897 victories. The only schools that are ahead of Nebraska on that list are Michigan, Ohio State, of course, Texas, of course, Alabama, and Notre Dame. And if you counted some, there are eight victories that Nebraska used to have that are no longer counted. They were against Lincoln High in the early 1900s, and they're now treated as exhibitions, which I think is appropriate. But if you also look at some of the early years of some of the teams, Notre Dame, for example, Notre Dame has a couple of its victories were against high schools. You scheduled what you could do. Notre Dame counts those. So if I were to add Nebraska's eight victories against Lincoln High, Nebraska would be tied with Alabama for a fourth. And I don't think Alabama had any listing of high schools there. But number six all time in victories. As we all know, 368 consecutive sellouts that started with the Missouri game in 1962, Bob Devaney's first season. There were 348 consecutive national polls that Nebraska was in. That's an NCAA record. Of those 348, 293, Nebraska was in the top 10. And that stretched from 1981 to 2002. The second on the list, Florida State, 211. So you go 348 to 11. We know that Nebraska's had eight Outland Trophy winners who have won nine Outland Trophies because Dave Remington won it twice. The only person to have won it twice, that's more than any other school. Nebraska's had five Lombardy Award winners. That's second only to Ohio State. Nebraska has five national championships, has played in 53 bowl games, which is third most of any program. And of course, three Heisman Trophy winners. And for the Grand Island folks here, Bobby Reynolds finished fifth in voting for the Heisman Trophy in 1950. He was the first Husker to rush for 1,000 yards, 1,342 yards he rushed for in nine games. He led the nation in scoring that year, his Consensus All-American scored 157 points. 22 touchdowns, 25 extra points. I hope that adds up to 157, had a remarkable sophomore season. He did all this as a sophomore. Then he had problems, he got a shoulder separation at Camp Curtis. Missed three games his junior year. Then he got the line that they used to mark the field, got it in his eyes, missed some more games. He only played 13 games his final two seasons at Nebraska because of injuries. So he would have been in that list. Tom Novak played at a time when Nebraska, it was a dark period in Nebraska football. But Tom Novak was a four-time all-conference first team selection. Only Husker that's ever been so honored that way. Tom Osborn, Bob Devaney got the five national championships, we all know that Tom Osborn in his 25 seasons as coach, 255, 49, and one. He had one season in which he lost to a team that finished with a losing record. 1992 Iowa State managed to beat Nebraska. That was Tommy Fraser's freshman year. A remarkable record, Bob Devaney, 101, 20, and two. Back-to-back 100-yard victory coaches. Hadn't happened before, double 100. All of these, Tom Osborn, 13 conference championships in his 25 years, nine of those outright. Bob Devaney, eight conference championships in 11 years, seven outright. All these things speak to the success the program had. All of these things, for the most part, happened after Bob Devaney came here. But if you go back to the beginning, there were some pretty good coaches. There were some very successful coaches. I want to start off with the second year that Nebraska played. The first year Nebraska played a game was in 1890. The Omaha YMCA, they played that game up in Omaha. Nebraska agreed to do it for two-thirds of the gate to cover travel expenses from Lincoln Dome Mall. Nebraska won the game. Nebraska won later in February. Nebraska played Dome and won that game as well. So undefeated that first season. In 1883, the student newspaper wrote an editorial saying Nebraska couldn't become a real college until it had a football team. But it took them seven years to get there. But I'm going to talk about the first time Nebraska played a team from out of state. And who was it? Iowa. 1891, Iowa. And before I talk about the game a little bit, I want to, this is always interested me. And it was in the university records and it was in the media guide. You could get this information in the media guide until 2001. And I think we got it changed because it wasn't accurate. But the media guide always had a note that said, Nebraska had a coach for one game that year. And his name was T.U. Lyman, Theron Lyman. And the footnote was that Theron Lyman was the head coach at Iowa. And it was such a sporting gesture that he helped prepare Nebraska to play Iowa. And there's a history of Nebraska football. It was written in 1940. It's called 50 Years of Nebraska Football. It's written by Frederick Ware and Greg McBride, both of the World Herald. And I've got a quote from that book in which they said, Iowa, this is a quote, Iowa wanted a good contest and lent its teacher in an effort to ensure it. And then there was another history of Nebraska football written in 1966 called Go Big Red. And it said that this decision to loan Theron Lyman to Nebraska was with a magnanimity seldom equaled in the game's history. Okay, that's quite a deal, right? Giving their coach to prepare you. And I was looking at that, I kind of thought, I saw it a lot of times. I was, well, it's really interesting that they would do that. And then I got to thinking Iowa City is over here and Lincoln's over here. How did Theron Lyman get from here to here and get back to help his team or did he just prepare Nebraska? So I pulled out an Iowa history, history of Iowa football, because I wanted to see what kind of record Theron Lyman had. Because if he's coaching both teams in this game, he's gonna get a win and a loss, it turns out he would have got a loss if he was coaching Nebraska. And I can't find any place where he ever coached there. He never coached at Iowa. Then I'm reading this section, Iowa's early rival before Nebraska was Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa. And Iowa played Grinnell College in 1889, 1890, and 1891 before the Nebraska game and lost to Grinnell in each of those three games. Grinnell was known at the time as Iowa College. And Theron Lyman was the star player for Iowa College in Grinnell. And he was listed as a student coach in 1891. So with a magnanimity seldom equalled in the game's history, it was in fact someone from Iowa's rival who came across the river to help prepare Nebraska to play Iowa. He wasn't Iowa's coach, and yet that story had been carried along. So Theron Lyman, he prepared Nebraska, but it didn't happen that way. And it's been changed subsequent. So now the footnote says he was the coach at Iowa College, even though he was a student coach there. The other thing that it showed is that he had the background in Yale, which meant that he must have been pretty young at Yale because he was 22 when he prepared Nebraska and he had played three years at Grinnell College. So he must have been in his early teens when he went to Yale University. It never did clear that up. After he finished at Grinnell, he went on to Wisconsin, spent two years there, captained the team for two or three seasons, and got a law degree. Okay, so he got the game here. You're playing in Omaha. You've got this one game coach from Grinnell. Estimates were, depending upon the newspaper account, 2,500 to 3,000 people showed up. The game was delayed for 45 minutes because somebody forgot to put up the goalposts. They didn't put any ropes around the field, and there's no bleachers. So the field is surrounded by Nebraska fans who tried to intimidate the Iowa players by going on the field. One newspaper account said there were two policemen trying to keep the people off the field. Another newspaper account, I think the Morning World Herald, said there were no policemen. They could have used anywhere from 11 to 20 policemen to try to keep these people off the field from trying to intimidate the Iowa players, which didn't work because Iowa won the game 22 to nothing. One of the players that played in that game for Nebraska was George Flippen. He was the first African American letter in a sport at Nebraska. He lettered three years at Nebraska, 1892, 93, 94. It's unclear, apparently, they didn't start giving letters until 1892. Although you can find a couple of guys who had letters from 1891. I have not figured that one out yet. But Flippen played prominently in that game. And according to Arthur Ash's definitive hard road to glory, it's a three volume set about African American athletes. George Flippen was only the fifth African American athlete at a predominantly white university to earn a letter. Missouri in 1892, good old Missouri, forfeited to Nebraska rather than play against an African American. The Western Interstate University Football Association, of which Nebraska was a member, along with Iowa, Missouri and Kansas, said, if you ever do that again, you're going to be fine. They changed the rules, so that it was only a four foot in 1892. But any subsequent attempt to refuse to play would cost you money. So that wasn't a problem from that point on. George Flippen was so popular on campus that he was elected president of the Palladian Literary Society, which was a very prominent organization on campus. Nebraska had its first paid coach while he was a player. In 1893, Frank Crawford was paid roughly $500, which included some tuition and some other things. George Flippen was elected captain in 1894. Frank Crawford said he couldn't be the captain because he wasn't smart enough. Yet he was president of the Palladian Literary Society. Frank Crawford didn't last, he was gone. Flippen was followed by, here's another inconsistency, three African American football lettermen and one basketball letterman. The basketball letterman was Overwood, he was lettered in 1908, 9 and 10. The football letter winners were Bill Johnson, who was listed as having lettered in 1900, 1904, 1905, and 1906. More about that in a minute. Robert Taylor, who was who lettered in 1905. And Clinton Ross, who lettered in 1913. Okay, now Bill Johnson, lettered in 1900, 04, and 05, or in 6. I couldn't figure this out because the student yearbook from 1905 said the previous two years prior to 1904, he was a star player at Lincoln High School. So if I'm to believe the letterman's record, he lettered at Nebraska. Then he went and played for Lincoln High for two years. And then he came back and played it in Nebraska for three. I don't know how that got confused. But, okay, so we've got Flippen, Star Sea African American letterman. We've got the first paid coach. We've got the first two years, 1890, 1891, they're called the old gold knights. Gold is the color. For some reason, somebody got all excited when Nebraska opened the season in 1892 against Illinois, first victory against an out of state school, by the way. Somebody, this is according to the Lincoln newspapers, red is the new color. Red is the new color because people showed up wearing red ties. One guy had a vest that was white and red, half and half. And so, and the nickname then, according to the Lincoln paper, was bug eaters. They were the bug eaters and their color was red. It was kind of up to the sports writer, you know, what the nickname was. The sports writers just kind of did whatever they wanted. And so Nebraska was called the bug eaters and Nebraska was called the tree planters. Nebraska was the tree planters state. Initially, the legislature made it the tree planters state. And they stayed in 1895, they were the antelopes, they were the rattlesnake boys.  If you look at some of the pictures of some of those teams with those helmets with a thing, they look like rattlesnake boys or axe murderers.  And it was a rough game. 1905, in 1905, there was a player, his name was Earl Eager. He weighed about 150 pounds. They called him dog. And the rules allowed this. And again, this is according to newspaper accounts, they get down by the goal and they'd pick up dog and try to throw him in the end zone. So hey, I guess he was, he scored some touchdowns by getting thrown in the end zone over the line of scrimmage. 1897, I found another newspaper account. They're still called the bug eaters. And you might know the story about it. We've got a bigger corn here. But Sy Sherman, who was a sports writer for the Lincoln Star, decided that he didn't like bug eaters. He didn't like the rattlesnake boy. He didn't like any of this stuff. He liked corn huskers. Now you go back to 1894, a writer for the Palladian Literary Society got a sign to cover the Nebraska Iowa football game. Thought it was beneath him. Didn't want to do it, but he did. Nebraska won the game. He used the term, we have met the corn huskers, two words, and they are ours in a disparaging way. Sy Sherman thought that was a pretty good nickname. So in 1899, he starts using it as a nickname for the Nebraska teams. Already in 1895, I think Scarlett and Cream had become the school colors. In 1900, Sy Sherman and Albert Watkins Jr., who was a journalism professor, got it through that that became the official nickname for the athletic teams, the corn huskers. In 1907, the student yearbook, which had been the sombrero, they changed the name to the corn husker. And in 1945, the state legislature made Nebraska the corn husker state. So Sy Sherman was the guy that started it all. He was eventually inducted into the Letterman's Club. Okay, so I want to jump forward now. And one other thing I would mention, a Dome football player was killed playing football in 1897. That's how violent this game was. And there was some thought about, you know, should this be continued or not. It was. Nebraska's coach in 1900 and 1905 was a guy named Bummy Booth. I think his background was Princeton. Always good to be an Ivy League person at that time, because that's where that was sort of the birth of football. Rutgers and Princeton had played in 1869, it was first game. Bummy Booth comes in, he's the coach. He coaches until 1905. His records 46, 8, and 1. He has a 24 game winning streak during that stretch, 20 of which are shutouts, including a 6-0 shutout against Minnesota, which was sort of the standard. If you could beat Minnesota, that was good. Nebraska didn't do it very much early on. And after 1905, he indicated that he was going to leave and the student newspaper said, yeah, it's probably good, it's about time he left.  So he's gone. Amos Foster's here for one year, he's gone. King Cole, everybody seemed to have a nickname back then, King Cole. William C. King Cole from Marietta College comes in as a coach in 1907. That's the same year that the Missouri Valley Conference was formed and Nebraska's involved in that with Iowa. Iowa had dual membership for a while in the Western Conference, which was to become the Big Ten. Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, and Washington of St. Louis. That was the original of the Missouri Valley Conference, 1907. 1908, Nebraska Field was built. William King Cole, he does okay. But not good enough, not good enough. The Missouri Valley Conference passes a rule that you got to have an all season coach, got to be your round, got to pay the guy. So William C. King Cole says, I'm out of here, he's gone. His last game, it's kind of like the weather.  Pretty impressive victory, he had to 119. So he leaves, they hire Jumbo Steen. Ewald O. Jumbo Steen. Now I don't think anybody called him Jumbo to his face. His first game, they beat Carney 117 to nothing, so it's a little bit impressive. Jumbo Steen is the winningest coach by percentage in Nebraska football history. 913, his teams won 35 games, lost two, and tied three. He coached from 1911 to 1915. He was called Jumbo because he had big feet, this is according to the student year book. He was six foot four, he's a big man. He had played against Nebraska basketball in 1908, had scored 28 points for Wisconsin in a 43 to four victory against our boys. And he had been coaching and the athletic director at Ripon College before he came to Nebraska. Nebraska hired him for $2,000. He has his great record, he wins the Missouri Valley Conference title. I think all of his seasons that he's here, there is talk of building at this point a concrete and steel stadium because there is so much interest. He beats Minnesota, and up to that point, Foster didn't beat him. King Cole tied him once and lost three times. Ruth was one and four against him, didn't play him one year. But in the third year, first two years, he loses to Minnesota. Third year he beats him, 1913. When Nebraska played Minnesota in 1912 in Minneapolis, he had his assistant coach, Owen Frank, take photographs of the Michigan shift. I don't know, I think they had the tackles in the backfield and they'd all of a sudden jump up to the line of scrimmage and then they snapped the ball. And he had his assistant coach take pictures of that shift. And so preparing for Minnesota in 1913, he used pictures of the shift to prepare for Minnesota. And he won the game seven to nothing. And it set off a near riot in Lincoln celebration that lasted for a couple of days. Henry Williams, who was the head coach at Michigan, or Minnesota, I'm sorry, was so upset by it, he dropped Nebraska from the schedule. He wouldn't play him again. They weren't on the schedule consistently again till the 1930s, because Williams would have no part of that. That's how Nebraska began playing Notre Dame. The last year that steam was the coach. And again, he didn't take kindly to, I'm sure, Jumbo. There was an entry in the student yearbook that said that after one of the games, the student newspaper editor had written that the Huskers had played well because they had a lot of steam behind them, playing on his name. And the yearbook said that Jumbo's steam went charging into the student newspaper office and, quote, devastated the sports editor. And the next day, the sports editor resigned from the paper. So Jumbo was not someone to be messed with. And the story was that the players that even had, if you came out, if you were hurt, you never played again. So guys were playing with minor broken bones and it was a tough bunch of people that played for him. Why did he leave? Indiana offered him, at that point, he's making $3,500 a year. In comes Indiana and says, we'll pay you $4,500 if you'll come to Indiana. So the business people, football's good for business even back then. Businessmen get together and say, look, we'll make up the difference of $3,500 to $4,250. We can do that if you'll stay. And steam said, well, yeah, I'd stay for that. And the university faculty said there's no way that a football coach is going to make more money than we do, than administrators do. It's not going to happen. Too much emphasis on football, it didn't happen. So he went to Indiana, he left for Indiana. But you're playing Notre Dame now. Nebraska plays Notre Dame from 1915 to 1925. Notre Dame loves it because it's big money. You know, Nebraska packs that Nebraska field. They split the money. Memorial Stadium is built in 1923, got an even bigger venue. Notre Dame likes it. But the problem is that the Klan is big in Southeast Nebraska at that time. The treatment of the Notre Dame fans gets progressively, or I don't know, progressive is the word, but it degenerates. It gets worse and worse. There is a, and by the way, the four horsemen, you know, they were identified as such by Grant Leroyce in 1924. But they played those, that backfield played against Nebraska three times. The four horsemen together in three years only lost two games, both to Nebraska, one tie in there, I think. But it got so bad that Nebraska even, the Notre Dame fans that came to Lincoln said they felt uncomfortable. The administrators felt uncomfortable in the stadium and Notre Dame ended it. Said that's it, no more. So Nebraska Notre Dame didn't play again until the late 1940s. So Jumbo steam's gone, Doc Stewart comes in. Jumbo ends up with 29 game unbeaten streak when he leaves. It continues up to 34, which I think is a school record.  You get to 1928, and Nebraska breaks off from the, okay, I'll wrap this up. Nebraska pulls out of the Missouri Valley Conference and forms the big six.  Oklahoma, right? Interesting story how Oklahoma got in the conference too. And the Missouri Valley, they suspend play in 1918 because of the war. 1919, the Missouri Valley Conference has a rule about you have to play games on campus, and Nebraska schedules Oklahoma, which is not a member of the Missouri Valley Conference, schedules Oklahoma in Omaha. And a doubleheader, Craton's plays Marquette in one game and Nebraska plays Oklahoma in the other game.  So 1919, Nebraska's not in the conference. 1920, Nebraska's not in the conference because they had, they were tossed out because they had scheduled that game. Who replaces Nebraska in the conference? Oklahoma. So Nebraska and Oklahoma become conference rivals when Nebraska is readmitted in 1921, they petition and say, hey, we're sorry, back in. So Nebraska now, so now you've got, you move step forward, you're in, you've got the big, you've got the big six. The coach that Nebraska hires is DX Bible. Nebraska tries to hire Newt Rockney, he's not interested.  So DX Bible comes in, he wins six conference championships in eight years. And Texas offers him a better deal. And he's from Texas and so he says, that's the only reason I would go anywhere other than stay at Nebraska is if Texas called.  Nebraska hires Biff Jones, who's a military guy. He comes in, gets Nebraska to the Rose Bowl after the 40 season. The 41 Rose Bowl, Nebraska plays, loses to Stanford 21 to 13. Bob Devaney always said he was at Nebraska for several years before he figured out that Nebraska had lost that game. Because fans were so passionate about, they got to the Rose Bowl, 39 of the 40 players on that Rose Bowl team were Nebraska players. From Nebraska, the other guy was from Kansas. People had great, I mean, there was great passion for it. 1941, after the Bowl, Biff Jones is called back to military duty. Which he ends up being at the Military Academy, coordinating athletics there. So Nebraska goes from that point on, in the 20 years that follow, Nebraska goes through seven coaches. Bernie Masterson, for example, former Husker from Lincoln, Nebraska. Coaches three years, they don't renew his contract.  During those 20 years after Biff Jones, seven coaches, Nebraska's record, season record is three winning seasons, 17 losing seasons and 1,500 season. So there's 21 years there, counting the last year of Biff Jones. So, you got Bobby Reynolds in there in 1950, got Bill Glasford in there.  He's the one that has the winning seasons and the 500 season. But he has a player revolt. The alums convinced the players to sign a petition to get rid of him. He overcomes that, sticks around, has an option to continue to extend his contract there for 1955, says, I don't need this, I'm out of here. So the higher-peat Elliot, who was 29 years old, been an assistant coach at Oklahoma, youngest head coach in the country. He brings in Bill Jennings as an assistant coach. Jennings had played at Oklahoma, had been an assistant coach at Oklahoma. And in the mid-50s, when there was an investigation into Oklahoma recruiting, Bill Jennings was the guy that took the fall for it. They got him a job working for an oil company in Dallas, off the staff. He'd been out of coaching. Pete Elliott hires him back. Pete Elliott comes to Nebraska. They lose this, the spring game was a varsity alumni game. It's the only time Nebraska ever lost the alumni game. Nebraska used to beat by the alumni 14 to nothing. So he figured it's not starting too well for Pete Elliott. He does manage a four and six season and he's out. He takes a job at Cal, so they promote Bill Jennings. So now he's the head coach. Bill could really recruit, but he never had a winning season.  There were two ties in that street. But 1961, you're out of here. You can't win. That's when they hire Bob Devaney. So I did get to Bob Devaney. And I want to say one thing about this, because I read this. I was looking, trying to verify some stuff. And I saw this on Wikipedia, said that Bob Devaney was their fourth choice of athletic director, Tippi Dye. That's not true. He was the second choice, actually. Bob was recommended by Duffy Doherty. Nebraska had tried to get Duffy Doherty to come from Michigan State because the chancellor at Nebraska, Clifford Hardin, had been an ag professor at Michigan State, new Duffy Doherty. Tippi Dye wanted to hire Hank Fulberg. Tippi Dye came from Wichita. Hank Fulberg was his coach at Wichita. He didn't get, Fulberg took a job at Texas A&M. So we got Duffy Doherty saying, I'm not interested, but why don't you look into this guy at Wyoming, Bob Devaney. He coached for us. He'd be the guy. So with the recommendation of Clifford Hardin through Duffy Doherty and all this, Nebraska, Bob Devaney is one of the finalists after Fulberg along with Ray Nagel and John Ralston. Ralston is the coach at Utah State. Nagel's the coach at Utah. They're all from this same conference with Wyoming. Bob comes in to interview, comes in under an assumed name. Don Bryan always told me that Bob Devaney was staying with the people right next door to him and he had no idea because it was, he came in under an assumed name. Mr. Roberts, I think he said it was. And they hire Bob Devaney from Wyoming except that he's got a contract that runs beyond, Wyoming wasn't gonna let him out of the contract. Took till February for Bob to finally get released from his contract at Wyoming to come here. He already had assistance here trying to start recruiting. And from that point on, it was success. Last thing I'll say, and you may know this, but two things about Bob and Tom. It was not a straight rise to success for either one of them. Bob came in and immediately got Nebraska to bowl game but he went six and four back to back in 1967 and 1968. Alums said, get rid of some of those assistant coaches. We can't be going six and four. He said, I'm not gonna do it. Bob was loyal to people that were loyal to him. Petition was circulated in Omaha among alums to get rid of Bob. Bob said always, his secretary was responsible for all of his mail and she'd go through it and the bad ones she'd throw away and the good ones he'd see. So he said he never knew about the petition. If he had, he probably would have signed it himself. Of course you could say that afterwards. Then you have Tom Osburn who replaces him and Bob's the athletic director. By 1967, he's both so he makes his hand-picked choice. Tom Osburn, people look at that and say, straight rise to that national championships and he was 60 and three his last five years. Could have actually had four, could maybe had five national titles. 1978, things were so bad.  Finally beats Oklahoma in 78 and then the next week loses in Missouri. Can't beat Oklahoma. So in 1978, Tom looks at the Colorado job. Bill Mallory gets fired. Tom gets to the point where he and Nancy, his wife, go to Colorado so he can meet with the players. And the story he told, and I'm sure it was more complex than this, but he said, you know, talking to those players and realizing I'd be coaching them against the guys that I had recruited to Nebraska, I just couldn't do it. So he decides not to accept the job at Colorado, comes back to Nebraska, sticks around. In the late 80s, again it was like, Tom once told us after a bowl game lost to Miami, it was almost like, is the game passing me by? Cause people were complaining. They run the ball too much, you know? You need to throw it more. He thought that, you know, is the game really passing me by? Stuck it out.  Changed his defense. You gotta be more aggressive on defense. Changed it to a 4-3 base so you could play those teams like Miami and the bowl games. And the rest is history. Tom, national championships. Three in his last four years. I consider it a blessing in my working life to have dealt with Bob Devaney as athletic director and Tom as a coach. And, you know, everything that followed, I think it's all part of the Nebraska tradition. But, you know, that's the heart of it there, I think. 1997, we're looking to get it back. I think Scott Frost is probably a good step in the right direction. And, as I said, my wife's heard me say this before. Bob Dylan did a concert in Pershing Auditorium one time.  And he walks off the stage. That's the way he was. Well, that's it. Thank you. Thanks a lot, Mike. That was really great. We appreciate the historical story. The historical story you told of Husker football from the early days through the modern era. I think you deserve extra kudos for powering through the weather announcements. So, thanks for that. Are you willing to stick around and answer a couple of questions? I'll certainly make up an answer if I don't have one. If you have a question for Mike, let me know, raise your hand. I'll get this microphone over to you and you can try and stump him. Anyone? Was it Devaney's staff in total from Wyoming that came here initially? Let me think about this a second. Yes, I think he brought everybody with him and then there were two people that he kept on staff that had been here. One was Cleet Fisher, who was, actually there was a big movement to hire Cleet Fisher. He'd been a high school coach in the state and there was a lot of support from the high school coaches in the state to hire him but Bob kept him on staff and he was an important part of the recruiting in the state. And the other coach was George Kelly who had just come to Nebraska. I think when Marquette dropped its football program but I think Bob brought everybody with him from Wyoming. I'm trying to think of maybe there was one that stuck around to be the coach out there but no, I think essentially his staff came with him and it was quite the, you know, the thing about Bob was he was extremely loyal to people that were loyal to him and you know, I don't know if you remember the, there was controversy over Moaiba basketball coach she'd had a practice at Mabel Lee Hall and he covered the windows so nobody could see what it was and there was a big movement to get rid of him, administration wanted to get rid of him and Bob stuck with him for a while and then he found out that Moaiba had not told him the truth about this thing and Bob told me one day, you know, with an expletive he said, if he would have just told me that's what he was doing, you know we would have been okay with it we would have figured something out so it was that kind of loyalty and I think that's why he brought his assistants, you know Mike Corgan was with him the entire time Jim Ross was his right hand man forever Melton Corgan, who else am I forgetting? Carl Selmer, that was a great group of assistant coaches there were some, you know, some as with any change I think when Tom was hired not everybody thought that Tom should have been the guy not everybody on staff thought that they should be there's a little bit different situation then but when Bob came in, I think there was everybody was pretty much happy with whatever he did when he, you know, however he did it and he was such a gregarious guy I think that helped a lot as well Yeah, any other questions for Mike? I'd like to know why Mike, why Nebraska hired Mike Riley Well, you're asking for some insight here that I don't have You know, I felt like I'm gonna say that I would say this about every coach that's been through here and I never, I wouldn't say anything disverging about Bill Callahan, for example and a lot of people would I think Bill Callahan's a great coach I don't think he was a good fit here I think I would say the same thing about Mike Riley I don't think he was a good fit here I think the thought when Sean Eichhorst brought him here was given the resources that he has at Nebraska and given what he did at Oregon State if you could just transplant that with the enhanced resources that he would have here things would work out, that it would be a good thing and I think that there was a fallacy in that that you can't just take Oregon State and move it to Lincoln, Nebraska and figure it's gonna work and that was part of the thing I think that, you know, that Mike tried to do what he had done at Oregon State offensively, defensively or whatever and it just didn't fit what they had here for one thing it didn't fit the players that they had for another thing you know, I don't think that they recruited very well I don't think that their recruiting philosophy fixed what needed to be fixed so it might have seemed like a good idea when Sean did it but when you looked at the dynamic of it you can't move Oregon State to Lincoln, Nebraska that's what it came down to I think Mike Riley is a good coach but you know, one of the things I think it was kind of telling was one of the assistant coaches Cosgrove I think said when the first media availability that we had said basically Oregon State was to the point where they thought they'd gone about as far as they could go it was kind of like the Bummy Booth thing and that they would have been looking for a job anyway had they not come here so it was kind of an unfortunate thing Mike Riley was a genuinely nice guy maybe maybe he looked at it as, you know, I've done a lot here's a great opportunity Nebraska is a, you know, all in kind of thing but Nebraska fans are, you know, they say the greatest fans in the country but like Tom Osborne said, I was never very I was about one seven and four season away from people getting upset it's like Bob Devaney going six and four twice two times, you know, you still have expectations and then when you come in with all that we you know that I mentioned here there are tremendous expectations here I don't know that Mike Riley understood that you have to understand the culture here it's different and I know every school price say that but it is unique here Mike, thank you so much no better way to spend a fall afternoon on Saturday when the Huskers aren't playing in my opinion you shared a lot of 40 years of experience with us and that's incredible look ahead for 40 years what do you see happening in college football or for Nebraska? Boy, you know, that's a good question football itself, you know, because of the health issues, the injury issues the, you know, what's gonna happen as you look at it now I think more and more kids are probably playing soccer which can be a, you do too many headers that can create problems as well but you know, I think parents get more concerned about you know, do I want my child playing football? If you can resolve some of those issues and I don't know if you can or not I think that it, I think for one thing you're not gonna have 300 division one schools playing for a playoff it's gonna, you're gonna narrow it down it's gonna be a smaller group of programs that can afford to compete at a very high level and you're probably gonna have an expanded playoff and that, you know, as TV does it TV is gonna control it more and more it's almost to some extent probably see it more in basketball but to some extent it's becoming very much about the players and not about the teams it becomes more and more that way with recruiting I think it's harder to find kids that wanna play for the school they're either playing for themselves long term or they're playing for the coach that recruited them and that that coach leaves and you know they don't have any loyalty to the school so it's a little bit different there and then the other thing is there's so much money involved in it I think at some point you have to figure out some way that the student athlete gets a little bit more than, and I, you know you can't place a value on education certainly but the amount of money that's generated with TV and all that sort of thing it's gonna have to figure into it as well. All right, Mike, that's great let's give him a round of applause for sharing his time and his expertise this afternoon Thank you, hope you enjoy the fair. I don't know too many people there's some Nebraskans that probably can cite a lot about the history of Hustler football it's in our blood I think but I don't know how many people could stand up here and do what Mike did out of his head without a note walking you through that history and that level of detail was that impressive or what? And to help Mike remember this we'd like to present him a little bit of a token of our appreciation for giving the N-150 lecture it's a framed poster of the announcement of the lecture by give Mike another big round of applause for that great lecture. You know I was sitting back there listening to Mike talk it certainly is an exciting time in Hustler athletics we've got little more than one week before opening kickoff here, a week from today we're pretty proud of the team we're putting together in Hustler athletics and I've listened to the question about leadership leadership's important and we think we have assembled a great leadership team Bill Moose has made some excellent hires in our coaches in football and men's basketball and baseball and gymnastics and tennis and in golf we feel like we're on the path to where we wanna be in Nebraska athletics and we're excited about it.


to Happiness Isn't Brain Surgery with Doc Snipes. Each week we record the podcast during a Facebook Live broadcast in which Doc Snipes presents information and tools to help you start living happier. Our website, docsknipes.com, has even more resources, videos, handouts and workbooks to help you apply what we talk about. After each podcast, the accompanying video, text and worksheets will be published from members on docsknipes.com. Additionally, each week we have a members-only educational group, followed by a question and answer session with Doc Snipes, to help you apply the tools to yourself and start living happier faster. The Doc Snipes podcast will be providing listeners and members the same tools and information Dr. Snipes gives her clients. Go to docsknipes.com to learn more. Welcome everybody to Happiness Isn't Brain Surgery with Doc Snipes, practical tools to improve your mood and quality of life. Today we're going to be talking about identifying and preventing vulnerabilities. This is one of my favorite topics because it provides a lot of easy initial solutions. I'm not saying it's going to fix everything, but it's going to take the edge off or give you some ideas about ways you might go in order to start reducing stress and working towards being happy. We're going to define the vulnerabilities. We'll talk about some of the most common vulnerabilities, their effects and ways to prevent them. Again, I want you to focus on the fact that this is a broad overview. Each vulnerability that we talk about is going to have its own presentation, its own podcast. Today what we're doing is just taking a survey, if you will. Why do you care? That's the beginning question that people want answered when they have to listen to a lecture or read a book or do something. Vulnerabilities are situations that make it more difficult to deal with life on life's terms, leading to depression, anxiety or stress. It makes it easier for you to overreact or get stuck. When I talk about vulnerabilities, I want you to think about a day that you woke up and you just woke up on the wrong side of the bed and you were in a God-awful mood. What was your day like for the rest of the day? How did you react with people? How did people interact with you? Did you tend to be more irritable than you may normally be? That's what we're talking about with vulnerabilities. They're things that predispose us to kind of be cranky pants. When you experience stressors or threats, you respond with the fight or flight reaction, which is basically anger or fear. If you're seeing the world through a negative lens, if you're seeing a lot of threats or stresses or if your body is perceiving a lot of threats or stresses, you're probably going to be a little bit more irritable because you're protecting yourself in a way. You've got that fight or flight thing going on. We want to try to reduce that. Chronic stress is basically the situation where you've got fight or flight going pretty much all the time. Everywhere you look, there's some sort of obstacle or some sort of threat to your personal integrity of some sort. Depression can occur if you feel hopeless or hopeless for long enough, so you're stressed. You're trying to fight the stress. You're trying to fix it. You're trying to fix it and nothing works.  At a certain point, your brain kind of says the same thing. And this is what we call depression.  There is no point continuing to throw energy at whatever this stressor is because we're not going to win. So we're going to conserve energy. We're going to conserve all those excitatory neurochemicals that help us get motivated and happy or motivated and get ready to do something fight or flee. But those neurochemicals are the ones that we need to feel feel happy to. So if it's holding on to those preparing so it's got enough excitatory neurochemicals to fight if another threat comes along, then we're going to not feel happy. So we're going to feel depressed. Addictive and escape behaviors increase when you feel a need to escape because of stress, anxiety, depression or pain. So this threat, this stressor keeps going on and you're just like, I cannot take one more second. I don't have the skills to deal with this right now. I just can't tolerate it, which people turn a lot of times to some sort of addictive behavior. Now it's not always an addiction. It couldn't be an escape behavior that you just use occasionally. And that's OK. Sometimes we just have to distract so we don't react impulsively. But you want to look at if you start developing addictive behaviors, what are you using it to escape from? What's the threat? What are the unpleasant emotions? What's going on? Any type of stress can activate the threat response system. And we do a whole video on the HPA axis and the threat response system. But I'm just going to kind of hit the highlights here. When you're stressed, when there's a threat, your body releases a hormone called cortisol. It's your stress hormone aptly named. This causes a decrease in sex hormones.  There's enough else going on right here. Sex is the least in my worries.   And that's, you know, kind of by design. It means you're not calming down because there's a threat going on. So your body doesn't want you to calm down. But if this goes on long enough, then it starts impacting multiple areas of life. Now you have this release of cortisol, decrease in sex hormones, decrease in libido, increase in anxiety.  On top of that, you'll have an increase in thyroid hormones initially. This is your initial fight or flight. But if your body decides that, you know what, I can't win this battle, then you're actually going to have a drop in thyroid hormones. But while those thyroid hormones are high, again, it increases anxiety, anger, agitation, whatever you want to call it.  It prepares you to respond to the threat. The whole point of this HPA axis is to protect you from danger. Unfortunately, when all this is going on, it causes impairments in sleep, which has a whole other cascade of effects we'll talk about later. So when you try to sleep, when you try to rest, you can't, you can't actually get good sleep because your body's on alert. It's looking for the threat is trying to defend itself. And sometimes, especially if you're not aware of what those threats are, you know, the body's just kind of scanning going, I don't know what I'm stressed out about, but I'm going to stay on high alert. So I'm not getting good rest.  If you've gone for a couple of weeks or months without having a good night's sleep, life seems a lot harder. It's a vulnerability. We'll look at some of the reasons why that's true. But as sleep gets impaired, then your appetite starts to get impaired. The body can't regulate the hormones that tell you when you're hungry or when you're satiated.  And most of them are negative. So the takeaway from this slide is the fact that you really want to look at things that are causing you chronic stress because chronic stress is bad. It's just, it's not a good thing. So individual vulnerabilities, physical, lack of sufficient quality sleep. When we sleep, our body rests, restores and rebalances. When we don't get enough quality sleep, the body starts to become imbalanced, which means it perceives a threat, you know, kind of goes back to that primitive, you're the weakest animal in the herd. So you're more vulnerable to attack. Many people, when they're not getting good quality sleep, say, you know what, I'm just going to take a sleep aid and go to sleep. Well, unfortunately, most of the sleep aids out there actually, they help you sleep, but it's not quality sleep. It's restless sleep. So you know, what do we do? When you're not getting enough sleep, you're going to be foggy, you're going to have difficulty concentrating. Again, think back to being a new parent or maybe when you were in college and you stayed up way too late, too many nights in a row. Been there, done that. You tend to be irritable or more anxious, because again, that threat response system is up, your body's like, Okay, I'm not on my A game, so I need to be more alert to danger.   Of course, you're fatigued. And I don't know about you, but when I'm tired, I'm not a nice person to be around. So it impacts every area of life. What do we do about it? Oh, there's a lot of things. But in this particular video, what we're going to talk about is a couple. Develop a sleep routine. So about an hour and a half before bed, if you can, start doing about the same three things.  That sequence of events that we did pretty much every night cued their brain into, Hey, it's about time to go to sleep. So it would start producing melatonin, which helped them get to sleep. Try to develop some sort of a sleep routine. In addition, caffeine stays in your body for 12 hours. So cut back on caffeine, at least six hours, but preferably 12 hours before bed. And I know some people are going, Oh, no way. You may not want to do it. Cold turkey, you may want to gradually wean down, but become aware of how much caffeine you actually ingest after noon. Because you know, I know for me, it wouldn't be unheard of for me to be drinking caffeinated soda or coffee or something else till three or four in the afternoon. Well, that means it's not actually out of my system until three or four the next morning. And I get up at 4am. So the entire time I was sleeping, I had a stimulant in my system. And easier said than done, reduce chronic stress. So developing tools to figure out what's stressing you out, and starting to take steps to address it, it's baby steps, you know, you're not suddenly going to be like, Okay, I'm going to create a sleep routine. And next week, everything's going to be grand. There are going to be small steps in the process. But as you start trying to deal with these things, you'll see some improvements. If you have poor sleep habits right now, just improving your sleep routine may start improving your mood. Even if you haven't really eliminated a lot of those chronic stressors yet. So look at your sleep. That's one of those things that most people are not averse to changing. And think about cutting back on your caffeine. Those are two initial steps that you can think about taking right away. Poor nutrition, your body needs building blocks. Your body uses vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates, fats for energy and to create the chemical reactions that produce the neurotransmitters. Proteins are used to produce those neurotransmitters and other hormones in your body. So you need to have decent nutrition. It helps you recover from injury, you know, because food is building blocks, basically, it helps you keep from getting sick, it keeps your immune system strong. And it helps you make hormones and neurotransmitters.  Look at making some small changes. If you don't have enough water, if you're dehydrated, you're going to feel foggy, sluggish, irritable. And it can also reduce your metabolism. So that's another bonus. If you start drinking enough water. Now it doesn't have to be pure water, ideally it is. But if you can get in some decaffeinated tea, something like that, anything to start improving your hydration will go a long way at helping you feel a little less sluggish. Have three colors on your plate at each meal and condiments and candy don't count. So M&M, Skittles, ketchup, no, that's not what we're talking about. Nice try. Fruits at breakfast, some kind of protein at breakfast and some kind of grain at breakfast, you know, same thing at lunch. A lot of people have a hard time getting vegetables in and, you know, slow baby steps. Try to get vegetables at lunch and dinner, but, you know, at least dinner.  Caffeine keeps that threat response system activated. It's a stimulant. It's saying there's something to be stressed about. There's something to be amped up about. Well, if you're telling your body there's something to be amped up about, then you're never going to be able to relax. You're basically countering any calming chemicals that it wants to secrete. Think about a hot bath. You know, you're constantly adding more hot water. If you're drinking caffeine and no matter how much cold water it puts in, you're increasing the hot water exponentially. So you're never going to get the bath that's the right temperature. And pain and illness. We don't sleep well when we're sick or when we're in pain, partly because pain keeps us awake and, you know, I have a bad shoulder, so I know what that's like to wake up and just be in agony. And so it wakes you up itself, but also your body perceives pain as one of those threats making you the weak link in the herd. So it keeps you a little bit more alert, makes it more difficult for you to get good sleep. When we're in pain or when we're sick, it's hard to concentrate. Again, your body's like we need to stay alert for things going on, but we just it's intolerable. It's painful or we just don't feel well and it's hard to get motivated and to focus. Your body is trying to help you get better. So it's not devoting those neurochemicals to concentrating on typing the report you've got to do, which can make you cranky in and of itself. Irritable mood, you know, most people are not in the best mood when they're in pain or sick. And remembering that medications, depressants can worsen sleep problems, concentration and mood. And those are your opiates generally and anything that slows you way down. Sometimes antihistamines, decongestants or stimulants, kind of like caffeine. It's going to amp you up, maybe only a little bit. Some people don't have as much of a reactivity to it, but it does have an effect. Antihistamines, like I said earlier, impair quality sleep.  You want to be able to breathe. However, understand that you're probably not going to get good quality sleep while that's in your system. And if you're in pain and the doctor gives you steroids, steroids tend to amp you up and can increase anxiety.  And it's all intertwined and the more stressors you have, the less sleep you get, the more unrested you are, the more irritable you're likely to be. So for any of these, talk with your doctor about interventions. What can what can I do about this pain so I can sleep? What can I do about this illness? And I mean, sometimes it's a virus and you just got to ride it out for the 10 days or whatever. Explore non-pharmacological interventions. So can you go into a steamy room? Can you use hot and cold compresses? What can you do physical therapy, massage? What is it that you can do to manage your pain and illness other than drugs? And finally, just be compassionate with yourself. If you're in a lot of pain, you're in a lot of pain and there may be nothing you can do about it at the moment. If you're sick, like I said, sometimes it's a virus and you just got to kind of live with it.  But we do it. And finally, brain changes. This can be caused by heredity. You may not produce enough of certain neurochemicals. It can be caused from an accident that damaged the brain. It can be caused by trauma. Trauma actually causes changes in the brain and hippocampal volume and all kinds of other stuff that you really don't care about. But recognize that trauma, whether it's chronic, mild or moderate trauma or one severe trauma, can cause significant brain changes. Doesn't mean we can't learn to work with it, but you need to be aware of it. And you can also have brain changes as a result of addicted behaviors. Because again, when you're using, you're altering the level of those brain chemicals. And when you stop using, your brain has to adjust and go, okay, we got to rebalance to this new level now. Changes in the structure of the brain have all kinds of effects, including memory, concentration, mood, and how reactive you are to stress. People who were stressed out at one point, people who had a trauma experienced a significant trauma or had a traumatic or neglectful childhood may have brain changes that cause them. It's called hypercortisolism, if you care, but may have brain changes that cause them to react more strongly when they're stressed out. So they go from zero to 250 instead of zero to 20 when something causes them a threat.  So it's important to understand that there may be some organic changes that happened that cause you to be more reactive.  Maybe, maybe not, but you can learn to work with it so you can prevent going from zero to 250 and you can learn how to deal with it if you do have an event that makes you get really upset so you can tolerate the distress and regulate your emotions, calm yourself down before it causes negative effects. What can you do about these? Well, good nutrition. If the brain needs the tools, it needs the building blocks to make the neurotransmitter, so eat well. You know, regardless of what state the brain is in, if you give it the building blocks, it typically wants to rebalance itself to what it knows to be normal. Get adequate quality rest. Allow your brain to use those tools. Give it time where it can rebuild and rebalance. Take medication if needed. You know, if you have brain trauma for one reason or another, you may need a long course or a short course of medication to help stabilize those neurotransmitters. And that's obviously a discussion you need to have with your physician or psychiatrist. Emotion regulation. This teaches you to become aware of your emotions and, you know, it's part of it is being aware of your vulnerabilities, but being aware of your emotions so you don't put yourself in a situation where you're more vulnerable to reacting with a 10 to something that's probably only a two. And distress tolerance skills. These are the skills that help you when you go from zero to 250 to tolerate that distress without having to act impulsively and help yourself calm back down until you can get to a place where you can think a little bit more clearly and make decisions that are in your best interest. So whenever your brain receives a threat, it activates the threat response system. This system impairs sleep, alters sex and stress hormone levels.  These are good if you're actually defending from a threat, but if these go on for too long, it can be exhausting and it can cause chronic anxiety and acting out and cause problems in other areas of your life. Physical vulnerabilities include lack of quality sleep, poor nutrition, pain and illness, and brain damage. Interventions for these are aimed at preventing the vulnerabilities when possible. So you know, eliminate as much chronic stress, get good nutrition, get good quality sleep. But if there are things that you can't completely eliminate, then you need to learn how to live with them, mitigate their negative impact, as we say. So figure out, okay, you got this going on. How can you be happy and live the life you want anyway? So this is the end of part one of this podcast. If you would like to subscribe to the podcast, you can. We are on iTunes, Google Play. You can also join our Facebook group. And henceforth and forevermore, these presentations will be broadcast through our Facebook group, which is docsnipes.com slash Facebook. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube slash all CEU's education. And you can also join our community and access additional resources at docsnipes.com. I will return with part two in about five minutes in the happiness isn't brain surgery group. Thanks for tuning into happiness isn't brain surgery with docsnipes. Our mission is to make practical tools for living the happiest life of the day. 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Well good afternoon everyone thanks for your time. I think I'll be fairly brief and then we'll go straight into questions. Today's report signals the end of an inquiry that's taken place for over two years. It was extensive, exhaustive. The Queensland Police Service assisted the CMC quite significantly. As you'll probably recall when the Tesco matter broke publicly at the beginning of last year there were quite serious allegations in terms of the scale and extent of alleged improper practices. It's good to see that those extreme claims have not been confirmed at all. Having said that any improprietary within the Police Department is a serious matter and one that we take seriously and we need to deal with.  We are one of the largest police departments in the English speaking Western world. Sadly but inevitably from year to year each year some of our 15,000 people will let us down. What we need to do is to minimize the extent of that to the greatest extent possible but we also need to identify that misbehaviour and inappropriate behaviour where it occurs. The CMC of course together with us, we don't shirk from our responsibility in that space, have a vital role in that regard. I think that what this has done is demonstrate the thoroughness, the vigor, the extent of the links that both organizations are prepared to go to to investigate improper practices in the Police Department. I'm obviously not pleased with what happened but I am pleased that the claims that were made at the beginning of last year have not been substantiated and you might recall those claims. They were along the lines of up to 20 senior police involved in the importation and trafficking of dangerous drugs which would imply systemic organized high-level corruption. None of that has been substantiated and I did not believe that it ever existed nor does it exist now. But certainly there's been learnings from this. As you recall towards the middle of last year we announced a number of initiatives. Some of those are in place, some of those are still work in progress and I think that those things and I think the CMC indicate those things that we've done have been worthwhile. So with those few words perhaps I could open it up to your questions. I think that the initiative certainly have been very worthwhile yes. I think that it was necessary to have a thorough and comprehensive investigation because of the very serious nature of the claims made at the outset and that was important as well and certainly that occurred. That the price of being a professional police department it never ends. That we must constantly be on guard. That we must be always of a mind to improve and do things better. But also we must be very careful about complacency and slippage. So certainly you know I think the other two lessons always look for improvement but also always guard against slippage. Where it's been referred to and forgive me because I just haven't had a chance to thoroughly read every page but I think that what it says in there that the CMC have referred which they have to us a number of matters to consider taking discipline reaction and that's what we're doing at the moment and you have my assurance that if discipline reaction is appropriate it will be taken in each and every case. There's some new legislation which I think is really quite good and for the two who are referenced there who've resigned the recommendation and the potentiality is what's called a 7A procedure which basically means a finding even though the person's left. I mean once someone leaves the police department there's nothing more we can do. The most serious thing we can do to someone in the police department is to sack them. If they leave they're gone so we can't take discipline reaction against them. But this is a discipline refining if you like in their absence and what it does it's on the person's record with us and the intent and purpose of it which I think is very worthwhile is if they seek employment in another police department anywhere in Australia or if they seek employment in the public service in Queensland that adverse finding is on their record. Well I'd like to think that we've always cooperated with the CMC and certainly in this case we and I think they've indicated that in the report we provided significant resources to them and again that was because of the serious nature of the original allegations which fortunately haven't been substantiated at all. Look there's always room for improvement and I accept that within the police department there is currently room for improvement and we are certainly working towards trying to achieve that but I do believe that our Colser is in good shape. There are many good aspects to the police Colser. There is a commitment to the community. There are people who give hours and hours of unpaid overtime. There are people who work in isolated remote difficult areas of the state and stay there. There are people who work in indigenous communities that are dry communities that are prepared to live there for years to work with the local community and sacrifice a lifestyle that many of us would not would miss greatly here. So there are lots of good aspects to the police Colser. The negative aspects have been well identified from the Fitzgerald inquiry and onwards and I'm not going to sit here today and tell you that they've completely gone from every one of their 15,000 people but I do believe we're in solid shape and I think we're well placed for the future. That's a matter for the court. Obviously you know that's a matter for the magistrate that dealt with it I guess really to make the determination. But I don't think that has any bearing at all on that former officers employability that potentially certainly never be re-employed with us. And I don't think it would ever be likely to be re-employed in the public sector. So despite the fact that no conviction was recorded there was still I think a plea of guilty to and I think it was a $4000 fine which is quite a significant fine. No I don't. I can find out for you but can I come back to you on that? Okay can I try and work through that? The first one is a matter for the CMC. I have no knowledge at all as to whether the CMC have ever been sponsored by an alcohol company or a wine company. You'd have to go to the CMC on that. It's not unusual though for organisations hosting conferences to seek sponsorship. The second one is I understood it that I get transport indeed I do whenever I try to travel around Queensland as much as I can. Generally as a professional courtesy the senior officer where I go picks me up at the airport and quite often and usually drops me back at the airport later. I'm on duty. I am working. When we're in the vehicle together we discuss you know police issues. I think there is a vast difference between my doing that and an off duty police officer getting a free lift home from licensed premises late at night. So I don't think there's a double standard there at all. The third one I'm sorry could you just repeat that that was about half price burgers. Can I talk about that for a little bit because that is a really quite interesting and significant topic that relates to gifts, benefits, gratuities. Now what we say is this and we're still finalising our policy and we're still in consultation with the police unions about this and I think it would be really good and healthy to have a public debate about this. We don't shrink from that and we're happy to discuss it with the media at any time. There are clearly some things at one end of the spectrum that are totally, totally unacceptable in terms of gifts and gratuities and they are free entry for police into nightclubs. They include free alcohol or half price alcohol in nightclubs which is not available to the public through a promotion so that police officer is treated differently because they're a police officer. They include receiving obviously kickbacks for arranging tows at the scene of vehicle accidents. Now at the other end of the spectrum there is a benefit that I believe is quite acceptable and that is the benefit of police officers travelling by trains free of charge because I believe there is a community benefit there. There is a community benefit if the police officers are using public transport we have an expectation that if something happens they'll become involved and deal with it and I believe that adds to the safety of the travelling public who use public transport so that's there if I could the two ends of the scale. Now towards the bottom end of the scale in my view is the issue of half price hamburgers and discounted coffee and that sort of thing you know from fast food outlets. We're not saying that that is corruption. I'm not saying that police officers who've engaged in that practice in the past and even would do so today and tomorrow are corrupt police. I'm also not saying that that even though there is a view that this is the case it's not my view that that is what's called the slippery slope. In other words that starts you on the path of corruption that accepting a half price burger somewhere at a fast food outlet starts you on the slippery slope to corruption some have that view it's not my view but what I do say is this that I put that in the in the category of of practice and that that is something we shouldn't do. I don't think it fits with us being a professional police department and what we should aspire to be in terms of professionalism. I put it in a similar category if hypothetically and I hope you wouldn't but if hypothetically you saw a police officer in uniform leaning up against the wall of the building with hands in pockets perhaps chewing gum with hat crooked you would look at that person and say gee that's unprofessional and that's not a good image and look for a police officer. That's the category that I see this issue of the half price burgers. It's professionalism. It's how we appear to the public and it's about where I would like the police department to be into the future in terms of what our own professional standards are. Yeah and look I think from a cost from a pure cost benefit analysis I think you know that's probably still the case but however I think that we and it's under consideration at the moment and I think it's something that may well regardless of the cost benefit analysis that just the bare bones of that I think it's something that we may well have to introduce. It's also currently a recommendation of the most recent review into the police discipline process and it was recommended that there actually be an examination of the cost benefit. That's my recollection of the recommendation anyway and I think we may well have to explore going down that path. Yeah look you'd have to it's a complex issue. Can I just talk about that for a minute in terms of some of the complexity. Firstly you need legislation change. Secondly it's generally accepted that the best way and the only thorough way to do a drug test is a urine sample. We are a vast state I have police from Kirlin Gatta to Cape York to to Birdsville to Mornington Island. To take a urine sample currently in Queensland under current legislation you have to be a doctor or a registered nurse. This is an expensive business and logistically it's a difficult business to do it properly and to do it randomly with nearly 11,000 police across the state so it's not something you know you say look this is really easy to introduce and it can be done overnight. There is a significant cost factor and there is a significant logistical factor to it but it needs to be explored and that's what's going to happen in the near future in terms of examining what it would cost and how we would roll it out in a practical sense if it were to happen. I would understand their sensitivity but we've introduced random alcohol testing and it is a fact that random drug testing takes place in other industries such as the mining industry and hopefully if it does come in if it does come in because ultimately it's got to be a government decision okay it's not one that I may be a government policy decision and as I said it would require legislative change in my view it would sorry it would require legislative change because currently we can drug test police in a targeted sense okay so if we have information or we suspect that an officer is using drugs then we can conduct a urine test for drugs but at the moment it's not random as it is you know for motorists they can be a drug or breath tested anyone can driving a motor vehicle so all of those you know things would need to be taken into account but I would hope that if it does come in that police would accept that it is part of the price of professionalism and that no one is being tested if it's a random testing regime because people think oh yes you are using drugs and it's just a matter of trying to catch you that that's not the case at all and certainly a random testing with alcohol has met with a very very hardly ever is anyone you know found to have consumed alcohol on duty which I think is really quite significant and a very good very good thing no no what let me restate that what I've said is the government it would be a policy decision that would be for the government finally you know to decide and in my view it would require legislative change which the government the only ones who can introduce what I've said was that previously my view was that the cost benefit of it didn't justify it that the world moves on and I think we have to revisit that and currently there is a recommendation in the very latest discipline review report which was by a lady named Simone Webb retired Supreme Court Justice Glen Williams and retired assistant commissioner Felix Grayson this is one the government commission I think it's on the premier's website and if you wish I can you know come back to you with the specific recommendation I just don't have it you know with me at the moment but it was to the effect that we revisit and re-examine this issue which which I'm sure is going to happen it's yes the New South Wales police and the Australian Federal Police I believe conduct a random drug testing I think it's well I think it's probably going to be inevitable again I think it's the it's a matter for the government to determine that and as I said we've got to get around the logistic issues and obviously it'll need to be funded but I think that there seems to be a view that that and it is a changing world and I'll come back to that in a moment but I think it's the price of professionalism as well you know look every time we have we do do some drug testing now I should have mentioned that all of our recruits are tested for drugs on the second day they're at the police academy every single recruit is tested every time there is a critical incident in other words something where the police have to use their firearm and tragically someone might be shot all of the officers involved the critical incident tested for alcohol and drugs okay so that happens now but it's limited of course but the latest research on Australian drug use which I think was in 2007 indicated that one in this is my recollection one in seven Australians admit regular illegal drug use one in seven and that thirty eight percent of Australians admit at some stage in their life having used an illegal drug so the issues of illegal drugs and generally fall into four broad categories there's cannabis amphetamines cocaine and apiates in other words heroin type type substances that increase sadly is within our society today you know over time so what we the police come from the community so you know and that's obviously how it should be but we're going to reflect society so I think for there's a range of reasons there why why I see the argument to do this okay to bring this in why did I bring it up I thought you brought it up well not you personally but I thought that the media brought it up over here I'm sorry the decision on whether it proceeds I would think that will be done within a month within a month this the if discipline reaction is taken that in all probability would not be finalized within a month but the decision as to whether to take discipline reaction should be complete within a month and we undertake to let you know the outcome of that of that decision is that if that's what you wish okay yeah I hope so I really do I you know I mean we all know that it's a difficult working environment we know the tragedy that could there recently and and I mean just last night you know stolen vehicle two people killed driver absconded yeah it's a very very busy place and I think they do a fine job and I think they deserve support and I think that will all be pleased that this this report has been produced and we can now move on you know it's a really good point and I thank you for raising it I said when I gave evidence at the hearings that our sergeants and senior sergeants in my view the most important people in the organization and we have approximately two thousand two hundred sergeants and about 800 senior sergeants so we have three thousand we are a large police department three thousand sergeants and senior sergeants and they are the heart of the organization and I truly believe they're our most important people you see the ones at the Colface and with the younger officers are out on the street providing you know the leadership for them we have put extra supervisors in at the Goldcast and the role of the supervisor as supervisors can't be understated in terms of its importance and we are going to introduce a training program for supervisors we had hoped that would be two weeks but again logistical and and other reasons I've had to bring that back to a week so we're starting with a one week course for supervisors and we'll bring them in from across the state or train them locally can try that training locally and I'm hopeful that over time we'll be able to expand that supervisor training I know and sorry this is beyond the goal cause we're talking statewide no no but it's it's it's very close to starting and and we'll be underway with it soon and and and I see that as something that really needs to expand and you know it's it's something that probably you know it's something we would like to have done a long time ago but we have a police department in a geographical area the size of Queensland there are challenges in terms of bringing people back to Brisbane for week two week three week four week training programs no that's a separate thing entirely and that's part of the work we do as well in terms of looking at you know people who the subject of excessive complaints or who their senior officers have a concern about and obviously you'd expect us to do that and we do the test-gate report no I don't as far as the free these go the police union obviously have been saying that we're going to keep them and GPS cannot stop us probably through an industrial law the advice and I don't speak to you about this previous year the advice at the time was the force what steps would you take yeah we'll only know that into the future and they're all very valid points as I mentioned in terms of the gratuities if we're talking about the half price hamburger and the half price coffee or the free hamburger and free coffee as I said I don't see that as corruption and I don't think that a police officer who has received a half price of free hamburger is corrupt and I'm not saying it is and I also don't believe as some do that that starts an officer on the path to corruption I don't don't that's not my view people hold that view but it's not mine but what I do believe as I mentioned this before is that in terms of where I want to see the police department be where I want to see individual police officers be is is highly highly professional people who were well regarded by the community I think this is something where we need to say and we have okay time's up for this practice now having said that the union and we are engaged in consultation with them at the moment the union as you quite rightly point out have a very different view they say there is nothing wrong in the practice we already know that some proprietors of fast-food outlets have flagged that they will not stop the practice they intend to keep doing it now it may well be that there is a legal challenge ultimately to what we're trying to do here and the outcome of that of course will if there is a legal challenge the outcome of that would be a matter for the courts and I think to some extent I can't speak for other policing jurisdictions but I think that certainly here in Australia what we're saying here is quite possibly cutting edge you know in terms of of where this sits but this has been a debate that's been going on for a long long time this issue you know free hamburgers and generally it's not free it's half price heavily discounted and there there are arguments for and there are arguments against but I think and those in the senior executive of the service share my view that it's time to call it a day whether we're right in that time will tell look I think that's that's to what if and to hypothetical I think we take it a step at a time I'm committed to introducing this policy but after proper consultation and consideration of how we roll it out and what we do with you know in terms and as I said I don't see this as corruption I want to really stress that point what I'm talking about here is is it's about professionalism and it's about image of a police officer and what a police officer is and represents so that's where I see it sitting and we've a little bit to work through yet in terms of the rally out of the policy that I have committed to it as we've said equally that it's a no-brainer that free entry into nightclubs and free alcohol is not acceptable and as we said I said equally that I think it's okay it's fine for police to travel free on public transport because I think they provide a community service and enhancing public safety this one's a grey area and it's middle ground that's the one about the discounted food but we've got to have a position on it and our position on it is that we think that time's up for it yeah look look that's a body of work that we would have done we are doing now but and I don't put this to you as an excuse for not having done so to date but as you recall back in December you know they were unprecedented flooding cyclones and natural disasters in Queensland and we have been pretty much consumed by a lot of that and the follow-up with that with the Commission of Inquiry so it's only been in recent times we've been able to restart you know our work and our consultation process we are doing at the moment an examination of policies interstate in in similar police departments and we see those as being New Zealand, Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom similar police jurisdictions okay yes all of the other interstate jurisdictions New Zealand, Canada, the United States and United Kingdom they're the police jurisdictions we generally look at in the comparative sense and thank you for your time