Nebraskas Bill Busch is home, no matter what happens with new coach: Im not leaving

May 26, 2024

LINCOLN, Neb. — Sunday nights for Bill and Laura Busch are special.

Laura’s middle daughter, Olivia, visits home. Bill, the interim defensive coordinator at Nebraska, has built a connection with each of his three stepdaughters since he and Laura, a Lincoln realtor, met in 2017 and married two years later amid a long-distance relationship.

With Olivia, a third-year Nebraska student, Bill said, humor brings them together. They talk and text often.

“We probably see each other the most,” he said at Memorial Stadium after a practice session this month with the Huskers. “All three of them are different, like most kids. But whatever they’re doing, that’s my world.”

Not long ago, third-and-10 was his world.

“Third-and-10 is still important,” he said. But now, his life has a “higher meaning.”

“They’re my daughters,” Busch said through tears. “They’re awesome. I’m lucky. I’ve been blessed.”

(Courtesy of the Busch family)

On Oct. 16, though, Sunday night felt strange. As Bill and Laura sat in their garage, he grappled with the emotional fallout of a 43-37 loss at Purdue 24 hours earlier. Nebraska had installed elements of a new scheme in the week ahead of the trip, and it didn’t work as planned. The Huskers allowed 38 first downs and 608 yards. Purdue held the football for nearly 43 minutes.

It rated as a snapshot of this season stuffed with painful moments. Busch, grateful for the chance to coach at all, searched for the right response. He put his phone on speaker and began to call his defensive players.

At the home shared by Nick Henrich, who suffered a season-ending knee injury in the first half at Purdue, fellow defensive captain Garrett Nelson and linebacker Luke Reimer, they all got a phone call.

“Not a lot of other coaches do that,” Nelson said. “That’s a pretty special guy.”

Busch didn’t want to talk football or make excuses for the performance.

“It was definitely unexpected,” safety Marques Buford Jr. said. “But it’s not unexpected if you know his character. I’ve never had a coach reach out to me the day after a tough loss just to check in on my headspace. Knowing that I have somebody in my corner who’s going to great lengths to see that I’m OK, that makes me feel secure.”

Busch ended each conversation with a message of love and support.

“That is definitely his strength, his passion for people,” Laura Busch said.

This year, more than any in his 34 seasons as a college football coach, has exposed Busch’s passions — for coaching, for Nebraska, for people and for his family.

“It means more than any place I’ve coached,” said Busch, who grew up in Pender, Neb., and played wide receiver at Nebraska Wesleyan. “I’m so thankful every day I come out here, every day that I get a chance to be here.”

Thing is, his days as a coach at Nebraska, in this third stint for Busch at the school, might soon be over.

Busch said he doesn’t think during the season about the unstable nature of his business.

He’s 57, and this is his 13th coaching stop. Scott Frost hired him in 2021 as a defensive analyst at Nebraska after Busch turned down an offer from Boise State to serve as co-defensive coordinator. Bill and Laura traveled to Boise in the wake of the 2020 season that led to his firing as safeties coach at LSU one year after he helped the Tigers finish 15-0 and win a national championship.

Boise impressed them. “A top 25 program,” Bill said, “and one of the most beautiful places.”

Laura told him to take the job. She’d stay in Lincoln with her work and for the sake of their daughters. The oldest, Sydney, had just started grad school at Nebraska-Omaha; Olivia was in her first year at Nebraska after graduating from Lincoln Pius X; their youngest, Gigi, was a sixth-grader.

“Not doing it,” Busch said he told her. He moved home.

Less than a year later, Frost promoted Busch to a full-time coaching job as special teams coordinator. It lasted four games. One week after Frost was fired in September of this season, interim coach Mickey Joseph removed Erik Chinander and placed Busch in charge of a struggling defense.

“I hate how it happened,” Busch said. “But at the same time, I’m enjoying the crap out of it, getting to run the defense.”

In his six games as defensive coordinator, Nebraska has allowed 126.5 yards per game fewer than in its first four and 1.05 yards per play fewer.

The Huskers, 3-7 and 2-5 in the Big Ten, play Wisconsin Saturday in Lincoln and visit Iowa on Black Friday. Soon after, Nebraska will introduce a new coach. Busch may not get invited to stay on the staff.

(Mitch Sherman / The Athletic)

Still, he said he’s thinking more about his players, who are experiencing the same uncertainty.

“These kids are upside down dealing with adversity,” he said. “Every day is hard for them. For the veteran guys, it’s been hard on them for a number of years. So to be able to respond the way they have responded, to come out and play and practice with tremendous effort, that’s been great.

“The reason it’s so rewarding for me is because of the respect I have for them. It’s easy to come to work when you’re 11-0. But this is a tough sport to play when things aren’t going well. People are trying to knock you down and hit you in the face.”

Busch has experienced bad years in coaching, he said, when the players’ effort diminished as the losses mounted. This is not one of those years.

As a coach, he said he cares this week and next only about finishing “the right way.”

“It would be a sickening feeling to know you cashed it in because you were worried about yourself,” Busch said. “I couldn’t live with myself, especially at this school, if I knew I didn’t give them everything that I had.”

Good reason exists for the next coach at Nebraska to keep Busch on staff.

Aside from his passion for Nebraska and knowledge of the Huskers’ personnel, start with this: He’s almost certainly the only defensive backs coach in the history of college football to recruit two quarterbacks later selected No. 1 in the NFL Draft.

And Busch “stood on the table,” to use his recruiting terminology, for both Alex Smith and Joe Burrow.

Working for Ron McBride at Utah in 2001, Busch found Smith at Helix High in La Mesa Calif., on the eastern side of San Diego. Smith operated a run-heavy offense that featured Reggie Bush, the future Heisman Trophy winner at USC.

Sometimes, Busch said, Smith threw fewer than five passes in a game. But the coach saw something. He begged Utes offensive coordinator Craig Ver Steeg to take a look at Smith in the final week of the spring evaluation period during Smith’s junior year.

Utah was the only major program to offer a scholarship. Smith signed in 2002 and sat the bench. McBride was fired. Urban Meyer replaced him. Busch kept a spot on staff and recruited Smith all over again to stay in Salt Lake City, while working to convince Meyer that he had a major talent, though Smith had attempted just four passes in his first season.

Smith stayed and helped guide Utah to 10 wins in Meyer’s first season. The next year, in 2004, with Busch gone to Nebraska to work for Bill Callahan, the Utes finished 12-0 and won the Fiesta Bowl. Meyer left for Florida. Smith placed fourth in the Heisman voting and the 49ers took him first in the 2005 draft, the only QB taken ahead of Aaron Rodgers.

Thirteen years later, Busch moved from Rutgers to LSU, thanks to a relationship built from 2012 to 2014 at Utah State and Wisconsin with Dave Aranda, the Tigers defensive coordinator.

Busch, through a connection with ex-Nebraska defensive back and graduate assistant coach Jimmy Burrow, developed an in with Jimmy’s son. Joe Burrow was looking to transfer from Ohio State, where he’d played in 10 games over three seasons without a start.

Busch said he went to LSU coach Ed Orgeron with a pitch. “I said if we get him, we’ll win a national championship.”

Orgeron questioned the boldness of Busch’s statement. Busch didn’t back down.

“Well, let’s go get him,” Orgeron told Busch.

Burrow finished 25-3 as the LSU starter and won the Heisman in 2019, completing arguably the most prolific season in college football history. The Bengals took him with the top pick in 2020.

In April before Burrow’s senior year, Bill and Laura got married at a barn used for special events west of Lincoln. The couple printed lyrics and requested all the guests to sing “Callin’ Baton Rouge.”

After the wedding, Orgeron instructed Busch to find players from the Midwest to recruit, so he could sneak in a trip to Nebraska to see his wife. Bill appreciated the gesture. But for the first 20 months of his marriage, that connection was missing.

Bill and Laura managed to see each other every three weeks from the time they got serious in 2017 until Bill moved home nearly four years later.

“Everybody was like, ‘How does that work?’” said Laura, introduced to Bill by her best friend. “It just does. Everyone has their things in life. We all have to adapt. You can either be negative about it, and it can be terrible, or you can make the best of it and do what you have to do. And that’s how we did it.”

Laura had been single for a few years before she met Bill. He was married for a short time during his previous stint in Lincoln and had no kids.

When they lived apart, Bill and Laura leaned into wisdom from the book, “The Circle Maker,” by Mark Batterson. It focuses on “praying circles around your biggest dreams and greatest fears” and features the number seven.

To stay connected, Laura would do something seven times — like walk or drive around Memorial Stadium. And wherever he was, Bill would do the same.

During the football seasons, she traveled to all of his games.

“She loves football,” Bill said. “She’s the perfect coach’s wife. But now I get to see her every day, which is awesome. She’s the whole reason everything clicks. She’s the difference in my life.”

Laura was raised in Lincoln and attended Lincoln Southeast High School. She worked at Runza on south 33rd Street while in high school and served food on roller skates at the iconic Rock ‘n’ Roll Runza near campus as a cheerleader at Nebraska in the early 1990s.

Bill, in those years, clawed his way onto Tom Osborne’s Nebraska staff and worked for three seasons as a graduate assistant, He left in 1994 for one season as a G.A. under Barry Alvarez, the ex-Nebraska linebacker, at Wisconsin.

In Madison, Busch met Callahan, Kevin Cosgrove and Jay Norvell, the Nebraska braintrust that brought Busch back to Lincoln a decade later.

“Eventually, we got here,” Laura said. “And this is our dream.”

After Nebraska held Indiana scoreless in the second half of Busch’s first game as defensive coordinator to win 35-21, Busch shared an embrace with all of his girls on the field at Memorial Stadium.

Bill’s connection with Sydney revolves around hockey. She got into it as an undergrad in Omaha, supporting the Mavericks. Bill and Sydney own jerseys and cheer together for the Vegas Golden Knights. The youngest, Gigi, is into dance. As a result, so is Bill.

“I’m all in,” Bill said. “My wife has whatever she wants, whatever the girls need.”

What a cool moment for #Huskers DC Bill Busch after Saturday’s win. pic.twitter.com/ZL9ax4xppE

— Michael Bruntz (@michaelbruntz) October 2, 2022

He choked up talking about the moment a few days later.

“He’s never changed,” Nelson said. “He’s always been the same in how he’s coached us — the same energetic, enthusiastic, passionate guy. We love being around him and being with him.”

When the season ends next week, Busch will take time to think about what’s next. He’d like to stay with the Huskers, of course. But what if the next coach doesn’t have a spot for Busch?

“I’m not leaving,” he said. “I’ll get an 8-to-5 job and go work. My wife and these kids mean too much to me. They already spend too much time away from me. Another move is just not in the cards for us. I used to never say never. Crazy things happen.

“But right now, we’re in a good place.”

(Top photo of Mickey Joseph and Bill Busch: Steven Branscombe / Getty Images)

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