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It would be interesting to take for each program the number of appearances listed next to the number of top 5 rankings achieved, or top #1s.

I like Nebraska and I loved the Sharkwater tailgate there back in 2011.  That said, the thing that makes me question Nebraska's "Helmetosity" isn't just the recent swoon, it is the fact that they weren't consistently very good before Bob Devaney either.  I noted in the more B1G-centric thread that Nebraska was mostly nationally irrelevant in the first 28 years of AP Polls (40 appearances, 16 top-10's, and no top-5's in 284 polls from 1936-1963). 

My view is that a PROGRAM that is a true helmet program doesn't need a great coach to be nationally relevant.  I have my doubts about Nebraska because substantially all of their success came under just two coaches:  Bob Devaney and Tom Osborne. 

Devaney arrived for the 1962 season and the Cornhuskers went 9-2 that year.  Prior to that they hadn't finished above .500 since going 6-5 in 1954.  They hadn't finished with eight or more wins since going 8-2 in 1940, and they hadn't won nine or more games since going 10-0 in 1903. 

Devaney, Osborne, and Solich* coached Nebraska for 42 consecutive years during which winning "only" nine games in a season was a bad year.  Outside of that a nine win season at Nebraska is REALLY good. 

Schools like Alabama, Ohio State, Oklahoma, and a few others have achieved high levels of success under many different coaches.

Another way to look at it, and one that ELA typically advocates, is to look at a program's ability to recover from a major downturn.  Ohio State is hard to measure on this metric because the Buckeyes are, by far, the most consistently successful program at least since WWII.  Alabama and Oklahoma, however, have each faced serious and extended downturns then recovered to get right back to being football powerhouses.  Alabama was basically terrible for 11 years from 1997-2007 and look at them now.  Oklahoma had a similar swoon from 1989-1999 then got right back to being a NC contender.

Oklahoma was even worse than you thought, Medina.  There was another swoon in there during the 1960s.  Bud Wilkinson tailed off toward the end of his tenure at OU, starting in 1959.  He went 7-3, 3-6-1, and 5-5, then recovered to go 8-2 and 8-3.  He retired after the '63 season.  For the rest of the decade, under Gomer Jones, Jim McKenzie, and Chuck Fairbanks, the Sooners went 38-28-1.  So, from '59 through '69, OU's record was 69-42-2.  We had a 1-12 record against Texas that overlapped that span by one year on each end.  Not as bad as the '90s, but not helmet-worthy either.

For the last 17 years (2002-2018) the Cornhuskers have been, for the most part, nationally irrelevant.  Here are their 2002-2018 AP stats:

• 22nd in appearances with 126 out of 278 polls (45.3%)
• 33rd (tied with Mizzou, KSU, and USCe) with 24 top-10's out of 278 polls (8.6%)
• 44th (tied with Purdue and aTm) with one top-5 out of 278 polls (0.4%). 
• Never ranked higher than #5. 

I'm not pointing this out to pick on Nebraska.  My point is that Bama (1997-2007) and Oklahoma (1989-1999) were not much better and they recovered.  My question is whether or not Nebraska can do the same thing?  I'm not taking a position on whether or not they can, I'm just pointing out the question. 

If Scott Frost can take them back to consistently playing high-level football that will REALLY shore up Nebraska's Helmet status because it will mean that they have four highly successful coaches (Devaney, Osborne, Solich, Frost) and that they have successfully rebounded from a protracted downturn.  If he can't, then I'll be waiting to see how the next guy does. 


*Solich:
I hesitated to include Solich in my list of great Nebraska coaches because he obviously didn't succeed at the Devaney/Osobrne level and got fired.  That said, his winning percentage is still third best among Nebraska coaches in the last 100+ years.

What your analysis about Nebraska may be missing is that Nebraska was a very solid program prior to the polling era.  Per my manual crunching of the numbers, the Huskers prior to 1938 were 270-86-28, with 23 conference championships.  The great Dana X. Bible coached there for 8 years, going 50-15-7.  The '40s and '50s were terrible decades for them.  But by the late '60s, they were one of the best programs in the country, and were AP national champs in '70 and '71.

Thinking of Nebraska football in the '40s and '50s reminds me of a passage in the novel MASH.  The 4077th is preparing to play Gen. Hammond's team in a football game, and Hawkeye and Duke are trying to round up players.  They have one guy who started for Nebraska, who is pretty good, and another guy who was 2nd team for Oklahoma, who is no good.  This struck me--as an OU fan--as just a bit odd, because Bud Wilkinson had started his great run at OU, while Nebraska was in the middle of its bad run when the novel was set, during the Korean War, probably 1951-53.  OU had won its first NC in 1950.

But MASH--written by former military surgeon Richard Hornberger and sportswriter W.C. Heinz under the name of Richard Hooker--was published in 1968, and Nebraska had been the better program through the 1960s, winning four straight Big 8 championships from 1963 through 1966.

When football really got started say the 20s, the Huskers went toe to toe with Rockne's teams, beating the four horsemen

They also shut down the galloping ghost

yes, the 40's and 50's were very bad, but besides those two decades the Huskers have been solid or much better than average

checking all-time winning percentage will show this

I understand the 1936 AP Poll cutoff, but Nebraska has a great history in football long before Devaney moved to Lincoln

More on Nebraska:

As someone who was in college when the Cornhuskers won three NC's in four years (1994-1997) I have a hard time seeing them as anything but a "helmet".  I was at Ohio State for five football seasons and everybody was pretty much chasing Nebraska the entire time:

• In 1993 Nebraska started out #8, dropped to #9 before playing a game then steadily climbed to #2 before losing to #1 FSU in the Orange Bowl and finishing #3.  
• In 1994 Nebraska started #4, climbed briefly to #1 then fell to #2 and later #3 before assuming the #1 spot in the 11/1 poll by pummeling #2 Colorado and rode #1 to the end of the season.  
• In 1995 Nebraska started #2 then climbed to #1 in the 10/31 poll and rode that to the end of the season.  
• In 1996 Nebraska started #1, dropped to #8 with their loss to ASU then steadily climbed back to #3 before losing the B12CG to Texas and finishing #6.  
• In 1997 Nebraska started #6, dropped briefly to #7 (one poll) then steadily climbed to #1 which they lost after a too-close win over Mizzou, dropped to #3, then got back to #2 and finished #2 in the AP, #1 in the other poll.  

In the 42 years of Devaney, Osborne, and Solich they were the best program in the country.  Here are Nebraska's AP stats out of 649 AP Polls for 1962-2003:

• 589 appearances (90.8%), #1 in the nation by 48 over #2 Michigan, by 81 over #3 Ohio State, and by 99 over #4 Bama.  
• 488 top-10's (75.2%), #1 in the nation by 134 over #2 Michigan, by 153 over #3/4 OU and tOSU.  
• 295 top-5 appearances (45.5%), #1 in the nation by 59 over #2 Oklahoma, by 85 over #3 Ohio State, and by 90 over #4 Bama.  
•  138 top-2's (21.3%), #1 in the nation by 11 over #2 OU, by 15 over #3 Miami, FL, and by 30 over #4 tOSU.  
•  70 #1's (10.8%), #1 in the nation by 1 over #2 OU, by 2 over #3 Miami, FL, and by 8 over #4 tOSU.  

For those 42 years Nebraska was #1 in everything.  They appeared in better than 9-out-of-10 polls, in better than 3-out-of-4 top-10's, in almost half of the top-5's, in better than 1-out-of-5 top-2's, and in better than 1-out-of-10 #1's.  

In the poll era outside of that so 1936-1961 and 2004-present (502 polls) not so good:

• 139 appearances 27.7%
• 30 top-10's 6.0%
• 1 top-5 (0.2%)
• 0 top-2's
• 0 #1's

So in the 83 years of AP Polls, Nebraska has 42 years (1962-2003) of being absolutely the best program in the country and 41 years of being decidedly mediocre.  Prior to the AP Poll they definitely had some success but that is harder to quantify.  

My assessment is that at this point they are a borderline helmet.  I strongly disagree with the notion that a team can never lose helmet status and I think that Nebraska has either lost it or is close to losing it.  That said, they still have a huge stadium, a huge and rabid fanbase, and plenty of cash.  If Scott Frost leads them back to the promised land then this discussion will look pretty silly in retrospect and Nebraska's 2004-2018 swoon will be viewed no differently than Bama's from 1997-2007 or Oklahoma's from 1989-1999.  If he can't . . .

This is what we call high peak, and that's some lengthy peak.  I'm not sure it is somehow more impressive if those 42 years were in 3 or 4 smaller non consecutive  segments scattered  from 1936 to today. 

All of this is fun with end points anyways.

This is what we call high peak, and that's some lengthy peak.  I'm not sure it is somehow more impressive if those 42 years were in 3 or 4 smaller non consecutive  segments scattered  from 1936 to today.

All of this is fun with end points anyways.

Those 42 years are an incredible peak for Nebraska and it is all the more impressive because 42 years is a REALLY long time.  Achieving that level of success over five, 10, or even 20 years would be a LOT less impressive to me. 

That said, it would be marginally more impressive to me if those 42 years were in three or four non-consecutive segments for two reasons:

• It would probably mean that they achieved it with more different coaches instead of just three (really two because Solich wasn't all that great and was arguably mostly riding Devaney/Osborne's coattails), and
• It would mean that they had proved themselves able to meet @ELA 's helmet criteria of being able to recover from a significant downturn.  I do think that this is relevant.  If a program can't recover from a downturn then they aren't a helmet (or at least they will not be one for long) because everybody has downturns eventually (with the possible exception of Ohio State because the Buckeyes really haven't had a significant downturn in at least the past ~70 years but I think that is more luck than anything else).

True, the recruits' frame of reference is a brief window, but history matters.  Not in terms of where you are on a list, or anything typed out in black-and-white, but when those kids visit your facility, what are they going to see? 
Are they going to see cool, huge cutouts of past players on the walls?  Okay.  Some kind of sign to tap on their way to the field?  Okay.  But are they also going to see Heismans?  National Championships trophies?  Are they going to see one or two...or seven?  Are they going to see a variety of trophies? 
If you go to a helmet program, you learn what the Nagurski looks like, the Thorpe, and the Walker.  You see Heismans from the 60s and the 00s. 



That's how history matters.