'95 Flashback: Gilman led with actions, not words
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BY KEN HAMBLETON / Lincoln Journal Star
Mark Gilman didn’t mean any disrespect to his father, but he had to laugh when Tom Gilman would talk about his concerns for Nebraska in its next game.
“One time he called and said that he was looking at the paper and it said Nebraska was favored by 37 points over Oklahoma,” Mark Gilman said. “He said it was unbelievable. I said, ‘Yes. It’s unbelievable. I can’t believe it’s that low.’”
Nebraska beat Oklahoma 37-0 in 1995. That was about average for the Huskers that year.
“I was there and I watched the tapes and that Nebraska team was so good,” said the younger Gilman, who played in all the games and started most them in the back-to-back national championship seasons of 1994 and 1995 at Nebraska.
“I had to line up across from Jared Tomich and Grant Wistrom every day in practice,” Gilman said. “I got to hate Tuesdays and Wednesdays. It was incredible to go against our defense. It was almost a joke. All those guys went to the NFL and a bunch are still playing.
“Here I was, a guy from Montana, playing tight end on a team that never passed, so I had to block those monsters.”
Gilman was no lily on the team. He was voted the lifter of the year for a team that boasted some of the strongest players ever at Nebraska. He was voted a team captain because he worked so hard and led by actions and not words.
Gilman also earned Academic All-Big Eight honors.
“It’s nine, 10 years, so nobody can really argue, but I think it was the best college football team ever,” he said.
Back in his hometown of Kalispell, Gilman and his wife, Tiffany, and children, Padan, 7, and Cameron, 4, still consider themselves Nebraskans. “I will bleed Husker red forever,” Gilman said. Tiffany is from Hastings, where Mark worked as an insurance agent for six years. He moved back to Montana last year and now works on the technical side for a flood insurance vendor. “Who says football players can’t learn something?” Gilman joked.
Gilman quickly learned that he was more of a part of the offensive line than part of the receiving corps, even though he practiced with the receivers.
“We ran the option and we ran it to perfection,” he said. “We lost the NFL linemen from 1994, guys like Brenden Stai, Rob Zatechka and Zach Wiegert, guys who were massive, 6-foot-5, 330-pound guys. But we had better option blockers in 1995, like Aaron Taylor, Aaron Graham, Eric Anderson, Steve Ott and a much smaller than now, Chris Dishman.
“The point was that we were recruited to run the option and we ran it like nobody before or since because we had the line, Tommie Frazier, incredible backs and the hard-nosed Nebraska guys who were like rocks out there on the field.”
Gilman often found himself ignored when he was open on a pass pattern but he didn’t mind.
“I could have had a bunch of 15- yard passes thrown to me, but Tommie would tuck the ball in and get 16 yards running. The stats didn’t matter, winning did.”
Still, when needed, Gilman was steady. He caught three passes for first downs in a victory against run-minded Colorado. He caught a key touchdown pass in the 1994 national championship game against Miami.
“It wasn’t a complicated system,” Gilman said. “If you could run the plays against our defense on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, against the Peter brothers and our linebackers, then playing on Saturday was like playing against a bunch of eighth-graders.
“Like people have said before, there were fights in practices because it was so competitive, but it was all a team deal once we got into the locker room or into a game.
“I honestly feel we could have scored a lot more points than we did and we scored a lot,” he said. “The only worry was wondering when the starters were going to be taken out. I don’t know if I played a full fourth quarter all year. I sat out a lot of second halves, too.”
Reach Ken Hambleton at 473-7313 or at khambleton@journalstar.com.
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