Tom Osborne blocked off a half hour of his schedule to talk with Bill Callahan on Saturday morning.

The conversation needed only five minutes.

“He asked if his contract was being terminated,” Osborne recalled. “I said yes it was. He was very cordial.”

And so Callahan left the stadium in his black Lexus SUV at 7:35 a.m., 15 minutes after he arrived. He waved to reporters, no longer Nebraska’s coach.

"As a former coach this is a role I really don't like," Osborne said during a 9:30 a.m. press conference. "I hate to sit in judgment of other people."

Callahan, who in September signed a new contract through January 2012, will make $3.25 million within the next 60 days.

If he hadn’t received the contract extension, he would be owed slightly more than $1 million as NU’s former coach.

The university is also obligated to pay the nine Husker assistants, whose contracts were also terminated, a combined $1.9 million over the next 14 to 19 months.

Osborne met with all of those coaches shortly after Callahan’s visit. Since the assistants are still getting paid monthly salaries, Osborne asked them to help with recruiting in the transition phase.

“Let me just say one thing,” Osborne said. “I try to not put any stipulations on anybody that I would not have expected of myself. I never, when I was coaching here, until maybe my last three or four years, thought I could survive a losing season as head coach.”

In four years, Callahan had two losing seasons, ending his time here with a record of 27-22.

Osborne took over as interim athletic director on Oct. 16. He said he told coaches upon his arrival he was hoping they could make this thing work.

“I think they understood that I didn’t want to make a change, because change is hard,” Osborne said. “Change is disruptive. Sometimes it’s expensive, but that’s not the main issue here.”

During his second week on the job, with four games left on Nebraska’s schedule, Osborne and the coaches set benchmarks for the season.

Osborne said that if they won the final four games and the team went 8-4, there’s no question they’d keep their jobs. If they won three and played well, he told them he thought they’d remain, but didn’t want to make promises.

Anything worse than that?

“It’s going to be tough,” Osborne told them. “Because now you’re break even, and we haven’t had many break-even seasons around here. If you have a losing season, I don’t think this is going to work.”

Still, Osborne maintained Saturday that this was not just about wins and losses, but also about how those losses occurred.

He recalled a recent conversation he had with former Colorado coach Bill McCartney.

“He said, ‘You’ve lost your identity,’” Osborne said. “I think what he was saying was that we used to be a team that people hated to play because they felt it for two or three weeks.”

Not this year. Nebraska gave up more than 40 points six times and lost six games by more than two touchdowns.

The Huskers gave up almost 38 points a game and lost three home games by a combined 75 points.

“The Kansas game was a big turning point,” Osborne said of Nebraska’s 76-39 loss. “The coaches knew it, I knew it when it happened.”

The Huskers, for so long the bullies in the college football world, were now a punchline.

“The issue becomes, ‘How long are you still viable?’ At what point, can you still go out and recruit without people saying you’re only going to be there one or two years?  At what point do you have credibility with the public? At what point do you still have a powerful impact with your players?” Osborne said.

“There comes a point where it becomes dicey, and I didn’t want to see Bill in that position. I didn’t want to see the University of Nebraska in that position.”

When Osborne was first hired, he said Callahan approached him wondering if Osborne wanted him to change assistants.

Osborne fired two assistant coaches in his 25 years as Nebraska’s coach.

“I said, ‘Bill, I would never do that.’ I would never ask you to get rid of anybody,’” Osborne said. “The head coach is the head coach. The head coach is not just responsible for the offense.

“The head coach is responsible for the defense, and the kicking game, and the whole deal. That’s why you’re the head coach. You’re responsible for firing those people. So I was not going to tell Bill Callahan who he had to keep, who he had to let go. Bill Callahan is where the buck stops.”

Osborne said he would like to talk to four or five potential head coaching replacements in the next few days.

He said he hasn’t yet talked to any coaches personally about Nebraska’s job, but did have a guy calling a few people to see if they might be interested in the job if something happened.

“I told him, ‘I don’t want to hear anybody’s name until after I talked to Coach Callahan, until after I made a final decision,’” Osborne said.

Two sources told the Journal Star on Saturday  morning that Bo Pelini, a former defensive coordinator at Nebraska, was contacted by the Atlanta-based search firm of Baker-Parker and Associates.There was no word on a possible meeting.

Osborne said he has been talking once a week to Turner Gill, the former Husker and current Buffalo coach, but only on a personal basis.

As for Callahan, despite what some might believe, Osborne said there was never any animosity in the relationship.

“I like Bill Callahan,” he said. “I think he’s a professional. I think he knows football. I think he worked unbelievably hard. But at times, I think there was something missing.”

Reach Brian Christopherson at 473-7439 or bchristopherson@journalstar.com.