Why was Ollie on the team

Originally he was the team manager and, as he put it, also served as an extra "body" during practices. He was drafted as a team member when the Huskers were short on players.

It is kind of a good question. About the second time Norm said, 'Ollie, go in the game' and Ollie said, 'uh humma humma humma coach, I don't know if I want to play,' Norm would say, 'When I say go in the game, you go in the game, or else you can run right down to the locker room, take that uniform off and get the hell out of here.'

Anybody who's ever coached basketball knows if you are coaching a team with 5-7 players on it, you are utterly guaranteed to run into some situation where somebody fouls out, somebody sprains their ankle, etc etc and that last kid on the bench has to go into the game, so he dang well better be willing and able to do it.

If you have a roster with 12-14 or more players on it, you can bury guys way down on the end of the bench and never put them in the game, but when you have 5-7 players, everybody has got to play.

Even if your No. 7 player is Ollie the geek manager, maybe Merle or Rade gets in foul trouble or got the wind knocked out of them or something, so you better be able to put Ollie the geek manager in the game without everything instantly going down the drain.

What the smart coaches do is throw Ollie the geek manager in for 2-3 minutes at a time in the 2nd and 3rd quarter of games early in the season so he won't freak out if you have to put him in with 2 minutes left in a tie game.











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4) You ever seen Superman $#$# his pants? Case closed.

With such a small school, it's entirely conceivable that Ollie could have been the 7th best player in the whole school. But even the 7th best could mean that he wasn't a very good player, and Ollie knew this.

It is bad to drink Jobus rum. Very bad.