Say this about Bill Callahan: He’s tough and stubborn. He’s no quitter.

Resign? No way, he says.

Also, say this about the man: He never grouses — at least not publicly — about Nebraska football fans’ relatively unwieldy expectations for the program.

The next Husker head coach might face somewhat diminished expectations in the wake of Callahan’s immense struggle to stay afloat. Perhaps the Big Red beast’s recent hard times have made its head coaching position more manageable, if ever so slightly.

“Slightly” because this job’s always going to be a bear to handle for a variety of reasons, foremost because of Nebraska’s mind-numbing prosperity in the 1990s under Tom Osborne. His startling success rate created a mindset among many Husker fans that winning big is automatic. How’s a record of 60-3 over the last five years (1993-97) for automatic?

Well, clunkety, clunk, clunk. The transmission dropped out this season, as Nebraska has sputtered to the tune of 4-6 overall and 1-5 in the Big 12. Callahan’s record at NU stands at 26-21 and 14-17 in conference play in four seasons.

Perhaps now, more than ever, fans appreciate Osborne’s coaching genius.

But realize: Osborne didn’t face many of the challenges coaches face during this day and age.

Newsflash: The Nebraska job has become a lot tougher since Osborne wore a whistle around his neck — and not just because the conference got tougher.

For instance, Nebraska discovering “diamonds in the rough” on the recruiting trail has become increasingly challenging now that Rivals.com and Scout.com scour heaven and earth for such “diamonds” and supply information on them to any poor soul, or recruiting coordinator, willing to shell out 10 bucks.

Ah, that dadgum Internet. When Osborne roamed the sidelines, he could focus mostly on coaching as opposed to addressing Internet rumors that crop up almost daily nowadays. Not sure Dr. Tom would appreciate the “information” emanating from ultra-intense Husker message boards and blogs. Not sure he would have liked directing his energy toward debunking that “information,” as Callahan did Tuesday (no, he hasn’t resigned, and he has no plans to do so, he said).

We haven’t even mentioned NCAA regulations.

Yes, there were drastic scholarship reductions imposed in the early 1990s, from 105 to 85, resulting in a more even distribution of talent across the country. We hear the “parity” refrain, ad nauseam.

Also in the early 1990s, the NCAA reduced the maximum of graduate assistant coaches from five to two, making it more challenging for the Nebraska staff to direct the 170-plus players Osborne liked to keep on his roster. Heck, in the 1980s, Division I-A teams carried as many as 10 graduate assistants.

In Osborne’s last season, 1997, Husker assistant coaches traversed the recruiting trail carrying laptop computers so the coaches could show prospects and prospects’ parents an interactive presentation of the tunnel walk and highlights of NU’s facilities and academic programs. The NCAA then banned such presentations because smaller schools couldn’t afford computers for multiple coaches.

Nebraska also used to be on the cutting edge in strength and conditioning, then the world caught up.

So, the Huskers’ advantages kept dwindling. At some point, the little things being lost began to add up.

You may call them excuses; I call it reality.

And, oh yes, that darned Big 12. Osborne decried the merger of the Texas schools into the former Big Eight in 1996 because the Big 12 eliminated grants-in-aid to nonqualifiers and drastically reduced the number of partial qualifiers. Nebraska suddenly had to play by the same scholarship rules as everyone else.

So, in a sense, Osborne got out of coaching at an opportune time.

Now, of course, he’s back on the scene to clean up a Big Red mess on a college football landscape that he may not always recognize.

Meanwhile, the world is watching.

“Nebraska can always be a good program,” says ESPN radio commentator Colin Cowherd. “But unless they substantially overpay and get the best coach in the country, I never see them being a juggernaut again. Businesses, life and sports evolve. And warm-weather schools are winning and growing at a much faster rate than cold-weather schools.“

To be sure, many cold-weather programs have fallen in last decade: Notre Dame, Penn State, Washington, Iowa, Nebraska.

Sports mirrors life, Cowherd says, and people from cold-weather states are heading to the Carolinas, Florida, Texas, the West Coast, the Southwest. It’s harder to recruit to cold-weather states.

Excuses, excuses.

Bring on the next head coach ready to battle the Big Red beast.

Reach Steven M. Sipple at 473-7440 or ssipple@journalstar.com.