By:Paul Hammel
LINCOLN — A rarely granted honor, described as the University of Nebraska’s “highest and most prestigious award,” was recently bestowed on two former NU coaches.
The Regents Medal was given posthumously Friday to Bob Devaney, a two-time national champion football coach who helped make wearing red a state obsession, and to Terry Pettit, whose 1995 national championship in volleyball paved the way for Nebraska becoming what many call “the volleyball state.”
The medal has been given only eight times in the past 18 years and only once previously to someone involved in athletics — former NU football coach and athletics director Tom Osborne.
It is intended, NU President Jeffrey Gold said, for individuals who provided “exceptional benefits” in furthering the goals and mission of the state university system.
NU Regent Paul Kenney, who presented the awards at a banquet Friday, said both coaches set standards of excellence that carried forward long after they retired. Both programs have nation-leading sellout streaks due to work by Devaney and Pettit to promote their sports.
Mike Devaney, one of Bob Devaney’s two sons, detailed how his father, a native of Saginaw, Michigan, worked in a foundry and was planning a career as a boxer before eventually going to college and taking a job as a teacher. His hiring, he said, was on the condition that he coach the football team.
Bob Devaney coached at four Michigan high schools, winning state titles, and on Duffy Daugherty’s staff at Michigan State before becoming head coach at the University of Wyoming.
Prior to taking over at Nebraska, Mike Devaney said his father watched film of the NU team’s 1961 season. His father, he said, couldn’t believe that the team, which had talented players like Bob Brown and Larry Kramer, had won only three games that year.
Bob Devaney coached at NU until 1972, winning eight Big Eight titles, playing in nine bowl games and claiming national championships in 1970 and 1971. He later served as NU’s athletic director from 1967 to 1992.
Mike Devaney said his father criss-crossed the state to build support for the football team and make “Go Big Red” a state motto. His father, he said, was a masterful speaker and communicator who made everyone in the audience feel like he was talking to them.
Pettit, a 79-year-old native of Crown Point, Indiana, got a teaching job at Louisburg College in North Carolina on the condition that he coach the golf, tennis and volleyball teams.
In volleyball, he molded a group of players who had never played the sport, winning the state junior college title after losing the first set of the season, 0-15.
Pettit famously applied for the head volleyball coaching job at Nebraska in 1977 after the women’s basketball coach at Louisberg, Paul Sanderford (who would later coach at Nebraska), found an advertisement for the Husker opening in a waste basket.
Over 22 seasons at Nebraska, Pettit built the Huskers into a national power in a sport then dominated by teams on the West Coast. He frequently recruited players who were great athletes in other sports, training them into great volleyball players.
Pettit’s teams won 21 conference titles, qualified for the NCAA tournament 17 times, and played in six final fours, winning it all in 1995 over Texas.
Now retired in Fort Collins, Colorado, Pettit is a published author and poet who produces a regular podcast on leadership and volleyball called “Inside the Coaching Mind.”
In his comments, Pettit said Lincoln business owners never said no to helping build the volleyball program by buying tickets, sponsoring tournaments, purchasing a new scoreboard and bringing in ranked teams to play the Huskers.
Past recipients of the University of Nebraska Regents Medal:
2023 — Howard and Rhonda Hawks
2017 — Richard “Dick” Holland (posthumously)
2016 — The Abel Family and Tom Osborne
2014 — Walter Scott, Jr.
2013 — Mike Yanney and Dr. Gail Walling Yanney
2011 — Robert B. Daugherty (posthumously)
2009 — Bill and Ruth Scott
2007 — Charles W. Durham