LINCOLN — The impact of Ndamukong Suh's unprecedented gift to the University of Nebraska should make a statement to NU athletes and prospective recruits, Tom Osborne has said.
“If they see that somebody like Ndamukong believes enough in this program to invest that amount of money, it must be a pretty good place,” said Osborne, the Nebraska athletic director. “It was good for them to see that gesture of generosity and service back to the school.
“Whether we ever have anybody give us money in athletics, I think it's important there is a precedent.”
NU announced Suh's donation of $2.6 million Saturday at the Red-White game, the largest gift ever pledged to Nebraska by a former athlete. It includes $2 million to the athletic department and $600,000 to endow a scholarship in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Engineering.
Suh, the AP national player of the year and a Heisman Trophy finalist in 2009, is expected to land among the top picks Thursday night in the NFL draft.
Osborne said he consulted with the 23-year-old defensive tackle recently about the donation and that ex-Husker Guy Rozier, assistant director of development for NU, played an instrumental role in securing the pledge. Suh approached Rozier with the idea.
“He was interested in creating history,” Rozier said. “That's one thing he mentioned to me. He wanted to leave a great legacy at the university, something people would always remember him by.”
From his preparation for the NFL Combine at the Michael Johnson Performance Center in McKinney, Texas, Suh got the idea for NU to add an area devoted to stretching, agility and running drills inside the North Stadium weight room.
The Huskers currently use the attached Hawks Center for such activity.
“He wanted to make sure future athletes had the chance to be bigger even than he was,” Rozier said.
There's some cost involved, Osborne said, in moving equipment that sits in the area planned for the renovation.
Suh's donation also will allow for the addition of electronic screens inside the lockers of NU football players, to be used for communication with teammates and coaches. The screens were cut from the locker room's original plans, which impressed Suh as a freshman in 2005. The North Stadium facility opened in 2006.
“One way or another, we'll use that money to make things better for our student-athletes,” Osborne said.
Osborne said he's not sure of a timetable on the delivery of the gift. Suh may negotiate with his NFL franchise for the club to directly pay Nebraska.
“I think it's probably a little premature right now to speculate exactly when the money would come and in what form,” Osborne said, “but we do have a pretty good idea of what he would like to have happen. So I have no doubt that this will all transpire in the next several months.”
Suh's intelligence and generosity appeal to NFL franchises as the draft approaches, Osborne said, and this donation only reinforces prior conclusions about his character.
“He's been pretty much an open book,” Osborne said. “I know there's always a level of concern on the part of professional teams when they're drafting someone who's very talented, because of the potential for character issues. This isn't a concern with Ndamukong.”
Contact the writer:
402-444-1031, mitch.sherman@owh.com
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