The all-conference awards go hand in hand with winning. Nebraska didn't really have all of those piles of all-conference players in the 80s if they weren't dominating the conference like they were. Likewise, if Nebraska finished above .500 last year, we'd have had a few more all-conference selections. That's just politics. The NFL Draft can't afford to be that biased.
Do you watch baseball at all? Are you old enough (or care enough about baseball) to remember Tom Herr? He was a mediocre 2nd baseman for the Cardinals, but the Twins made a trade for him and bragged at how they had gotten such a proven hitter, pointing at his RBI numbers. Tom Herr batted third in a lineup that had Vince Coleman and Willie McGee at the top of the order, and they just happened to be great hitters with world-class base-stealing speed, and one or the other or both was/were pretty much always on base when Tom Herr came up to hit. My grandma could have swung her walker at the strike zone if she batted in that position, and she would have had triple-digit RBIs each year. Tom Herr was a mediocre baseball player, but the fact that he batted with world-class speed always on the bases (and a distracted pitcher, catcher, and infield who were always worried about them stealing a base) meant that ANY contact with the ball that didn't result in a line-drive out was probably going to move the baserunners. It also helped his average that he had good hitters behind him, so nobody was ever going to walk him on purpose. He got big, juicy strikes to hit, and even a shallow pop fly to the outfield could score a couple runs.
That's the difference that being a bubble-level draft pick playing on a national contender means. If you play LB at Ohio State, Alabama, Michigan, or Clemson, you NEVER have to worry about getting caught in the wash because the O-line pushed your teammates back into your lane to fill to make a tackle' you're free to make plays, possibly even "go cowboy" and gamble to make big plays that look great on highlight film. There may be a basement level of speed and other measurements that you have to have, but every year there are guys drafted from the top-ranked teams who are NOT significantly better than guys who are left undrafted after playing on less glamorous teams. Stanley Morgan and Devine Ozigbo have better stats and get drafted if they're playing for Michigan; to their credit, the NFL did NOT draft Higdon from Michigan because he was the beneficiary of what I just described, having played behind a world-class O-line in a run-first offense.
