The Minnesota's, Northwestern's, Indiana's, Illinois's and Purdue's were all pretty much gimmies back then.All you say is true. I don't want to take anything away from the Nebraska teams of the late 70's and most of the 80's, but the competition was pretty lacking for most of those years. The old Big 8 was like playing 6 teams a little better than South Alabama most years. Nebraska basically had at least 5 gimmies in conference every year and usually 6 couple that with 2 more gimmies in non conference.
There is a lot more decent teams right now. You have to show up every week to play.