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I not only played for Nebraska but idolized the team growing up & watched them more than all the other teams on earth combined. I dreamed of one day being a
#Blackshirt as a boy. I arrived to Nebraska right after the Rose Bowl year. The level of expectation when I was growing up & when I first arrived at Nebraska are completely different than they are now for the team. I had a few conversations while I was in DC with a recent former Husker (who I won't name) & he bragged to me more than a few times about how he won 9 games while he was there & he played for a conference title. Don't get me wrong, those accomplishments as a college football player are nothing to sneeze at, but I did the same exact thing & I was mad about it at the time & it still makes me angry to this day that the most amount of wins I achieved in a season at Nebraska was actually 10 & I never won a championship.
When I played for the
#Huskers I never won a championship but that was always our goal, not a certain amount of wins against mostly unranked teams. This former Husker was proud of the same things that infuriated me. Another recent Husker took to social media & vented his anger about Bo's firing. One of his statements said "Since they wanna fire Bo, ima be one of those unrealistic fans who wants to be playing for a national championship every year." My response when I read it was, yes! Exactly! Thank you! That's what I grew up with, being in the national title conversation every year. People might say well, times are different and with the 85 scholarship limit it's impossible to do that anymore. I would beg to differ. Alabama has done it every year for almost a decade. They've won 3 titles in the in the past 5 years and Saban has won 4 titles in just over a decade. Something a recent former Husker believes is unrealistic, is the very thing I believe should be Nebraska's yearly goal to strive for. Another thing that's gets me is, when is it Nebraska's turn? Not that the Huskers have been bad whatsoever, but a program can go through lulls & that is normal.
The past 15 years of Husker football has not met the standard set by the previous 30 years of Husker football. That being said, there have been programs who have gone from great to not so great for a time, but they eventually bounce back play for & win conference & national championships again. Programs like Florida St, Stanford, Auburn & so on etc... They may have the lull but they almost always eventually get back to national prominence. When is it Nebraska's turn? There are some programs who traditionally are powers that are struggling at the moment like Texas, Michigan & Florida. The difference between those schools & Nebraska is given enough time, I have no doubt those schools will once again be title contenders.
While Nebraska is not what you might call struggling, I believe that if we were given more time under Bo we would most likely experience more 9 win seasons & unfortunately more embarrassing nationally televised games & no rings. It seems every program gets their turn at being in the national title picture except Nebraska. Just take this year for example, teams like Baylor & TCU are in the picture & they've never been in it before. Even Mississippi St was number 1 for a while. Winning 9 games consistently is good, but when is it our turn to be in the national title conversation? When is it out turn to win a conference title? It hasn't happened since 1999.
The expectations of the current players are what they are because that's the tone set by the coaching staff. Bo is unapologetic after big losses, he does not accept blame & loudly states that if they don't like it they can fire him. I believe that's because in his mind he believes constant 9 win seasons regardless of what does or doesn't happen in the other 3 or 4 games played every year should be enough. In his mind if people aren't happy with that then he doesn't care.
That's the impression I get. To me this indicates he doesn't plan on changing anything. If he doesn't plan on changing then we're going to keep getting the same results. The definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over & over expecting different results. I believe that's the problem with Bo. He's fine with 9 wins, no rings & the same teams that have beaten us in the past doing the same things they did to beat us in the past again this year & seemingly every year.
We have gone from physically imposing our will on opponents, to at times having other teams impose their will on us. I've been asked several times what Nebraska's biggest win is in recent memory. The best I could come up with was beating an 8-4 Georgia team last year & beating Oklahoma in 2009 (who ended up 8-5). Bo has 7 career wins vs ranked teams.
The 1994 Nebraska team beat 5 ranked teams on their way to the national title. I struggle justifying a defensive head coach whose teams more often than not are better at offense than they are at defense. I don't care if announcers on national TV say that 9 wins is the new normal at Nebraska & that's all we can expect now. They don't care about Nebraska. It doesn't matter to them if we go 9-3 or 3-9. I've heard people say & I've said it myself,
#TomOsborne struggled for a while to win big games before he finally broke through. That's correct, but I don't ever remember watching multiple Husker games under Osborne & being embarrassed. I remember multiple frustrations, but not multiple embarrassments like I do with Pelini. There was also never any question about how Osborne conducted himself. I am not bashing Bo whatsoever. Like I said up until the last Wisconsin game I firmly had his back. I loved when I had the opportunity to play for Bo & enjoyed it immensely. He taught me a lot. However, since Wisconsin I have been on the fence about firing Bo. I am simply explaining why I think he was fired & while I did not advocate for his firing, now that it's happened I do not oppose it. Bo Pelini is unquestionably a good football coach.
The problem is Nebraska isn't a good football program, it's a great football program. Bo Pelini at the moment is a good football coach, not a great football coach. That's not to say he can't be one day. Is being good however keeping us from being great? The risk in firing a good football coach is he could be replaced by a not good football coach. The last time we fired a 9 win football coach (I will never speak ill of Callahan who I played for), the following era of Husker football was very tough. We just fired an extremely good football coach who struggles in big games & in exuding professionalism on a consistent basis. He was fired because Nebraska expects competitive greatness & class. It's a risky move. It's a move I'm conflicted about. It's a move at one time I would not have supported. It's a move I have no problem with now. as long as they already have a few good coaches in mind. I am a conservative person, but I'd rather reach for the stars than play it safe. I wish Bo Pelini all the best & I have no doubt he will be hired somewhere else quickly & will have good success there too. As far as what's next for Nebraska, I've spent most of my day reacting to the firing of a coach I once played for. But looking ahead, I've been asked who I think might be good for our next head coach. Without thinking about that a whole lot yet, 2 names popped right in my head with previous Nebraska ties. Nebraska ties are not imperative but should be taken into consideration.
The past 2 Husker head coaches I don't believed fully understood what Nebraska has been & can be once again. First is Scott Frost, former Husker national championship winning quarterback & offensive coordinator of the dynamic Oregon offense. To play devils advocate, I'm not a full believer just yet in the Oregon offense because of the way it affects the entire team. They try to run a play every 12-18 seconds, the average team takes twice that long to run a play. This forces Oregon's (possibly Nebraska's) defense to be on the field 35-40 minutes a game. That's tough if your defense is facing say, Nick Saban & Alabama for the national title. That being said, they've proven the offense is very good in Oregon & again with Chip Kelly in Philadelphia. I just haven't bought into it 100% yet. The other name in my head is Craig Bohl. I also played for Craig Bohl. He played for Nebraska in the late 70's. He was an assistant coach for the Huskers for 8 years & spent the last 3 of those years as the defensive coordinator. He was fired after the 2002 season when his defenses struggled. He took a job at North Dakota State & surprised me with the dominating dynasty he created there.
He won 3 straight national championships using the good old fashioned power running game he learned in Lincoln. He is currently the head coach at Wyoming. One last name to throw out there is Jerry Krill, the Minnesota head coach. He's beaten us 2 years in a year & had good success utilizing the power running game. He doesn't have the facilities we do & has an even tougher location to recruit to than Nebraska. I don't know much else about him, but what I do know is he turned Minnesota around & he continues to do more with less. This was lengthy because Nebraska football means so much to me.
Like I said, I was born & raised bleeding Husker red. I shed blood sweat & tears in Lincoln fulfilling my life long dream of playing football for the university of Nebraska as a Blackshirt. If someday my son ever wants to play there, I'd love it if
he followed in his father's foot steps. I want to make sure we honor Huskers of the past, proudly represent Nebraska in the present & set up the future generations of Huskers whether it be fans or players to proudly carry on the tradition of one of the greatest college football programs in the nation.
#GBR
