By Matt Zimmer
I really dislike the Nebraska Cornhuskers.
I always have. It was sort of a rite of passage in my family, to root against the Huskers on Saturdays, but then a friend of the family started taking us to games and certain people in the family were converted.
I was not.
I didn't like the boring red jerseys, and the even boringer white helmets with the tiny 'N' on the side.
I didn't like Tom Osborne. It's nothing personal, I just have a general disdain for sacred cows. It's fairly certain that by saying I dislike Tom Osborne, I'll get some hate mail from conservative folks who will equate such a statement to Godlessness or a general evil, but the fact is, I just think it's silly that the guy is treated like royalty in that state and among followers of the team. He's just a football coach. A football coach who recruited Lawrence Phillips. And Jason Peter. And Mark Vedral. And Shevin Wiggins.
It's not Osborne I dislike, really, it's the idea that he is unimpeachable that I dislike.
I dislike the way the Huskers play football. They are, and always have been, a boring football team, running a boring offense that is more similar to what you would see in high school football than what you'd see in the NFL.
They won with it in the 80s and 90s, but Osborne wisely got out when the speed and athleticism of the SEC got to the point that you could no longer win a national championship by running the I-formation behind a big offensive line. The Huskers didn't begin fading as a program because of Osborne's retirement, the rest of the nation simply passed them by.
Bill Callahan was a failure as the Huskers coach, and most of his ideas were, in hindsight, terrible, but I do think he was onto something in trying to drag the Nebraska offense into the 21st century. He just wasn't a good enough coach to do that succesfully.
I dislike the whole "blackshirts" thing. It's stupid. It's just a nickname for their defense. Whether it's good or bad. Guess what? Every team that plays football has a defense. You should have to do something special to have a nickname (at least, something more special than wear black shirts in practice). It would be one thing if they played some unique style of defense, or were known for inventing some kind of widely-used scheme, but nope, it's just another name for their defense. Their plain-old, regular-ass defense.
If you're a Husker fan reading this and you're getting ornery, think of it this way: It'd be pretty damn annoying if every other football team went around calling their defense the yellowshirts, or whiteshirts, or purpleshirts, or whatever, wouldn't it? There is nothing anymore special about the Husker defense than anyone else's, so the nickname is freakin' dumb.
The reason the Huskers (and their fans) are so annoying, is because it's the only team in the entire state.
Nebraska has no major pro sports teams, and, because it's - depending on where you are in the state - roughly the same distance away from Minneapolis, Kansas City, St. Louis, and Denver, there is no consensus team or teams that they adopt, in the way that the Dakotas - at least on the east side of the states, have largely adopted the Twins and to a lesser extent, the Vikings.
The University of Nebraska is the only Division I school in the state and it always has been. Nebraska-Omaha, Nebraska-Kearney, Wayne State and the numerous private schools in the GPAC, have their share of fans, but because they're at a lower level, their fans are ALSO Husker fans.
This means that the Nebraska football team is, to put it somewhat crudely but not incorrectly, the one and only team for the people of the state.
And to an outsider, that is annoying. I'm not saying it's wrong - it isn't. I'm generally of the opinion that if you are a true sports fan, you root for the team that is your default home team. If you don't, you'd better have a really good reason.
But when you get that many like-minded people together, all agreeing on the fact that the country would be a better place if Tom Osborne were president, and all (giggle) saying with a serious face that this year's team is going to win a national championship, all while wearing ugly red shirts that are two sizes too small, well, it's enough to make you really want them to fail.
More Hate continued in the comments section....
So, with that as your backdrop, yeah, I really wanted the Jacks to win. Believe it or not, I think Stu did, too.
ReplyDeleteYeah, we're supposed to be impartial, and, for writing purposes, we were. But after seeing the Jacks play Minnesota to within three points last year, and USD beat them this year, it was kind of obnoxious as a South Dakotan to see the Nebraska media (and those annoying fans) predicting a 58-0 win or thereabouts.
And I'll be honest. I fell victim to it, too. The Jacks were unimpressive in their first two FCS games. The Huskers had gone on the road to destroy a Washington team that boasted one of the most highly-touted quarterbacks in the nation. In my live chat last Tuesday, I predicted a 42-14 Nebraska win, but, to be honest, I had previously thought SDSU would play the Huskers closer than that (I realize this is an after-the-fact statement, so feel free not to believe me).
But no one associated with SDSU seemed to have any confidence going in, so I figured, well, I guess it really is gonna be that bad.
But it wasn't. The Jacks played hard and they played well, and they exposed the Huskers as a pretender as far as the national title conversation.
Bo Pelini? Please. Getting back to why I hate Nebraska, there seems to be a perception among Husker fans that Pelini, because of his prior ties to the program, is going to right the wrongs that Callahan brought to the program, and bring back the glory days.
Good luck with that. It ain't gonna happen. Those days are over. Get a grip on reality and deal with it.
That was apparent this week. Pelini practically insulted the Jacks when Terry asked him about his knowledge of the SDSU program during a conference call last week and he admitted to having almost no awareness of the history of the program, and it was fairly obvious that the "we won't have a let down" talk throughout the week was a bunch of wooden PR.
The Huskers weren't ready to play, and, worse, were unable to make adjustments at halftime after an underwhelming first half. The poor first half was forgiveable, the inability to get things straightened out and put the game away in the second was not.
Luke Meadows' dubious 4th and goal call (Really? You've got an overmatched offensive line and a slowish running back and on 4th and a yard you're going to run the option out of the wildcat? By doing that, you're asking the Jacks' O-line to completely blow the Huskers off the ball, and give Minett at least two seconds, almost three. Never gonna happen. Bad play call) notwithstanding, the Jacks outcoached the Huskers, which has pretty much become standard when one of the South Dakota teams plays up (see DeBoer-Morrell vs. UND, Meierkort, Beschoerner vs. Minnesota).
But it wasn't just the coaching. I suggested in my live chat of the game that SDSU take a similar approach to the one USF used to beat UND - that they not bother trying to win on the line of scrimmage, and use the short passing game and misdirection to keep the Huskers off-balance.
But as it turned out, SDSU was good enough to compete on the LOS. The Jacks competed in the trenches the whole game, and Kyle Minett was a beast. The fact that he lost yards only once in 28 carries was maybe the most impressive stat of the game in my mind. The Jacks didn't juse use coaching smoke and mirrors, they PLAYED with the Huskers.
Having said all that, the Jacks never truly threatened to win the game, though it would've been a little more interesting if the refs hadn't thrown Nebraska a bone by calling back Derek Domino's interception return.
I can see why the Jacks don't want to get too caught up in moral victory discussions. They should hold themselves to a higher standard than that.
I'm just happy they showed what all of us non-delusional not-Big Red Dorks already know: That the Huskers are not going to win a national championship this year or probably anytime soon.