LINCOLN — Niles Paul’s rough time didn’t end Saturday when the Nebraska receiver walked off the field after the Huskers’ 20-13 loss to Texas.
Reminders of what NU football means to some fans followed him into the night.
Paul said Tuesday that a few people said things to him as he left Memorial Stadium with family and later as he was getting something to eat at a Wendy’s. Nearly 20 people left unwanted messages on his Facebook page before he deactivated his account.
“It hurts,” Paul said. “It hurts when I’m walking back to the car and people are yelling stuff at me. It’s disrespectful.”
Paul said he tried to keep his family calm, especially his older brothers, rather than react to what they were hearing.
“It was just a couple people, just yelling stuff at me from afar, from a distance,” he said. “Just stuff like, ‘You suck,’ and, ‘You lost us the game,’ and, ‘Texas can have you,’ or whatever.”
Paul seemed more bothered by the Facebook content.
“A lot of people wrote the worst stuff they could possibly put on there about a college football player, a human being,” Paul said. “It was getting real personal.”
No stranger to criticism, Paul said it was different this time, “never to this extent.” NU coach Bo Pelini said the two talked about it Sunday, and he’s convinced that Paul will respond to it the right way.
“I told him, ‘Don’t believe it when they’re saying good things about you, don’t believe it when they’re saying bad things — the truth is somewhere in between,’ ” Pelini said. “All you’ve got to worry about is the things you can control, and that’s one of the things you can.”
Asked if he found it disturbing, Pelini pointed out that it’s usually a small minority doing it. It happened to him, he said, as he left the field Saturday night.
“I mean, believe me, I get the same thing,” Pelini said. “We all get it. It’s part of the deal. It goes with the territory. You try to educate them that you can’t let that stuff affect you.”
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NU teammate Brandon Kinnie said he told Paul to ignore it, but Kinnie said he could see how that would be easier said than done for the senior from Omaha.
ReplyDelete“I told him, ‘You’re a good guy for dealing with stuff like that,’ because I don’t know how I would have handled something like that,” Kinnie said. “It’s hard and it’s tough, especially being from somewhere that you’re from, born and raised.”
NU senior Mike McNeill said after practice Tuesday that it’s common for fans to infiltrate Facebook pages. McNeill said he used to just accept all “friend” requests, but then started being selective if it was somebody he didn’t know.
Still, anybody could send him a private message — and McNeill referenced times that Missouri fans would do so before Husker-Tiger games because he was from St. Louis.
“You’ve just got to block it out,” he said.
As for Saturday, Paul said he would own up to as many dropped passes as fans thought that he had vs. Texas. The Huskers totaled as many as eight, depending on what would be classified as a drop.
One of the most costly for Paul was on a third-and-4 crossing route from the Texas 11-yard line late in the third quarter, which could have been a touchdown to pull NU within 20-10.
“I’m extremely frustrated with myself, just knowing that I can make those catches and I’ve been doing it,” said Paul, No. 9 on the Huskers’ all-time chart with 81 receptions. “I’ve proven myself worthy of making those catches, and then we get to a game like that and it doesn’t happen.
“You have to look yourself in the mirror, man up to your mistakes and focus on how to get it fixed.”
Paul’s bid for redemption starts Saturday at Oklahoma State. And it comes with the chance of feeling a little more comfortable than he might be in Lincoln.
“When you’re at home, there’s a lot of pressure on you,” he said. “And if you make a mistake, the crowd is definitely going to let you know.”