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....
New Haven, Conn. – The Walter Camp Football Foundation has announced its Football Bowl Subdivision National Offensive and Defensive Players of the Week for games ending October 23.
