Corn Nation

Oh ok

Thanks for clarifying

MrCollegeFtbll83 - January 5, 2012 reply

7-5 next year?

How do you figure that?

That’s a very pessimistic viewpoint. At the beginning of this season I saw some of that very same pessimism that predicted 7-5 or worse. We went 9-3 (yes, I’m not counting the bowl game in this year’s record because you aren’t in your prediction either).

So, you want to play the what if game? “If Braxton Miller didn’t get hurt, we would have lost to Ohio State.” Then it’s just as fair to say if Rex Burkhead hadn’t had a rare fumble near the goal line we probably would have beaten Northwestern. If you play the “what-if” game, we still could have gone 9-3 during the regular season.

It’s not hard to imagine being we’ve lost to Iowa State and Northwestern over the last few seasons

First of all, the Iowa State loss was three years ago now. Secondly, every team gets beat by a “lesser” program from time to time. Oklahoma State lost to Iowa State this year, should they fire Mike Gundy? Oklahoma lost to Texas Tech, a team that didn’t even make a bowl game. Iowa lost to Minnesota. Michigan lost to Iowa. Two years ago when Jim Tressel was still at Ohio State and they were still dominant, they lost to Purdue. The almighty Tom Osborne even lost to Iowa State when he had Tommie Frazier at quarterback! Do I need to go on? That is just how college football works. I understand that it’s frustrating to lose those games from time to time, but this isn’t 1995 anymore and probably never will be. Those “lesser” programs are a lot more competitive now than they were back in the day. Besides, hate on Iowa State and Northwestern all you want, but those schools are known for pulling off upsets under their current coaches from time to time.

I see what you’re saying about scheduling being 13 to 14 games, but if you want to say that 9 wins is less important now than it was then, let’s be real….the Big 8 was a walk in the park compared to what we face now. Most seasons the ONLY tough game on the schedule was Oklahoma. Now we have 4 or 5 tough games per year, and then if you do well you have to face another really tough team in your conference championship. Then there’s the bowl game, which is a wildcard. In fact, one could even argue that it’s even harder to get 9 wins now than it was then. Sure, Tom Osborne won a higher percentage of his games, but seriously…do you think that the schedule he faced back then was nearly as tough as what we face now? I’m not at all trying to diminish what he did, because he is a legend…I’m just saying that winning 9 games on this year’s schedule was good, not great, but good.

You’re right though, time will tell. But I think that you need to step back and be a little bit more realistic. Obviously it’s great to want a program that can compete for the national championship every year, but if you expect it to the point where you fire a first time head coach for winning at least 9 games every season, then you clearly missed that college football has changed a lot since the mid 90’s. Sure, we look around and there are teams like Oregon, Oklahoma, and Alabama that seem to be competing for the national title every year. But don’t forget that Oregon’s run is very recent, the past three years or so, Oklahoma went 7-5 two years ago, and Alabama was mostly irrelevant from the early 90’s until Nick Saban came to town.

For most programs, they spend a short time in the spotlight followed by a lot of time out of it. Very few programs can say that 9 wins is a “disappointing year.” Think of how happy we were to get 9 wins with Callahan ONE season. Remember two years ago when Florida and Texas were top 5 teams dominating their conferences? I bet they’d love to have 9 wins right about now.

You have to accept that Bill Callahan almost destroyed Husker football as we know it, and now we have a young, fiery coach who has brought us at least 9 wins a year for 4 seasons. We are waiting for our time to shine once again, and Pelini brought us right back to the edge of turning the corner, and just as it was during the Osborne era, one of these years everything will be right and Husker football will truly be back.

Billgrip - January 5, 2012 reply

And my response...

By the way your grammar is definitely pardoned :)

The pain of that Texas game from last year lives on. You’re right, we definitely shouldn’t have lost that game. But in my opinion, that game should not be clumped with Iowa State and Northwestern’s losses. The reason is because even though they went 5-7, they still had one of the most talented teams in the country. The problem was that hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard, and they clearly never learned to play as a team. However, all they had heard about since the Big 12 championship the year before was about how Nebraska wanted revenge. They saw the wear red, be loud, beat Texas video. They read the article. They got to memorial stadium and saw 86,000 people who passionately wanted them to lose. That day, they played as a team, and they played to their level of talent. Our guys couldn’t handle the pressure they had put on themselves to win that game, and they came out too emotionally charged to play well. That led to costly mistakes and ultimately a loss.

It was a team that was more talented than us that came together for one game while our guys fell apart. The perfect storm. The Iowa State/Northwestern losses on the other hand…well those are teams that we are more talented then and we should definitely beat. But as I mentioned above, everyone loses to teams like that from time to time in today’s college football world.

Next- Nick Saban. You are comparing apples to oranges by comparing Saban’s body of work at Alabama to Pelini at Nebraska. Nick Saban had been a head coach Toledo, Michigan State, LSU, the Miami Dolphins and THEN Alabama.

Here’s a more apt comparison of Pelini and Saban. This is Pelini’s first head coaching job. He took over a team that had just gone 5-7 and has gone 9-4, 10-4, 10-4, and 9-4, with two conference championship appearances that were very close, competitive losses. For Saban, we won’t count his first year at Toledo because…well it’s Toledo. His first job at a major division 1 program was at Michigan State. Saban’s first four years as a head coach at a major division 1 school (Michigan State), he took over a 5-6 team and went 6-5, 6-6, 7-5, and 6-6. No conference championships, and 3 blowout bowl losses. Hmmm…that doesn’t look like a lot of progress was being made there. Some people probably wanted him fired after going 6-6 in the 4th year. The thing is though, the next season he went 9-2 and then resigned and took a better job at LSU, where he won a national championship 4 seasons later after 10 years of head coaching experience.

My point is that a lot of the great coaches weren’t always great coaches, and championships came after a lot of growing and learning as a head coach through non-championship seasons. Exhibit A, Tom Osborne. Of course, it’s easy to look out there and see some programs have overnight success, but usually it’s too good to be true. The first name that comes to mind is Bob Stoops. He is a great coach, and I bet a lot of fans around here who are skeptical about Pelini would love to have him. But here’s the funny thing- the grass isn’t greener on the other side. “Big Game Bob” came in and won a national championship in two seasons. But guess what? He hasn’t won a national championship ever since. Oklahoma fans don’t even care about conference title games anymore, they just want national championships. Almost every year since they’ve had a chance and they’ve always disappointed. Now some Oklahoma fans want to get rid of Bob because they think he isn’t good enough for them. To us, that seems ridiculous. Bob wins 10, 11, sometimes 12 games almost every year. They are almost always in the preseason top 5. They have won 7 Big 12 titles in the past decade. But as I said, it’s not good enough for them. If only they could see the bigger picture…if only they realized what they have there.

That’s one example of quick success that has been too good to be true in the long run (at least for Oklahoma fans). Here’s an even better one- Gene Chizik. Auburn may have won a national title in his second year, but that was sandwiched between two 8-5 years, preceeded with a miserable 5-19 two year stint at Iowa State. Sure, Chizik has a national championship, but was that because he is a good coach, or was it luck that Cam Newton went to Auburn. I think it’s the latter. Now they just have a mediocre coach who happened to win a national championship and they will likely be just as irrelevant as they were before. And let’s say the NCAA finds out they did violate NCAA rules with Cam Netwon, and 5 years down the road they have to forfeit their national championship. Then they are left with nothing. So is it worth it for them to have a questionable national title with an unlimited amount of years of irrelevancy surrounding it? I think not.

I would say it’s much better to be a relevant team that at least has a potential of winning championships every year than to be the team that won a championship at some point in the past and has done nothing since. If you are a team that’s on the brink, you’ll keep watching…it will be worth it for you to get excited every fall because you know that this year could be THE YEAR. If you’re Auburn, you had your year, and now the best you can hope for is to win 8 or 9 games.

Sometimes you have to look at the bigger picture. A team that’s in a major conference and wins 9 or 10 games a year will always be relevant. Sure, we might not always be in the national title race, but over the past two seasons (especially last year), we spent multiple weeks in the top 10 and we were in the discussion as an outside shot. We were the favorite to win the Big 10 in our first season in the league.

Look, I’m not satisfied with a 9 win season, and I’d love to see the Huskers playing for a national title just as much you. Our fan base expects a lot. We are the same fan base that wanted to fire Tom for not winning the big one. We are just like the Oklahoma fans who are unsatisfied when they don’t win the national title. And despite what Bo said after the Iowa game, I’d bet everything that he wants to win a championship at Nebraska more than you and I or anyone else that supports his team.

We all have questions, and we all have our arm-chair QB opinions. When will he learn to behave better on the sidelines? When will his teams stop having so many penalties? When will we turn the corner and win a championship? No one knows the answer to those questions, and if we did what fun would it be to watch? The fact is that right now we have a team that is on the edge of winning championships, but they are relevant. College football is more balanced and competitive than ever before, and it’s tough for teams to maintain success for more than a few years (see Texas, Florida, Kansas in 2007, ect.) We have a young coach who is still growing and learning, and though he hasn’t brought us the type of success that we all want (championships), he has brought us back our tradition, pride, and consistency. We are one of only 7 teams to have won 9 or more games each of the past 4 seasons. It’s not a championship, but it is consistency and relevance, and in the long run those two things are just as important as championships. Championships without consistency and relevance are nothing more than a fluky, temporary high. The Colorado Buffalo fanbase was built on that, yuck! Our proud fan base was built on decades of consistency and relevance, years and years of people watching the Huskers because this year could be the the year that they could break through. If you step back and look at the bigger picture, it’s easy to see that he’s doing well. Bo deserves more time and more support from fans. When Bo got hired we were all starving for consistency and relevance, and Bo has delievered that with 4 seasons of at least 9 wins. Now we are hungry for a championship, and I’m confident Bo will deliver that to.

As for the 7-5 season next year…there’s always reasons why “x-team” could potentially beat us during the non conference games, but the numbers are strongly in our favor. Bo is 14-2 in non-conference games at Nebraska (excluding bowls). Obviously, every team has a shot, and that goes back to my point about college football being a lot more competitive and balanced than ever. Next year we do have a couple opponents coming off good seasons, but one is from C-USA and the other is from the Sun-belt. 8-0 in the Sun-belt is 2-6 in any other conference. I’m not saying they can’t beat us, but both Southern Miss and Arkansas State have new coaches, and I know that Southern Miss was an extremely senior laden team and will have inexperience all over the field next year. As for UCLA….they just lost to Illinois and were the first team ever to make a bowl game with a losing record. Jim Mora went 31-33 in the NFL, so there’s really no evidence to lead me to believe he will be successful at UCLA. The good news is that we’ll probably win at least one game at the Rose Bowl next year!

In conference play…I disagree with you a lot there, and I can go into it some other time if you want…but I think we will beat Wisconsin, Michigan State, Penn State, Minnesota, Northwestern, and Iowa with losses at Ohio State and at home to Michigan.

Billgrip - January 6, 2012 reply