If you don't care what I think about this year's Nebraska football team, that's OK. You can stop reading now. I've tried not to write about the Huskers, but I cover sports for a living. So, I'll bow to the peer pressure.
As always, especially in the fall, Husker football leads every day's sportscast in Nebraska. Everything from who's been demoted to who's thinking about possibly coming to the U seems to be important.
And every day, it seems, we hear about this losing streak we're on. We hear platitudes about how it's always darkest before dawn. The sports broadcasters go on about how we're still trying to get over the previous coaching staffs and their recruiting.
Enough already!
Here's my take, for what it's worth.
I'm a Husker fan. I have been all my life. I probably will be until I die. I don't like losing. I don't like it when my team loses. But we Husker fans have been spoiled, you know. Most of us don't remember the lean years before Bob Devaney became the coach. The first games we really remember are in the 1970s when Nebraska was starting to be good. In the 1980s we were pretty good, and in the 1990s, we were awesome. We started to falter in the 2000s, and now we're at the bottom of the wheel.
But here's a news flash, people. The wheel is round, and what's at the bottom will eventually come back to the top. We needed to learn how to be good losers, I think. We're so used to winning we've forgotten how to lose. It's all part of the cycle.
I think, though, we have the right people in place to ride the wheel back to the top. It will take time, as we're being told. We have to give them time to get their system in place and bring in the athletes who can fit that system. It's not an instant fix, and that's hard to comprehend in this instant gratification society. So we have to be patient. As we've seen, the first games won't go well. Personnel will change. Challenges will be issued, and people will step up or not.
I think previous staffs lost track of the heart and soul of Nebraska football - the kids from Nebraska. They were so caught up in the hype of star recruits that they missed the heart recruits. It really doesn't matter how good someone was in high school, you know. You were probably a big fish in a small pond. And when you get to college, you're one of many similarly sized fish now in the same pond. That takes some getting used to, and if you're not passionate about the school you're playing for, it's easy to bail out.
The home-state kids, though, would give almost anything to wear that helmet. They're willing to take a smaller role or a more specialized role, anything to be able to say they're a Husker. They've dreamed about that their whole lives, you know. I think if more Nebraska boys find their way onto the roster (and I hope that happens), you'll see more passionate football. You'll see more effort, more enthusiasm and more excitement.
But it'll take time. And in the meantime, can we stop dwelling on the losses and look at the positives? The offense is showing flashes of how it could be, and the defense has made some good plays. There are certainly places that need a lot of work, but they'll improve. Don't ask me for a timeline, though. That's a Scott Frost question.
