Nebraska Hate Week

This week the ‘Canes play their first real opponent of the season as the Nebraska Cornhuskers come to town.

Like  I said last year, this is the Green Bay of college football. Small town, big crowds, the beauty of rural America, “doing things the right way”, etc.

All of which is really just code for “this place is a frozen shithole, no one lives here unless they are trapped by circumstances or Warren Buffett, might as well go to the football game”.

Much like Miami, this program is coasting on accomplishments from over a decade ago and being a name brand.

If Miami wins this game, which it should, a bunch of people are going to call it a signature win for Al Golden. Which actually makes me angrier than anything about Nebraska itself.

Let’s get one thing straight: Nebraska sucks. They lost their 2 best players to the draft in Ameer Abdullah and Randy Gregory. They lost their most explosive player to a season ending injury in August. Their QB, Tommy Armstrong, is a runner that the Huskers coaching staff is trying to make into a pocket passer, because that always works.

Speaking of the coaching staff…Nebraska has a new coach this season. Despite going 9-4 pretty every year for like 157 straight years, Nebraska fired Bo Pelini.

One of Pelini’s 9 wins last season was an absolute demolition of the ‘Canes in which Nebraska ran on 33 of their final 36 plays, finishing with 343 yards on the ground for the evening (averaging 6.5 yards per carry, no less).

Nebraska essentially too out a megaphone and announced to the world before every play “we’re running it up the middle”….and you know what Miami did? This is probably shocking, but Al Golden didn’t adapt. He kept playing his defense deep because he was, and I’m paraphrasing here, “afraid of getting beat deep”. By the team that ran the ball on 90+% of its plays.

Can’t make this stuff up.

After the season, Nebraska fired the Real Bo Pelini (not to be confused with @FauxBoPelini, who has also taken his legendary performance to Youngstown State) and hired Mike Riley, the Webster definition of a generic football coach.

That’s right, Nebraska finished 9-4 but determined that they weren’t happy with the forward progress being shown, so they shitcanned the coach. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Nebraska enters the game 1-1, with a loss on a Hail Mary to BYU and a win against some crappy team whose name I forget and I’m too lazy to look up right now.

I can already see how this game is going to play out.

Nebraska WILL run the ball a gazillion times, while Miami stays in its shell.

Miami WILL blow this game in the second half.

Al Golden WILL say that it’s early, and we are still recovering from the guys we lost to the NFL last year--which will be ironic given the game in question—and that the injuries to Darrion Owens and Braxton Berrios have really made an impact.

If this post feels “blah”, it’s because that’s how I feel about this game. I don’t hate Nebraska, but I do hate what they represent: a paper tiger, a straw man, a windmill that Al Golden will tilt at and lose.

They are a smoldering mediocrity, and yet they are a smoldering mediocrity that still expects greatness, unlike our administration.

I was talking to my brother earlier and asked him "why should I hate Nebraska?"

His answer: "the self loathing stemming from the inevitability of them winning."

Nailed it.