NU fans,
Stop fucking melting down.
You overreact like a hysteric teenage girl every time we get beat. Every other program in the country somehow manages to cope with not winning a national championship without wanting to fire everyone in sight. Except Michigan, but they're justified at this point. You, my friends, have been spoiled. And not just by our world-beater dynasty of the mid-nineties, but by our three-decade period of dominance and superiority. These past seven years have been a wake-up call, and even in
that woeful period, we played for the national championship.
I almost wish Callahan and Co. would do even WORSE, just to help lower the expectations to a realistic level. Sometimes, even great teams get blown out. Runaways happen. USC's current dynasty is an aberration, a phenomenon, something that happens once in the history of a handful of programs and not at all for the rest of them, something that happens twice to only a few select members of the handful.
Look, people. I'm only 23. I've been a fan of this team for my entire life, as far back as I can remember. I recall sitting in the living room with my assembled family when i was nine years old and watching Nebraska lose to Florida State in the Orange Bowl. I remember watching us win the national championship the following year all by myself in the living room of my mom's house in Westminster, CO because I was the only one who cared, and I remember being so excited I thought I would burst. Those were easy times to be fan.
But my childhood is over, my friends, and our collective youthful fandom is done now too. These are somewhat challenging times to be a fan. I was in middle school the last time we won a conference championship. I've sat in Memorial Stadium and watched Big XII North teams spank us on our own field. But that's nothing.
For almost as long as I've been cheering the Big Red, I've been cheering the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. And for most of the past fifteen years, they've been terrible. We had a pretty good run for a few years, capped by a Super Bowl, but we have since returned to mediocrity. And Tampa isn't even a rebuilding team. They're a declining team. The defense is old, the QB is a vet on the back end of his career, and the O-line is a shambles and has been for a long time.
Being a fan of a team that suffers builds character. Builds class. Nebraska gets called "the classiest fans in college football", but it's easy to applaud the opposing team as they leave your field after beating the 'skers when you only have to do it once every five years, or even once a year. Try doing it twice in a row, like we would've had to do if we were Michigan fans.
I've been thinking about fans enduring hard times and still loving their team and cheering enthusiastically, and I've been thinking: what if it got really bad? What if Nebraska were Baylor? What if we had to endure back-to-back 2-or-3 win seasons? Would the consecutive home sellout streak continue? How about in the event of a third such losing season? A fourth? Would everyone in the state still tune in every week if they anticipated a loss more than win, game after game?
Lately, I'm beginning to think there'd be very few of us left in the stands. I think I'd find myself in a cold and lonely place.
I'm not saying we shouldn't value excellence and greatness and performance. We should, and we do. But we also shouldn't be throwing coaches and players and staff under the bus in the name of these ideals. We're supposed to be a family here in the heartland. Whenever a family member does something foolish or makes a mistake, we don't say we should disown them. If so, my family would've kicked me out long ago. My family supports me, and I support them, and I get better, and they get better.
Maybe we jumped the gun on Frank Solich. There. It's out there. Still high on the nineties euphoria, we were like football addicts doing anything to get our winning fix, and we may have put that before tradition and family. But what's done is done, and we can't go back and change things. We've welcomed new members into our family in Callahan and Co. Tossing him out the way we tossed out Solich is just repeating the mistake we've already made.
Cornheads, we lost to the #1 team in college football, or so say the polls. That's nothing to be embarrassed of. It was a tough loss, and impossible to put a pretty face on, but that's OK. Sometimes, your team's going to lose. Get used to it. Revise your expectations.
I think a good program to use as a jumping off point is Virginia Tech. There's a team with a long-tenured coach with a solid football philosophy, a stout defense that plays with pride and heart, and passionate fans. We're like a bigger VT, bigger because college football's the only game in the state and NU is the only program, and because we've got a long and rich tradition as vaunted and epic as anyone's. But our expectations should be the same: we should be able to get to the conference championship game most years, and win it half of the time we get there. And if we've done these things, we should be in a big time bowl game. And if we have done these things AND run the table, we should be in the national championship picture and have a shot at playing to win it.
If we play in the Big XII title game, say, three out of every five years... and win that game every other time we play in it (3 out of every ten years) and one of those times we run the table (once every ten years) and get a shot at the national title.... well, I get the impression a lot of you would still be unsatisfied.
Given the regime and philosophy change, I'm willing to count last year as Callahan's Year One. He's got four years left on his contract. He's been to the CCG once already, so he needs to get us there twice more, and maybe even once more again if the North division doesn't improve. And he needs to win this conference at least once. If he can do those things, then I think he meets the "winning" requirements to be the head coach of the team I love.
But what I'm trying to get across, I guess, is that there are more important things than the "winning" requirements. I like being thought of as a classy, knowledgeable fan. Not a whiny, bitchy, pubescent, know-it-all brat child. I want to revel in our victories, and mourn our losses... and then get the fuck over them.
And I want you to, as well.
Comments (1)
College football dynasties are harder to maintain because players have at most four years to play, and as soon as they run out of eligibility (if not sooner) they are out. The best that a coach can hope for is a sequence of several successful years which lead to good recruiting classes which lead to more successful years. I think USC's recent success depends largely on Pete Carroll's good management of his players and on his ability to attract effective replacements to fill empty spots. Few coaches can command that kind of respect and skill in recruiting. And it usually takes a good coach five years to be able to attract the kind of players he truly wants.
The advantage Nebraska has is that its program has a longstanding good reputation. That will, in the long term, do much to help the coach recruit players. I mean, in the Big XII there are only a couple of programs that have the national reputation of Nebraska. You think someone would actually choose Baylor over NU? (I say that as a Baylor alum, too.)
I saw most of the USC-NU game. I thought Nebraska put up a good fight. USC is just plain scary sometimes. I'll be curious to see if your #1 pick (LSU) proves to be USC's match during the season. Maybe the two would end up unbeaten and facing each other for the national championship? I'm sure it would be quite a game.