The Moaning of Life

This was a hell of a season, definitely. Some wild wins, and a lot of the coolest plays and finishes all in one season.

It was also a season in which we played neither Ohio State nor Wisconsin, but still lost four regular season games. The offense that was billed as putting up 60 points a game saw that promise extinguished in a UCLA meltdown at home. The defense's vulnerability was a shocking revelation, although by season's end it had started really turning the corner. It's exciting, but we can all hope for (finally) a defense in 2014 that looks like a Nebraska defense again.

I don't think we were lacking in our appreciation of the good. But bitter tastes have a tendency to overpower, and there was plenty of that, too.

And how much can you knock the fans for not going nuts over a 9-4 season? In this program's heyday, a quarterback and running back(s?) were lost and that's better known today as the Greatest Season in College Football History. Nowadays as we try collectively to make sense of the Bo Pelini era as it's happening, the debate is on over whether Bo just doesn't run that good a show, or if there are X, Y, and Z perfectly legitimate reasons for this particular lack of a conference championship.

There's a lot of contention now, and that's on the staff. They've made their critics out to be not only enemies, but powerful ones. Biff the Blogger, mustachioed parents' basement-dwellers, "Honestly, who has a good relationship with the fans?", and so on. Bo is fighting a fight that doesn't need fighting, and it is clearly draining, for everybody. When Tom Osborne said that the fanbase is the program's biggest asset, I don't think chastising fans for following "18-to-21 year old kids" was what he had in mind. It's maddening to watch, because appealing to the NU fanbase is literally the easiest thing in the world to do. Less than 140 characters required.

 
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As someone who comes from Minnesota and wasnt a husker fan during the hay-day... All i know is Husker football from 2007 to present.

I saw the gopher hockey team win a hockey nat' champ in '01 and nothing since... so i am use to losing, so with the Huskers that isnt much different than what i grew up.

I can understand why Husker fans want more, but lets be honest, we probably wont win a Nat Champ no matter who our coach is... at the end of the day, we better get use to being a team that is around 15-25 in the polls, competes near the top half of the B1G, but loses 3+ games a year.

This can change when guys like Suh/David/Dennard/Prince walk through the door, but these will need to be underrated kids that we teach up or just were under-looked. We arent going to have a top 5 recruiting class, so we need to get better with the talent we have.

I for one think this season belongs in the "bad column" but that was not because we lost but how we lost and what followed it. Bo needs to get better with the media..

That all being said.. i have very high hopes for next season. Lets running the flippin' ball. Lets get in the QB's face, and lets try and be more positive as a fan base... go to the games.. get loud.. support the team, and you never know, something magical could happen...and by magical.. i mean two losses and a trip to the rose bowl(or whatever bowl the B1G winner plays in)... but dont expect a Nat' champ.

 
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I can't speak for others but it seems natural to me to focus more on the things that can improve than to compliment the things that may have went well. It's not that I don't enjoy or appreciate the good things but when something goes well, it seems like that should be the desired outcome and therefore somewhat expected. The coaches and players sure don't practice to fail. Alternately, when there are deficiencies or things that don't go right, there are numerous opportunities to comment on what went wrong, how, and why. I think most coaches, including Pelini, tend to approach the game in the same way. They are constantly focused on what can improve and tend to skim over the successes. I guess maybe I, and apparently quite a few others on HB, just aren't big rah rah types.

For example, I loved the hail mary and numerous other events this season, but what can a guy come say about them on an internet message board that goes beyond saying you liked it? Good plays and positives just aren't as conducive to discussion as areas for improvement imo.

 
The stuff you guys are talking about; the meltdowns, disappointments, whining and even reactionary threads like these are normal for sports forums. Pick a school, any school, visit their forums and you wll see these exact same things. It's to be expected and doesn't reveal any flaw unique to HB.

Now your offline fabase is different. Much of it is spoiled and suffering from past success. I agree with Minnesota Husker in that Nebraska fans need to accept the state of their program, the landscape of CFB and their likely future. A 90's type run is probably never going to happen again. There are many reasons...the coaching, the conference, demographics, no more partial qualiers...that's a whole separate thread. I'm of the thinking that if we're going to see runs like that again it's going to be teams south of the MD line with great coaching, a ton of luck and probably a fair bit of rule bending.

Nebraska is still a strong program and should be in the top half of their conference competing for championships every year...and they have been. You guys could even win a National Championship again if things work out well but the expectations, the "every year should be our year", "we will get a heisman, CC, NC this year for sure", the "we should dominate every opponent ever" mentality has to go for you all to be happy and really enjoy your team as what they are; young men representing your school/state in a game.

I say that with the hope that you will never change because it makes for some great entertainment. The RB and "B1G welcome to Nebraksa football" talk at the opening of the 2011 season made that first NU-UW game so sweet and it's just another example of my point about expectations and respect. If you have reasonable expectations and a healthy respect those losses to the Minnesotas, Iowas and Wisconsins of the world would hurt a lot less and if your team had them then the losses might not happen in the first place.

I don't know, I just find it funny. Wisconsin fans who remember pre-Alvarez and younger Husker fans have a lot in common as far as appreciating what highpoints their teams reach each season while the younger "new-to-winning" Badger fans you guys love to whine about and Osborne-era Husker fans share a similar brand of arrogance.

 
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You make some good points Bucky. I am somewhat spoiled and would like to be arrogant about Husker football again. I'm realistic and know the 90's are over and likely to never be duplicated. But when a team routinely plays two of four quarters, I'm gonna b!^@h about it. When they turn the ball over five times in a game, hose types of problems will dominate the discussion. Don't mistake that for being unhappy. It really is a form of eternal optimism to dwell on the possibility of things being better. The day I accept mediocrity (or if that term is too offensive to some, merely above average) is the day I'll quit caring at all.

 
I think what you're seeing is the fan base sliding into apathy. At least with Callahan we were (1) united in our disdain and (2) could laugh at the situation.

With Pelini, there's a good number of us who know he's not going to bring a championship to Nebraska, but also know that we're stuck with his mediocrity for the foreseeable future. Those of us that aren't completely apathetic have to grumble about our circumstances to make ourselves feel better.

 
Now your offline fabase is different. Much of it is spoiled and suffering from past success. I agree with Minnesota Husker in that Nebraska fans need to accept the state of their program, the landscape of CFB and their likely future. A 90's type run is probably never going to happen again. There are many reasons...the coaching, the conference, demographics, no more partial qualiers...that's a whole separate thread. (...) I'm of the thinking that if we're going to see runs like that again it's going to be teams south of the MD line with great coaching, a ton of luck and probably a fair bit of rule bending.
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Stanford? Ohio State? It can happen at Nebraska, but first you have to try for it. Get a first-class coach here, for starters. I would've loved to see Tressel come in and try his hand.

I don't totally mean to sound mean, but with all due respect to Wisconsin's recent considerable success, Nebraska standards are Nebraska standards.

 
What really rustles my jimmies is how you Instagram/Tweeter people ran Callahan out of town after four years. HELLO! IT TOOK DR TOM 22 YEARS to win the title. AT LEAST GIVE CALLAHAN 20. And yall think your better cuz you use line breaks and such, well guess what IN MY DAY THEY DIDNT HAVE LINE BREAKS! We walked uphill to school both ways, gave it to our wives hard and RAN THROUGH BRICK WALLS. So be happy with 9 wins or go root for an $EC team of thugs and felons.

 
I think most on here only look at wins and losses, lack respect for most other teams, tend to follow blindly. This season had a lot of positives for this program. We lost a great Husker for the season, but we saw a new QB actually get meaningful snaps during the season. Had Taylor not been hurt, I do not believe that would have happened. We saw a defense improve and give us hope for the future. We lost tough games to Iowa and Minnesota, but on those days, in brutal honesty, they were the better team. We played a good game against a major player in the SEC and won. Most do not beat the SEC in that level of a game.

Should everyone be happy? Doubtful that will ever happen. But we saw improvement, we saw young players step up and play the game as a team. That is important. Like Bucky says, most on this board do seem spoiled. Expect too much. For this program in this day and age our goals should be becoming a top ten program. MNC's take a lot of luck. I have never been a Pelini fan, but he does good things, is a good person I think, and do believe we could do much worse.

But I agree with Zoogies, I would love to see this program with an elite coach and a highly qualified staff. With the administration fully behind him in every aspect. I do not believe that is where we are at this point, and feel it is nearly impossible for it to ever be.

In honesty I feel better about this season's results than last years. We won games last year that we absolutely did not deserve to. Maybe one this year with Northwestern. And I am very happy with the win over Georgia.

 
Perhaps the fanbase is in a funk because so many of us got to see what we have been asking for the last couple of years.

1. The backups got to play meaningful minutes this year at many positions, especially QB.

2. The defense had players fast enough to fly to the ball. It just took 6 games to figure out where to fly to.

3. Two of the most incredible pass plays in Husker history.

4. A win over an SEC team in a bowl game.

If we had been told at the start of the season that all these wishes would come true we'd have been very happy. Careful what you wish for because it might come true in unusual ways

 
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