Great new Husker Football Book coming out soon

Here's a little in-game "my favorite-play" story from the book by former OLineman Matt Vrzal, who now owns Piezan’s Pizzeria at 15619 West Center Road there in Omaha:

"From a personal aspect, for me it was when we were playing Arizona State and I was (Aaron) Graham’s backup. It’s second, third quarter -and I didn’t play a whole bunch, enough to say I was a player and that made me proud- but not enough to say that I really made that much of a difference, really. Well, Graham comes sprinting off the field screaming, “My helmet’s broke! My helmet’s broke!” So Coach Young sends me in the game. And we had worked this freaking play every time in practice and it was Shotgun 36 Trap. What happened was, the center snaps the ball directly to the running back and the quarterback misses it. (And I had this bad habit of launching the ball over the quarterback’s head and the running back’s head, okay?) So I’m in and Tommie doesn’t know I’m in, and he calls the play and looks down and sees it’s me and says, “Verz, you got this?” And I’m, ‘I got it.’ He goes, “I can call timeout.” And I’m like, ‘No, don’t call timeout! I’ve got it.’ So I get in my stance and I’m like, ‘Okay…’ (Now, I’ve got to keep my rear end low for this snap. You had to keep your butt low to keep the ball low.) So it looks on the field that my rear end is so low that it’s only an inch above the heals of my shoes. It looks like I’m on the toilet, and if that’s not the truth, Paul, I’ll kiss your rear end and like it. (laughs) Anyway, I snap this thing and it’s just a little bit high, but Ahman grabs it. And they blitz right into it, somehow. I took my step –really, the fastest block I’ve ever had- I pick the noseguard off and knock him into the blitzing linebacker and Ahman goes for 70-something yards for a touchdown.

And on the field, (we had to watch it on film about 800 times) but Ahman takes off and he’s going (and I had my block, and the defensive lineman is down and the linebacker’s down), and then I take off. I started chasing him. I was running and celebrating and having a great time, and we get into the endzone and I can’t believe he caught it. And later, with Coach Tenopir in the film room, he goes “Verz, you are really kind of fast! (laughs) If you look here, Ahman is ten yards ahead of you and you haven’t even started running yet. (And we watched this so many times) You’re giving him a 10 yard lead. Ahman is 20 yards ahead of you, and then you take off.” Then as the film goes on, now it’s only 18 yards, now it’s only 15 yards, now it’s only twelve yards from catching him. And he’s like “You are actually catching Ahman Green!” (laughs) Everybody is laughing and hooting and hollering. So I’m laughing, too. It was funny. Well, I get into the endzone and Coach is like, ”Now, here’s where it gets scary.” And I’m thinking, ‘Oh no,’ (because I knew what I did). So Ahman literally gets to the endzone and turns around and I’m like right there! He turns around and jumps up and I catch him. And I didn’t think he was going to jump up, and he kind of almost knocks me over.

It ended up on the cover of Huskers Illustrated that week. We beat them like 77 to 14. Then Lance Brown did that backflip. They were all mad because they thought we ran up the score. Matt Turman did his job, he checked out of an audible that he saw. Lance Brown saw it too and ran the right route, and Turman hit him on a post route and he scored. Then like a doofus Lance Brown does a backflip."

 
Here's some coaching gold about Ron Brown from former WR Aaron Davis:

"I’ve used this many times in my personal life and in the business world- I remember Ron Brown used to stand not two yards away from you and just throw that ball as hard as he could at you to catch. He would just zing it as fast and hard as he could. Anyway, when that ball was in the air and you were running and could maybe catch it, just touch it with your fingertips, there was always the saying, “When in doubt, lay out.” A lot of times in life some things seem just out of your reach and we don’t want to leave that comfort zone, but “when in doubt, lay out.”

Sometimes you’ve got to be willing to leave your feet, risk it and lay it on the line. And I think that resonates with every position coach; they constantly challenged us to get out of our comfort zones and to do things that we didn’t think we could do, push ourselves just a little bit further every practice. And you may not catch that ball, but at least you have to lunge and try. When in doubt, lay out. As a husband, a father, a businessman, sometimes you’ve got to leave your feet and go after the big one. You might miss it. And often if you do it’s because you didn’t lay out and try. That was just our mentality. We would not tolerate lack of effort. Not only that, but you’d get your head knocked off."

 
NoPlaceLikeNebraskaPKoch said:
Here's some coaching gold about Ron Brown from former WR Aaron Davis:

"I’ve used this many times in my personal life and in the business world- I remember Ron Brown used to stand not two yards away from you and just throw that ball as hard as he could at you to catch. He would just zing it as fast and hard as he could. Anyway, when that ball was in the air and you were running and could maybe catch it, just touch it with your fingertips, there was always the saying, “When in doubt, lay out.” A lot of times in life some things seem just out of your reach and we don’t want to leave that comfort zone, but “when in doubt, lay out.”

Sometimes you’ve got to be willing to leave your feet, risk it and lay it on the line. And I think that resonates with every position coach; they constantly challenged us to get out of our comfort zones and to do things that we didn’t think we could do, push ourselves just a little bit further every practice. And you may not catch that ball, but at least you have to lunge and try. When in doubt, lay out. As a husband, a father, a businessman, sometimes you’ve got to leave your feet and go after the big one. You might miss it. And often if you do it’s because you didn’t lay out and try. That was just our mentality. We would not tolerate lack of effort. Not only that, but you’d get your head knocked off."
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Coach Brown did this at a state FCA convention one year. Had a bunch of college and high school athletes in aline, along with a 6 year old boy, and whinged that football at them as hard as possible while having them run straight towards him full speed focusing on the cross of the football. That little boy never caught it and got beat up pretty good (Ron didn't let anything off), but I can only imagine the lesson he learned through all of it and through the kindness and affection displayed by coach and all the other athletes afterwards.

 
Well, things are coming along smoothly and I'm looking at a late July/early August release of my book "No Place Like Nebraska", where I pull back the curtain to those 90's Championship teams. I figured you'd appreciate my sharing some more snippets here and there, just like I have in my earlier thread titled "Great new Husker Football Book..." and even added a few funny/informational snippets yesterday if you want to go check that out.

Anyway, before leaving the office for the weekend I wanted to share some excerpts from former LB/Captain Phil Ellis talking about leadership and mindset:

"We just had great leaders. Even in ‘94 we had Terry Connealy, Ed Stewart, we had ‘em all. It starts with leading by example, and if you can follow Christian Peter through a summer you’re gonna be a better man by end of summer.

That’s why they succeeded, too, in ’97, because they still had that mentality of how to win and what it takes to win. Scott Frost? We were kicking his a$$ on scout team. But there was a mentality that was instilled in us, “This is how you do it. And if you don’t do it this way then get the hell out of our way.” That was it.

Q: In what ways was that mentality implemented? Obviously you guys put pressure on each other…

PE: It was more of a peer pressure atmosphere. The coaches just sat back and loved it. Again, once it was instilled in us through Mike Anderson and Trev Alberts and them guys? You just learned how to win, I guess. And once you start winning it’s contagious. You just challenged yourself, too.

And again, going against the number one offense -speaking from the defense’s point of view- we were literally going against the number one offense in the country, and I wasn’t kidding that Saturdays slowed down a lot. It literally was like playing with your kids. It was almost silly! It was almost silly, like, ‘Are you kidding me? You guys are Division One football teams?’ I don’t know if you’d call that cocky or what, but it was just the mentality. Look at Brenden Stai: he’s 330 and hitting them in the mouth like they’re some high school kid. I guess you don’t just learn that. (laughs) I wouldn’t do that now, but back then it was like an everyday occurrence. It was like, ‘Get the hell out of my way, I’ve got to tackle Lawrence Phillips. I’ve got to tackle Tommie.’ That’s the beauty of it, there was no green shirts, no red shirts, no padded practices."

And here he talks about meeting his new teammates as a frosh:

"(Aaron) Graham and Brook (Berringer), we were all pretty close. I was Brook’s roommate after my freshman year, that summer going into my sophomore year. That was fun.

Funny story about Aaron Graham: it was him and me and Brook and (Mark) Gilman, and we were all sitting there and didn’t know Aaron from nobody, you know? And Aaron goes, “Here, let me show you this tape.” So he pops in a tape of his high school all-star game and starts going off about how good he was and was pretty big on himself. And he looks at Gilman and he’s like, “What did you play in high school?” And Gilman was, “Quarterback.” He looks at Brook and says, “What did you play? Quarterback, too?” Brook says, “Yeah.” And Aaron goes, “Dude, you’d be like third string in Texas.” (laughs) Then he looks at me and goes, “You look like a punter.” We’ve laughed about that for years."

Finally, here Phil talks about the locker room coaching during halftimes:

"PE: Well, the one thing that really sticks out was ’95: me and Doug Colman were both hurt, both had bad ankles, and it was down in Norman and we were at halftime and beating them up like 24 to nothing, and it was the first time I’d ever heard Coach Osborne cuss. (laughs) He said, ”Dadgummit, you guys have got to be watching that tackle!” We went out right away and it was like 38 to nothing. It was funnier than hell.

Q: So he accused the defense of dogging it? He didn’t like your effort?

PE: Oh yeah, I don’t know if you were ever in there when he gave us those speeches, but when we were in a close game all the coaches were all calm and collected and, “Alright, you’re doing good,” and when we were blowing somebody out, flipping McBride was spittin’ and screaming and chewing somebody out and Osborne’s freaking out. It was like, “What the hell is going on here?” (laughs) It was hilarious."

Have a great weekend...

 
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NoPlaceLikeNebraskaPKoch said:
And again, going against the number one offense -speaking from the defense’s point of view- we were literally going against the number one offense in the country, and I wasn’t kidding that Saturdays slowed down a lot. It literally was like playing with your kids. It was almost silly! It was almost silly, like, ‘Are you kidding me? You guys are Division One football teams?’ I don’t know if you’d call that cocky or what, but it was just the mentality. Look at Brenden Stai: he’s 330 and hitting them in the mouth like they’re some high school kid. I guess you don’t just learn that. (laughs) I wouldn’t do that now, but back then it was like an everyday occurrence. It was like, ‘Get the hell out of my way, I’ve got to tackle Lawrence Phillips. I’ve got to tackle Tommie.’ That’s the beauty of it, there was no green shirts, no red shirts, no padded practices."
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My favorite part yet! LOL LOVE IT!

 
Appreciate all of this, P :)

Congrats on everything & good luck with your book sales. Hope you'll stick around also.

 
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Landlord of Memorial Stadium said:
Coach Brown did this at a state FCA convention one year. Had a bunch of college and high school athletes in aline, along with a 6 year old boy, and whinged that football at them as hard as possible while having them run straight towards him full speed focusing on the cross of the football. That little boy never caught it and got beat up pretty good (Ron didn't let anything off), but I can only imagine the lesson he learned through all of it and through the kindness and affection displayed by coach and all the other athletes afterwards.
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Really?...the University just needs a reason not to let Brown close to kids, this might be it.... I don't care how kind and affectionate the coach is AFTER winging a football at my son/daughter, the guy would be a "douche" in my eyes. I remain hopeful that you are exaggerating and the OP is just a chance to share your "story"...If a Division One coach heaves a ball at a kindergartener from 4-5 feet at full strength, the guy should be should be nowhere near the field of child development.
 
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funhusker said:
Landlord of Memorial Stadium said:
Coach Brown did this at a state FCA convention one year. Had a bunch of college and high school athletes in aline, along with a 6 year old boy, and whinged that football at them as hard as possible while having them run straight towards him full speed focusing on the cross of the football. That little boy never caught it and got beat up pretty good (Ron didn't let anything off), but I can only imagine the lesson he learned through all of it and through the kindness and affection displayed by coach and all the other athletes afterwards.
Click to expand...
Really?...the University just needs a reason not to let Brown close to kids, this might be it.... I don't care how kind and affectionate the coach is AFTER winging a football at my son/daughter, the guy would be a "douche" in my eyes. I remain hopeful that you are exaggerating and the OP is just a chance to share your "story"...If a Division One coach heaves a ball at a kindergartener from 4-5 feet at full strength, the guy should be should be nowhere near the field of child development.
Click to expand...
Easy does it there cowboy. I'm bettin it was a little exaggerated. Not to mention you probably had to be there to fully comprehend the moment.

Outside of the Omaha city council appearence, Ron Brown's record stands for itself. Do we have to go down this road again?

 
Thanks for all the positive replies. I'll try to share a snippet a day if you appreciate the ones I've shared thus far. And as for pre-orders, I'll let you know when that option becomes available so keep tuned to it here on HuskerBoard.

 
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