If 9 wins is your standard, then Nebraska is meeting it, and has been under Pelini.
But these days it is starting to feel like the ceiling, rather than a standard. 9 wins should be a minimum standard. That means once in awhile you should exceed it. It might mean you also fall short occasionally, but you should at least strive to exceed it when you can, instead of saying "that's good enough".
I think the 9 win target is too nebulous to use as a benchmark. A 9-3 Nebraska team in 1981 was 7 points off a National Championship. Nebraska also went 9-3 in 1990 and that squad is widely regarded with much derision among those of us old enough to remember it. That team drew as much angst as any I can remember, up until the dark ages began.
Yet, that team won 9 games. It actually resembles a lot of Pelini's teams. They got clobbered at home by the only ranked team on the schedule. They had a complete and utter meltdown in a road game against an opponent who really wasn't that good (OU under Gibbs). They were overmatched in an Orlando bowl game and got blown out. They trailed 7-3 at halftime, at home, to an Oregon State team that went 1-10. They were 22 seconds away from failing to score a single touchdown against Baylor.
The '81 team would absolutely wipe the floor with the '90 team, yet they both went 9-3. Records can sometimes be deceiving about a team's true quality.
Honestly, I'm willing to put up with a 7-5 rebuilder mode once in awhile if it means there's a 12-1 year out there waiting for us at the end of it.
That's the problem. Where is the 11-12 win season? When does that come? Shouldn't Pelini have given us at least one by now?
Our favorite notorious World-Herald scribe informed us all today that 57 different FBS schools have had at least one 11 win season since Nebraska's last one, in 2001. Are you telling me that Nebraska can't do something 57 other schools can do?
