Steven M. Sipple: Pelini wants NU offense to be flexible

I just don't like that small of a margin of error. That's putting a lot of pressure on the defense, and our special teams haven't exactly been too special other than Henry's foot. I still think you need to have some type of identity on offense. I remember the saying that if you try to be good at too many things, you won't be good at anything. Insert NU offense, 2009 here.

 
Yeah, we're "multiple" all right...we can run anything!! Too bad nothing works well or even marginal.

 
I see people crack on this reporter or that TV broadcaster all the time. Joe Buck takes a lot of flak from people, as does Musbuger, and I see Sipple cracked on a lot here.

My question to those people is always - OK, you don't like this guy. Who do you read? Who do you listen to?

Funny thing is, they never mention names. It's always just cracking on this guy or that guy with no explanation.

So... Vince - who do you read? Who's a good reporter?

 
I see people crack on this reporter or that TV broadcaster all the time. Joe Buck takes a lot of flak from people, as does Musbuger, and I see Sipple cracked on a lot here.

My question to those people is always - OK, you don't like this guy. Who do you read? Who do you listen to?

Funny thing is, they never mention names. It's always just cracking on this guy or that guy with no explanation.

So... Vince - who do you read? Who's a good reporter?
I like Sip myself. I don't always agree on everything he says, but he is all right in my book. I think Brian Christopherson knows way more about football than Sipple does though. Tim Griffin though...can't stand that guy and not because I think he might hate Nebraska or something. Mostly his huge love and bias towards Texas makes him off-putting for me.

 
I see people crack on this reporter or that TV broadcaster all the time. Joe Buck takes a lot of flak from people, as does Musbuger, and I see Sipple cracked on a lot here.

My question to those people is always - OK, you don't like this guy. Who do you read? Who do you listen to?

Funny thing is, they never mention names. It's always just cracking on this guy or that guy with no explanation.

So... Vince - who do you read? Who's a good reporter?
I like Sip myself. I don't always agree on everything he says, but he is all right in my book. I think Brian Christopherson knows way more about football than Sipple does though. Tim Griffin though...can't stand that guy and not because I think he might hate Nebraska or something. Mostly his huge love and bias towards Texas makes him off-putting for me.
Sipple is okay in my book, but I look at him more as another fan than I do as someone that has inside knowledge. I don't always agree with him, and I do express that to him on occasion. But then I don't agree with a lot of people, and there are a lot of people that don't agree with anything I say. So, we are all even. I know I don't agree with most things some of the National press has to say about Nebraska football - but then they are wrong more than they are right. :espnsucks:

 
Sipple :rollin
I see people crack on this reporter or that TV broadcaster all the time. Joe Buck takes a lot of flak from people, as does Musbuger, and I see Sipple cracked on a lot here.

My question to those people is always - OK, you don't like this guy. Who do you read? Who do you listen to?

Funny thing is, they never mention names. It's always just cracking on this guy or that guy with no explanation.

So... Vince - who do you read? Who's a good reporter?
Locally, the best are Dirk Chatelain, Lee Barfknect, Brian Christopherson, and Tom Shatel. They at least tell it like it is.

Sipple is too much of a homer and won't tell it like it is. As an example, when Callafraud was still here the guys from 1620 The Zone would ask him point blank questions about how bad he and Cosgrove were. His standard reply was "Ohhh - I don't know. Bill knows what he's doing". It wasn't until after they were let go did he speak more open and honest.

If I want to read rah rah I'll come here. I expect a sports writer to write it like is without B.S.

Sorry if I offended your tailgate mate, but the guy can't/ won't tell it straight.

 
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I can't stand Shatel. He comes off as a major league idiot. Sip comes off as a bit of a simpleton but a nice enough guy. Agree on the "think of him as another fan" comment, that's spot on for me. I think Christopherson is alright, although I put him and Sip in the same category (by association?) of 'more like a fan'. I haven't reca;led reading Chatelain or Brafknect extensively.

Tim Griffin is a very fair blogger, IMO. I guess I just don't see the bias you guys are seeing. He has been very friendly towards NU as well in the past.

 
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I can't stand Shatel. He comes off as a major league idiot. Sip comes off as a bit of a simpleton but a nice enough guy. Agree on the "think of him as another fan" comment, that's spot on for me. I think Christopherson is alright, although I put him and Sip in the same category (by association?) of 'more like a fan'. I haven't reca;led reading Chatelain or Brafknect extensively.

Tim Griffin is a very fair blogger, IMO. I guess I just don't see the bias you guys are seeing. He has been very friendly towards NU as well in the past.
That's because he is.

Shatel, Chatelain or Barfknect are of the same form in that they are not rah rah and just tell it like it is. A lot of Husker fans don't like them because of this. But then these are most likely the same people that think TV announcers can never say anything bad about NU Football.....no matter how accurate it may be.

 
I can't stand Shatel. He comes off as a major league idiot. Sip comes off as a bit of a simpleton but a nice enough guy. Agree on the "think of him as another fan" comment, that's spot on for me. I think Christopherson is alright, although I put him and Sip in the same category (by association?) of 'more like a fan'. I haven't reca;led reading Chatelain or Brafknect extensively.

Tim Griffin is a very fair blogger, IMO. I guess I just don't see the bias you guys are seeing. He has been very friendly towards NU as well in the past.
Oh yeah, Tim has shown us some love in the past. I just think he really, really loves Texas and it makes me want to puke. But you have to talk about the leader of the conference and they are leading this year I guess.

 
I can't stand Shatel. He comes off as a major league idiot. Sip comes off as a bit of a simpleton but a nice enough guy. Agree on the "think of him as another fan" comment, that's spot on for me. I think Christopherson is alright, although I put him and Sip in the same category (by association?) of 'more like a fan'. I haven't reca;led reading Chatelain or Brafknect extensively.

Tim Griffin is a very fair blogger, IMO. I guess I just don't see the bias you guys are seeing. He has been very friendly towards NU as well in the past.
Oh yeah, Tim has shown us some love in the past. I just think he really, really loves Texas and it makes me want to puke. But you have to talk about the leader of the conference and they are leading this year I guess.

Solid point....

He does have a tendency to lean towards UT. However, if NU were back to where they should be, would he show NU the love they got when Frazier and Frost were at the helm?

I realize it's a hole new Internet world since those days of real NU Football - however I think you know what I'm saying. Would the love be given to NU if they were back to where they should be?

 
To me the biggest gripe you can level at Sipple (and Christopherson, and McKeever, and Rosenthal, and Heinrich... not sure how you differentiate between them all when they cover the same team from the same news organization) is that they put the kid gloves on too much. I guess that's because they work in such close proximity with the coaches, even Callahan's regime, that they feel like they can't burn bridges by exposing too much.

That's not a Sipple problem, that's a problem with everyone who covers Husker football, though. "Telling it like it is" is a pretty broad statement. If you've got specific examples I'd love to hear them. From what I've read, Shatel tells it like he sees it without a lot of proof. He's as much of an "insider" as the people who post here, and he has generally less proof. Christopherson is a good writer and a fine journalist, but he's no different than Sipple in "telling it like it is."

Journalism is all about cultivated relationships. Nebraska football is Sipple's bread and butter. Yeah, he could expose a lot of things, and he'd get great readership on those articles, but he'd be persona non grata at every news conference from that day forward, pretty much killing the duck that lays the golden egg for him, and potentially the rest of his staff.

Let's put it this way - I talked to Sip at the tailgate and asked him some specific questions about some specific situations with the program. 1) He knows the real story on all of the things I asked him about, and 2) he won't disclose them in the Sports Section because (surmising here) it's not worth one story to destroy a source.

Now, you want to proffer Shatel as a "better" journalist than Sipple, and I'll question your sanity. Christopherson... again, I like Brian, and for a brief moment I got to meet and greet with him at the tailgate as well, but "better" than Sipple? I don't see it, and I don't see at all how he "tells it like it is" more than Sipple. Their take on things is largely similar, especially since they run their articles through the same editorial filter. Dirk Chatelain? I like what I've read from him, but I can't speak authoritatively on him as a writer. Lee Barfknecht is pretty much a potzer, and frankly I've seen little from him that makes him a "good" journalist. He's average.

Bottom line - if you're going to proffer the notion that criticism = "good journalist" then you're not talking sense.

 
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