The other thing that tugs at me is I know that with each year that we fiddle around being irrelevant, it makes it that much harder to recruit! The glory days of the 90's fade farther away almost to a point that we sound like ND fans.
How have we been irrelevant, especially in the past year (or week, for that matter)?
Nebraska was at the forefront of conference expansion. Nebraska was a Top 10 and 15 team this year, and if we win out we'll be Top 15 again.
And comparing us to fans of a school that sold their tickets to a visiting top team, have had multiple losing seasons since the 90s, and that is routinely outclassed by Nebraska in TV ratings, despite having their own network? I don't know if this kind of thought won you major accolades back on 'Pedia, but here that's just asinine and unjustifiably pessimistic.
Plus, if you were a fan for as long as you said you were, then you would know that all coaches, including St. Tom, lost to unranked teams they should have clobbered. It's college football--a game being played by kids that were, mere months ago, unable to legally buy porn, play the lottery, or smoke it up.
Yes, the Northwestern loss sucks. But there's no reason to go all maudlin about it--the future is brighter than ever before.