Bruleif

Really? USC beat Stanford, Utah beat Stanford - no one in the North beat Stanford. Oregon got clobbered by Arizona, who is not considered to be amongst the South's best three teams (ASU, UCLA, USC). The South does have two weak teams - Cal and Colorado - but the North has Washington State and a streaky, inconsisten Oregon State. Most South teams are very tough to beat, especially at their home stadiums. (Utah beating Stanford is an example.) Also, do not forget that Nebraska lost at home to a South team, UCLA. I will admit that the top TWO teams in the PAC-12 for the last 2-3 years have been two North teams, Stanford and Oregon. But in overall strength top to bottom I think the South is on a par, or at least very close to being on a par, with the North.

While it is true that USC has talent, the lack of scholarships has had a big impact. USC could only take 56 players to the game at ASU. The limitation in scholarship also has a big impact on practice options. And, as the season progresses, injuries take a much bigger toll, relatively speaking. On top of that, with all of the spread offenses in today's college football, you need a lot of players to keep up with the pace both on offense and defense. Kiffin basically paid the price for Carroll's violations.

Just wanted to add that I think the Schadenfreude Index (getting pleasure from the suffering of others) amongst Bruin fans seems to be pretty low. Most UCLA fans want USC to be at the top of its game so a victory over them is more meaningful. In college football you are only as good as the teams you beat.

Lane Kiffin is out at USC. Not really surprising. He was not Pat Haden's hire and the fan base was in an uproar even before last night's stomping by ASU. Personally I kind of feel sorry for the guy - even though I am a Bruin alum - because he inherited a no-win situation from Pete Carroll. From the get-go he was destined to be, at best, a caretaker, at least until the number of allowable scholarships returned to normal. The fact that Jim Mora seems to be doing well also did not help Kiffin's cause. Recruiting pundits generally acknowledge that UCLA has the upper hand now in southern California recruiting.

I second GDKT in thanking the Cornhusker fans for your class and thoughtfulness.

There is a point in the video of the game where you can tell that Mora is telling Hundley to smile. And Mora stated after the game that the directions given to the Bruins at halftime were to just relax. So, maybe the difference was having fun or at least being relaxed.

Nebraska up 21-3 has only to keep doing what it was doing to win that game. You sound as if this UCLA victory was inevitable at all times in the game - and it very clearly wasn't. Down 18, UCLA needed Nebraska to collapse to win that game. Nebraska obliged. This mantra you keep selling that UCLA's athletes were clearly superior to Nebraska's is false. The teams are pretty evenly matched athletically. Exactly. UCLA didnt and doesnt have superior athletes to NU. They are right about even across the board. UCLA is a good team but they aren't as superior as Bruins fans beleive them to be. I wish your team luck the rest of the year but the arrogance is getting a bit old. Arrogance? If I say that I think the Bruins were faster than Nebraska, that's arrogance? Wow! Let's put it this way: if the Bruins were not faster how were they able to score 28 points in one quarter? Wasn't that due to the speed of both the Bruin defense and offense? I stand by what I said - I think that the Bruins were faster than Nebraska.

Bo is the victim here. He thought he was speaking in private. Yes, he might have used bad judgement in that nowadays this is no such thing as privacy, but whoever released the tape is the villain, as far as I am concerned.

Don't you mean there is no defense BY Bo?

I think Texas is getting the same kind and quantity of attention. I might add USC to that mix but I think the USC fans understand the probation limitations and their effect on the Trojans. Had it not been for the release of the 2-year-old tape there would not be that much of a kerfuffle over Nebraska football, I think. After all, UCLA was higher rated going into the game. The point spread was basically due to the "homefield advantage" Nebraska had so the oddsmakers evidently thought the game would be a tossup. The only ones who predominantly felt the game would be a Nebraska rout were the Nebraska fans. So just based on the comparative quality of the teams there should be no big uproar. I don't think UCLA fans would have lost much sleep if the Bruins had lost. The cause of the negative reaction is, I think, the way Nebraska lost (giving up 38 unanswered points).

I did not say that UCLA players were superior than Nebraska's - or at least I did not mean to. What I meant is that at the key positions I thought the UCLA players were faster than the Nebraska ones.

Wow...a Nebraska fan admitting that the Bruins are a good team! (I won't call them great until after the Stanford and Oregon games.) Almost all posters here believe, or at least write, that if Nebraska had only done things differently the outcome would have been different. I think Martinez should have run more and that the defense should have blitzed a little more. But I think that would have only narrowed the margin of defeat. As they say, speed kills, and I think the Bruins just had more speed than Nebraska and the Bruin coaching staff has schemed to take advantage of that speed. Nebraska can still have a good year.

The reason that the UCLA game was the breaking point for so many Nebraska fans can be summed up in one word: conceit. Let's face it, most Nebraska fans think West Coast football is soft, effeminate, bad. Most Nebraska fans can't stomach the losses to UCLA because they think that Nebraska players are, by definition, superior to the UCLA's players. Therefore any loss to UCLA is due to bad effort and/or bad coaching and is never caused by lesser talent. This is why the Nebraska fans go ballistic after losing to UCLA - they simply cannot admit that they got beat by a better team if that team is from the West Coast. (USC might be the exceptiion because of their brand name.) God forbid that they would admit that they got beat by a better team. You only have to read the posts on this site over the last two years in which the Nebraska fans predict blowout victories over UCLA to verify what I have stated. And ask yourself this: which part of the country is considered the hotbed of high school football talent? Most college football experts will tell you its southern California. You just cannot beat 10 million people who live in year-round good weather for finding good football players. So learn to eat some humble pie and set your sights on winning the Big 10, the fourth best football conference in the country.

If you think I am condescending that is something that your are inferring. I did not mean to imply any condescension. You can check my other posts to verify my high opinion of the Nebraska program. To set the record straight, while the UCLA program has never risen to the level of the Nebraska football program - at least not since 1954 - I would not say that they have been abysmal since the 1990's. We beat SC 8 years in a row in the 1990's. You may not think that counts for much but it is very big in southern Calfiornia. The Bruins went to two Rose Bowls in the 1990's - 1994 and 1999. The Bruins generally had competitive teams with good talent at the skill positions throughout the 1990's. In 1998 we were five points away from playing for the NC and in that year a Bruin QB, Cade McNown, placed third in the Heisman vorting. In 2005 we were 10-2. So it has not been all bad. Yes, after 1998 -- McNown's last year - we fell off the table, To be frank, we had three successive coaching staffs which were not very good (Toledo, Dorrell and Neuheisel), although to be fair the core of the current team, including Hundley, was recruited by Neuheisel. On top of that there was a 3-4 year period when we had a weird string of QB injuries. In one fall camp, the first-string and second-string suffered season-ending foot injuries on consecutive non-contact plays. Go figure. It got so bad that we had to field a walk-on QB in a game against Notre Dame. But I do not dispute that the Bruins have been mostly mediocre or worse since 1998 with the exception of 2005 and last year. But I would not say abysmal. Abysmal is Kansas State before Bill Snyder. Besides, don't you think it is bad sportsmanship to dredge up the twenty-year-old record of a team that has just beaten your team the last two years? If Nebraska had beaten the Bruins the last two years I would have tipped my cap to the Cornhuskers. Why do you find it so hard to do likewise?

Oops....I stand corrected. Original error fixed. Also, to respond to a previous response, I did not mean to be condescending at all. I have total respect for the history of the Nebraska football program and you can verify that by reading my other posts both this year and last.

This is a great forum - much better architecturally than the Bruin ones I have seen. But I think it could be made better as follows: 1. Do not allow "quoting" of previous posts. The quoting of previous quotes make posts unecessarily long - some of them very, very long. Sometimes you have to do a LOT of scrolling to get to the new post. 2. Instead of the quoting feature, add a feature where the poster can display the title of the referenced post or some kind of reference number so he/she does not have to go through a lot of text to find the new post yet can still find the post being responded to. 3. Don't allow posting DURING the game. Most of them add little or no value. I know that they give fans a chance to vent, so maybe I am wrong here. Most of them wanted Pelini and his staff to be machine-gunned before the game was over! Just my humble opinion.

I've read a lot of the posts here, both before and after the game. Here's the perspective of a Bruin fan. 1. The Bruins defense benefited from the matchup with the Nebraska offense. The strength of the Bruin defense is the linebacker corps, especially their speed. That speed seemed to negate the biggest threat from Martinez and that was his running. I do not think that the Bruin coaching staff was afraid of Martinez as a passer. It seemed as if the Bruin defensive approach was to make Martinez pass. And a 3-4 defense with very fast linebackers can do that very well. 2. Yes, coaching is important, but I honestly think the Bruins were noticeably faster than Nebraska. Better coaching would have made the final score closer but I think the speed difference would have ended in a Bruin victory more often than not. After the Bruins got clobbered by Baylor in last year's bowl game Mora acknowledged that the team needed to get faster. He got those faster athletes and many of them are playing as true freshmen with good results. 3. I agree that the Nebraska coaching staff needs a wake-up call. But isn't it likely that Nebraska will still win 9 games this year? If so, would the adminstration be willing to fire a coach after a 9-win season? That would be rare, wouldn't it? 4. This is a great football forum site. I had a lot of fun reading the posts here. Some of the posters here are very, very witty and some are very hip about college football. 5. How bad is the Big 10 this year? Can you imagine the outcry if Michigan had lost to Akron, which they almost did? Is there a really good team in the Big 10 other than Ohio State? 6. It's unlikey that the Bruins will go undefeated. They have to play Stanford and Oregan away and on consecutive weekends. That will be tough. Arizona State is also good. So is Washington. Who knows about USC? In that rivalry game anything can happen. 7. If I were Pelini I would not look to do anything drastic. Usually small changes can reap huge benefits. I would run Taylor more and have him pass less. I would blitz more. I think firing a DC or OC midseason is more of a public-relations move to keep big boosters in the fold than it is an effective adjustment to make a team better. Look at Texas. 8. Bruin fans basically had a 13-year run of bad teams, during which only one team had a decent record (10-2 in 2005, mostly due to Drew Olson at QB and Maurice Jones-Drew at RB), so we know what misery is. It is part of the natural cycle of college football for teams to be up and down. Look at Kansas State. Before Bill Snyder KSU was the doormat of college football. If a "down" year for Nebraska is a 9 or 8-win season then Nebraska fans are very fortunate. 9. Hundley is going to make a lot of defenses look bad. The Bruin season hinges on how well they can defend against the really good teams (Stanford and Oregon).

So was it a political decision to change the Jayhawk from facing left to facing right? Otherwise there's no difference.

I thought exactly the same thing when it was said. My thinking is that the it was an attempt to humanize Muslims to counter the hatred against them by the knuckle draggers. That is a noble intention but it is kind of condescending. If it were me I wouild not have said it. People who care about Adbullah will either already know that he is Muslim or will find out on their own.

IMHO the Nebraska players do not match the speed of the Bruin players.

Just out of perverse curiosity, why do you hate Jim Mora? He has been very compliementary of Nebraska before and after the game.

What if the fundamental problem is "the Culture of Nebraska Football?"

There have been a lot of stories in southern California TV and newspapers about how classy the Nebraska athletic department and the Nebraska fans have been about commemorating the life of Nick Pasquale. I want to extend my personal thanks to all Nebraska fans and family for their wonderful thoughtfullness.

Seems like almost all of the Nebraska fans are jumping on Bo Pelini and his staff. I think the major reason for the Bruin victory was that on both sides of the ball the Bruins had faster players than Nebraska did. Yes, recruiting is the responsibility of the coaches, so the current staff could be (and should be) criticized for not gettting players who are fast enough to compete with the better teams in college football. But the recruiting issue aside,do any of you think that the outcome would have been any different if you could have magically swapped out the entire Pelini staff for any other Big 10 staff?

Sorry. I am avatar-challenged.