Blackshirt

Sounds like we've lost him. This quote from him via the Omaha World Herald also concerned me:

Okay, figured out the link problem. You are inadvertantely using the "@" button to post your links. When you post a url you can either just copy and paste it (must include the http://) or use the "http://" button above, instead of the "@" button. This is an email button, which makes the links wrong. C'monnn!! (I fixed them so all should work now)

Eric, when you post a link you can either just copy and paste it (must include the http://) or use the "http://" button above, instead of the "@" button. This is an email button, which is why your links are wrong. I changed this one for you so dont worry about it. My opinion on Rod and that other guy no one has heard of - they had no chance anyway, which is why they "removed themselves". Come on, these guys would have to be mildly retarded to pass up a job of a lifetime like this. Over Morgantown WV?! Are you kidding? Twice the money and 10 times the program! gimme a break Rod. He just wanted to make WV look better and make them feel like they are "lucky" that he stayed, which improves his street value to the U. So obviously he's not so dense after all.

Im afraid you are correct. We havent actually promoted the board too much yet, just got it going this season as a means to "cathart" with friends. And we teamed up with Huskerbay so we moved over a lot of their old members, but havent emailed them yet (plan to this wknd). So far I think we actually have some pretty bright and good people on here, so Im encouraged. But I know how boards can get, so please do us the favor by sticking around to help maintain a high level of quality! By the way, where did you hear about the board? Chad

Thanks Dave. Eric, maybe you copied the shortcut for "send this article to a friend", which sometimes use the "mailto" command like Dave said. Thanks again for the links guys. Keep it up!! Blackshirt

You are so right. I think they seek these people out just so they seem smarter. So did you catch the clip? Thanks for the support by the way, the more people that know about the board, the better the chances are for quality discussions and learning new info. GBR- Chad

Hey guys, Just wanted to let you know about a story Channel 6 (WOWT) is running tonight. They're looking to get a feel for the current state of Husker Nation, and do some on camera interviews with local businesses. They contacted me, but since I’m in KC it wasnt possible tonight. They may be in touch with me later this month for another story, so let me know if there are any local business owners out there, and I can refer them to you. Contingent upon a shameless plug for this site of course. Should be on at 5, 6 & 10. www.wowt.com Chad

I guess since none of us are going to change anything, we may as well assess the damage. What do you think, how many steps do we have to take backward to regain what we had? Do you think it will take years to recover? Championships are the ultimate cure; will Husker Nation forgive Steve the moment our glory is restored, or is he digging his own grave? I wonder what the shelf life is on a fascist AD that doesnt live up to the very precedent that he set!?! Blackshirt

Thanks for the synopsis Eric. And I agree w/brotherofalatehusker, Pederson has a plastic smile that is as fake as a wedding cake. The guy seriously concerns me. Wouldnt want him at my side in an alley fight. Mind get somethin stuck in your back. Anyway, most probably already know about his past relations w/Bo. Read more about him and Gill's situation here: http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=1674838 Blackshirt

Supposed to be a press conference today at 1 PM. Not sure if it will be televised or not. Please post if anyone hears the details. *Also. Heard that Gill is probably gone too. What a mess.

Bill Briggs from the Denver Post is taking a tour of the Big 12 stadiums this season to get a first hand view of the shenanigans that take place on game-day. Oh yeah, and he's wearing the opposing team's gear. Heres the intro article: Article Published: Friday, September 12, 2003 college football The Fan The search begins for the best and worst of Big 12 fans, but no extra armor included in enemy territory By Bill Briggs Denver Post Sports Writer I'm headed straight for the nosebleed seats. When the fists start flying in the bleachers and pepper spray blends with the scent of popcorn, I'll be there. The Denver Post is sending me to the new heart of fan violence: college football. Once, it was the sweet domain of pep rallies and pompoms, where forearm shivers and chop blocks were the tactics of choice on the field, not in the student section. Of course, that was BCS: Before Countless Simoleons. Since the birth of a national title game - and the gush of money unleashed by the Bowl Championship Series - stadium fights and postgame melees have increased, experts say. The hunger to be No. 1 is apparently making some fans psychotic. Each season, The Post receives complaints from fans who claim to have been mistreated at a college football game. So this fall, we'll grab a seat in the bleachers at each Big 12 stadium. I will mix, mingle and exchange pleasantries with rabid fanatics who bleed Nebraska red, Texas orange or Colorado gold. The twist: I'll be wearing the visiting team's attire each week, and possibly shedding a little blood of my own. The Heartland can be a tough place on an autumn Saturday. Just ask the Losole family from Nebraska. Two brothers and their 51-year-old father were gang tackled and clubbed by Texas fans while leaving the 1999 Big 12 title game at the Alamodome. The Huskers beat the Longhorns 22-6. "We're going to show you how to make a Texas sandwich," someone shouted before the attack. Said 29-year-old Dave Losole at the time: "It was the scariest moment of my life." The family's collective injuries included a broken nose, a chipped tooth, a swollen jaw and an array of bruisers and cuts. Now it's my turn. Quarterbacks are allowed about five concussions before they are forced to give up the game. How many do sports writers get? "If you're smart," said Jerry M. Lewis, an international authority on fan violence, "you'll wear the visiting team's jersey quietly." That's the game plan. To test fan hospitality at all 12 schools, I'll be cheering consistently and calmly each week. Which basically means I won't be screaming, "Nice passing game, ladies!" when Oklahoma sputters at home against a visiting rival. And I have no plans to shout, "Yo, husk this!" while sitting shoulder to shoulder with Nebraska fans. "It will be tamer in the early part of the season, then it will get more violent," predicted Lewis, an emeritus professor of sociology at Kent State. His studies on fan violence show three key trends: Fan brawls and riots are rising in college sports but holding steady in the pro ranks. The formation of the BCS in 1998 stoked the level of stadium violence. The perpetrators are almost always young, white males. And they're not necessarily misbehaving because they're drunk, Lewis said. They just identify far too deeply with their favorite team. "A small portion of the young, white males want to celebrate the victory and that's why fan violence occurs," Lewis said. "They can't tackle and they can't dunk. But they can be a loud, boisterous fan. Violence takes the place of skill." The BCS, which pits the top two college teams at the end of the season, has sent some fans into an emotional tizzy, Lewis said. It also might explain why stadium violence, rare in the 1950s, began to spike in the 1990s, Lewis said. "The importance of winning a championship becomes so much heady medicine for some of these young, white males," Lewis said. "It gives them a sense of place." Flip the switch Of course, players and teams have to share the blame, the professor added. Stadium scoreboards urge fans to "make some noise." Players whip towels above their heads and plead with fans to rachet up their intensity. "They push the envelope up to a point and then they say, 'OK, turn off the switch,"' Lewis said. "Well, old guys like me, and our wives, can turn off the switch. A portion of the young guys can't." It happened to Mike McKinney. Two seasons ago, McKinney was punched in the face by a fellow fan after Texas Tech shut out Texas A&M in Lubbock. McKinney, whose son played center that day for A&M, isn't exactly the kind of guy who goes looking for a scrap - at the time he was Texas Gov. Rick Perry's chief of staff. Today he runs a hospital, which is what McKinney needed after Tech's 12-0 victory. Following the final gun, a swarm of bleary-eyed Red Raiders fans ripped down the goalposts. Then they shoved the steel uprights into the end zone bleachers where McKinney and other visiting Aggies fans were sitting. Then someone slugged McKinney. It took eight stitches to close the gash. Sometimes the "12th Man" can be a real lunkhead. "It was like the Alamo," McKinney told The Associated Press. "They were coming over the wall." But the A&M faithful have done some Assaulting & Maiming, too. Last season, after Nebraska beat the Aggies 38-31 in College Station, Texas, a cadre of Cornhuskers fans burst onto the field to celebrate. They were stopped cold by somber members of the A&M Corps of Cadets - all of whom dress in military uniforms for football games, some of whom march into the stadium with swords. One cadet decked a Huskers fan in the head and knocked him to the turf. But the rules are changing, in part because of one bad day last fall. On Nov. 23, a spree of melees erupted and at least 74 fans were arrested during and after games at Ohio State, Cal, North Carolina State and the University of Hawaii. In Columbus, Ohio, fans set 12 fires. Play nice Before Big Ten games this year, ads featuring conference coaches are broadcast on TV and at the stadiums asking fans to be nice and "respect the game." The Big 12, meanwhile, has banned fans from entering the field after a game. Violators can be prosecuted. For extra security, the conference also requires schools to use surveillance cameras to record any postgame trouble. "This stuff has been in the game manual but there's just more emphasis put on it this year as a result of incidents NCAA-wide, including the Ohio State riots," said Bo Carter, assistant Big 12 commissioner. "We want to keep as much order as possible for the safety of the spectators, the coaches and the student athletes," Carter said. The Post's roving fan inspection - otherwise known as "The Contusion Tour '03" - starts this weekend at an undisclosed school. It will travel through some of the most venomous rivalries in college football. Each week, I will detail the feedback I get - right around the rib cage probably - as I cheer for the visitors amid a sea of homers. We'll also give you a sense of the joy and anguish of a college gameday in the Big 12, one of the most tradition-rich conferences in the nation. Cue the fight song. http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,3...1626253,00.html

Article Published: Monday, September 15, 2003 big 12 football Hawk's-eye view First stop in Heartland tame in terms of trash talk, trouble for visitors By Bill Briggs Denver Post Sports Writer AMES, Iowa - In the muddy flats where charcoal smoke and school spirit hung in the postgame drizzle, two men suddenly cut toward each other in a simultaneous blitz. One, draped in Iowa State Cyclones gear, vowed to de-bone the other, an Iowa Hawkeyes fan who had just been pawing through a truck bed littered with seat cushions, beer coolers and foam fingers proclaiming both schools No. 1. "Hey!" the Cyclone hollered between huffs, "you better not let YOUR Iowa stuff touch MY Iowa State stuff!" The two men zoomed closer, watched by an ocean of soggy tailgaters outside Jack Trice Stadium. But at the end of their sprint, the two men skidded, then laughed, then hugged - making sure not to spill their cans of Bud Light. This is Iowa after all, the capital of nice, home of Radar O'Reilly and cornfield baseball, where a modern football rivalry is really nothing personal. Well, not anymore. Iowa State was the first stop on The Denver Post's tour of Big 12 football stadiums. At each venue, I will dress in the visiting team's attire to test the best and worst of home fan behavior, from hospitality to hostility. For Ames, I wore an atomic yellow Iowa sweat shirt and a black ballcap with a gold "I." Happily, there is no "I" in revenge. Although Iowa knocked the DNA out of the 'Clones, 40-21, I didn't hear so much as a, "Yo mama's so stupid, she thought a quarterback was a refund." The only hands laid on me were quiet high-fives from blissful Hawkeyes fans. Even the trash talking was tame, not that I didn't try. The Cyclones fan to my left in the south end-zone bleachers was a 20-something guy named Brian who came with his father. Between the raindrops, I tried to heat up the football chatter. ME: Hey, man, your boys are goin' down today! BRIAN: You may be right. I hate to say it, but you may have the better team. ME: Never mind. This is nothing like the in-state nastiness between Texas A&M and Texas Tech that culminated in a stadium brawl two years ago. When Iowa State is not playing Iowa, Cyclones fans generally pull for the Hawkeyes and vice versa. A fair number of beer coolers are carried into the parking lots with an Iowa State backer on one handle and an Iowa guy on the other. And it's as much about the party scene as it is about the game, dubbed the Iowa Bowl. According to Ames police, thousands of ticketless people rolled onto campus Saturday morning just to munch brats and taste the game-day atmosphere. The public parking lots were full by 9:45 a.m., almost two hours before kickoff. Which is about the time the student section filled up at Trice, booing anything breathing in black and gold. (The only Hawkeyes not razzed by the kids were the Iowa grads piloting two of the fighter jets that roared in formation over the stadium.) Inside the small parking-lot nation of RVs, school flags fly, beer funnels gurgle and Cyclones rooters mix with Hawkeyes fans beneath gold tents and red awnings. The talk is often about consumption rates rather than completion rates. "Yo, check this Iowa State guy out over here!" a young Hawkeyes fan yells in my ear over someone's Nine Inch Nails CD. He's pointing at the boozy guy in a crooked Cyclones hat who's being held upright by his girlfriend. It's 10:53 a.m. "Dude's so drunk he's about to puke," his friend tells me proudly. "Iowa fans can outparty these guys forever!" Familiar foes By now, they've had a lot of practice. The rivalry dates to 1894. And it was testy from the start. In 1897, Iowa State's Foster Parker ran 40 yards for the winning score, but Iowa's players immediately claimed that an illegal Cyclones block broke Parker loose. When the referee refused to throw a flag, Iowa left in protest and forfeited 6-0. Two hours east in Iowa City - home of the Iowa campus - the local newspaper covered it this way: "The umpire, whose sole duty it is to observe such things, says he failed to see the play. Why? Either because he did not want to see it, or because he was grossly, not to say criminally, negligent." And now, the farming news ... Soon after, things got ugly. Iowa temporarily cut all athletic ties with Iowa State in 1907 after the Hawkeyes' coach received an anonymous tip before the game that his star halfback, Chick Kirk, would be purposely hurt while playing Iowa State. Sure enough, Kirk was injured, tackled while trying to make a fair catch. By 1916, even the federal government had seen enough of the backyard squabble. The U.S. education commissioner urged the two colleges to stop playing football. After two more sporadic meetings, the series ended in 1934. The cease-fire lasted until 1977 when Iowa State convinced Iowa to resume the rivalry, following almost 10 years of peace talks and negotiations. Today, the game is Iowa's biggest sporting event, drawing caravans from the western and eastern parts of the state, which seem largely partial to the Hawkeyes, and from the central towns, which tend to go for the Cyclones. The paid attendance Saturday was 53,488 - a stadium record. About one-fifth of the fans wore Iowa gold. No special events ushered in the game but almost everyone was talking about it beforehand. Iowa, once the winner of 15 straight in the series, had suddenly lost five in a row, including a heartbreaker last year in Iowa City where the Cyclones came back from a 24-7 deficit. "We don't hold any rallies during Iowa week," said Chris Andringa, 25, a senior at Iowa State. "Everybody just knows." "If you're an Iowa State fan, you kind of feel like you're being looked down on by your big brother. So there's a little bit of the chip-on-the-shoulder type feeling," said Eric Heft, the color analyst on the Cyclone Radio Network. Big brother was back on Saturday. As Iowa roared out to a three-touchdown advantage, I left my seat to see if I would draw any verbal fire from the Cyclones student section. Many just glanced at my Iowa sweat shirt, looked at their feet and muttered something about how their rugged team had apparently been replaced by the Backstreet Boys. "Running game? We don't even know how to run out the clock," one Cyclones fan said. "Iowans as a whole are pretty reasonable people with a fairly good perspective on things," Heft said. "Look at the political demographics of Iowa - you've got conservatives and liberals, but they're all concentrated in the middle of the road. There aren't any shrill extremists." Unless you count the X-rated, anti-Iowa T-shirts that were popular in the crowd. They succinctly demanded that the home team do something physical to Iowa, something that is central to the breeding of Iowa livestock, something we can't mention here. "Beat Iowa" is the closest version I can use. Cassie Reinke, 21, from Waukon, Iowa, wore one of those shirts. But she was more offended by the black-and-gold Iowa getup worn by her live-in friend, 22-year-old Neal Corwin. "He won't be staying with me anymore," Reinke said, "unless he takes off that shirt." http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,3...1632756,00.html

Article Published: Monday, September 22, 2003 big 12 football Wild West vs. Hollywood: a pity party By Bill Briggs Denver Post Sports Writer NORMAN, Okla. - Wearing powder blue - not exactly the testosterone of colors - into a red-clad horde of 83,000 is about as smart as a deer grabbing a stool at the hunters' favorite diner. Everyone stares, some smile big, a few drool. But when the boys in the end zone start firing 12-gauge shotguns over the goalposts, well, suddenly it's like Bambi is sporting butter underwear. And it gets really interesting when the closest Oklahoma fan spies your UCLA jersey and reveals, with a smirk, that he has a gun, too. This is Saturday afternoon, Boomer Sooner style. A double-barreled blend of Wild West ritual and football feast, where a stagecoach circles the field after each score and the fans plead for points until the very last snap - even if their team leads by five dadgum touchdowns and is within a spittoon shot of 60. They called me "Bruin." On every corner outside Owen Field, at tailgate parties tricked out with red buses, red awnings, red lawn chairs, red grills and red wheelchairs, I was the bizarre SoCal invader in powder blue, wearing a No. 26 UCLA home jersey and a Bruins ballcap. This was Week 2 of The Denver Post's tour of Big 12 football venues where I drape myself in the visiting team's attire to test the best and worst of fan hospitality. "Hey, Bruin, thank you for comin'!" "Wow, really great to see you, Bruin!" Oh, how those Sooners faithful welcomed all 200 or so UCLA fans as we waded into a swarm of crimson. I felt like a guy who wears a Sponge Bob Square Pants get-up to a costume party - but instead walk into a stuffy Save the Sea Sponge soiree. The home fans offered me a mix of open pity and hidden snickers. "Golly, I think it will be a terrific game today, Bruin! Right down to the wire, sir!" They handed me O-Club burgers and fat brats. They jammed cans of beer into my palm. With red face paint, white cape and a box of Marlboro Lights crammed into his utility belt, Capn' Sooner, (think: Barrel Man minus 60 pounds) wished me and the entire UCLA team the best of luck and safe travels home. Remember that old "Twilight Zone" episode where a seemingly friendly space alien gives the Earth a tome entitled "To Serve Man" and someone figures out it's actually a cookbook? We California types were about to be the main course - on the field, anyway. That's not to say a number of well-oiled Oklahomans strolling to the game didn't give my UCLA jersey a long scan and fire a glare that seemed to say, "How 'bout we step into this here alley, Hollywood?" "At Oklahoma, football is war without casualties," said Brent Clark, a lawyer on Main Street in Norman and the guy who wrote the book on OU football, called "Sooner Century." "A lot of us are not really fit to be around on game day. I mean that. I find myself snapping at the parking lot attendant for no reason at all. "I decided, well, I'm either going to have to engage in some behavior modification or hit some medications," Clark said. "We're all just so intense. We take it so seriously here." Truly, this football following has more rituals than some ancient religions. Two hours before kickoff, a swift murmur swept through the tailgaters - coach Bob Stoops was coming. It was 12:30 p.m., time to salute the man who resurrected the program, won a national title in 2000 and has the Sooners ranked No. 1 again. Hundreds of people cut their conversations in mid-tale and sprinted to the curb to offer their respects as the Stoops' red SUV and the team bus rolled into the stadium. Stoops didn't stop. He also didn't wave or seem to be drawing any air whatsoever. "Game face," someone said. About 30 minutes later, the Sooners marching band, wearing white flannel, gathered on the grassy north oval near the campus stadium. Each instrument group formed a circle: The tubas locked arms and weaved slowly, the trombones thrust their horns into the air, forming a brass umbrella. Even these melodious guys and girls seemed ready to rumble. The band merged to play a quick concert for the fans - "Boomer Sooner," the first of 712 renditions we would hear that day. "You know why there are only two words to that song," cracked Mike Pfaffenberger, a visiting Bruins fan from L.A. A few other UCLA fans slowly backed away from Pfaffenberger, who, at last word, made it out alive. The band then played "Boomer Sooner" while snaking down Asp Street, past Louie's Deli and Bar and the Norman Christian Center. A few hundred fans followed the band into the stadium, singing along. Inside, the "Ruf/Neks"- a red shirt-wearing male spirit group dating to 1915 - whipped up the crowd by wielding red-and-white wooden paddles above their heads. The tactic began in the 1920s when members thought the threat of a spanking would intimidate Oklahoma fans to cheer a little louder, according to the Ruf/Nek website. After welcoming the Sooners players to the field by raising their paddles skyward, the Ruf/Neks sprinted 100 yards, slid into the farthest goalpost and, from their knees, chanted "Fadada." No one knows why this tradition started, how it started or what it means, the website said. Believe me, no one is asking. The Ruf/Neks also drove the white-pony-pulled Sooner Schooner across Owen Field after each score. The mini Conestoga, donated to the school in 1965 by Dr. M.S. Bartlett and his late brother, Buzz, once may have cost Oklahoma a bowl game. During the 1985 Orange Bowl, Washington and OU were tied 14-14 when the Sooners kicked a field goal to take an apparent third-quarter lead. But the kick was nullified when an official flagged Oklahoma for illegal procedure. The Ruf/Neks aboard the Schooner didn't see the flag and made their typical on-field gallop. The refs threw another flag, 15 yards for unsportsmanlike conduct. The kicker missed his second - much farther - attempt and Washington won 28-17. When the Ruf/Neks stuffed their paddles into their back pockets, the guns came out. The Ruf/Neks frequently fired modified 12-gauge shotguns into the air before, during and after a game. It sounded like a four-hour clip from Ken Burns' "Civil War." White puffs of smoke curled from the muzzles. Even veteran Sooners fans jumped at the noise. "On the one hand, people are having their bags checked for tweezers (as they enter the stadium). On the other hand, we have these guys out on the field with explosive weapons," Clark said. The shotguns fire only gunpowder. My seatmate's weapon, back home, fires the real deal. I enter section 10 in a corner of the stadium. A small contingent of Bruins fans are clustered on the opposite side, in a corner. A distant blur of blue. Too far to help me now. "Bruins fan in the house!" I said cheerfully to the surrounding Sooners fans, as I took my seat. "Oh, man, it never fails! Why do we always get one of THOSE here?" Janice said behind me. "I have a gun," Donny, from Duncan, Okla., added with a sly grin. He sat just to my right. When UCLA's Manuel White rumbled for an 11-yard touchdown to give UCLA an early 10-7 edge, the Sooners trailed for the first time all season. "Yes!" I yelled, totally alone. "Here we go, Bruins!" "I'm putting bullets in my gun," Donny said. But when Oklahoma's Antonio Perkins scored on a punt return in the second quarter, the Sooners increased their lead to 21-10. Perkins would run two more punts back that day, an NCAA record. "You want my gun?" Donny asked sympathetically. The Sooners routed UCLA, 59-24. No one in the exiting crowd of 83,000 said a word to me as I trudged to my car. But one guy did hold up a sign: "Hasta La Vista, UCLA, You've been Recalled." http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,3...1648099,00.html

The below is not a verbatim quote of Ron's speech at the breakfast. It is second-hand and may not be completely accurate, however, the general message is correct. Please let me know if you are aware of any discrepancies that need to be altered. Overall though, it makes for some interesting speculation, as he provides a bunch of inferences to read into. Big Red Breakfast 11/25/03 Ron Brown: Good morning, nice to see you all here. Really appreciate your loyalty, support. This was a meeting that I didn’t know I was supposed to be at. Marvin Sanders and I flipped a coin and he won and was supposed to be here, but his mother died a few days ago and that’s why he’s not here today. Please put Marvin in your prayers. Quite frankly, there is a little different flavor in the air. A lot of things on the internet and in the paper about the status of our coaching staff and our team. OWH asked what I thought of the Sunday article in the Lincoln Journal Star – the Lord will direct our paths. There will be people that will try to put pressure on your life, they will cause you to doubt who you are, no matter what your record is. It’s an interesting life. A few years ago, I had the opportunity to interview Tom Landry at the end of his life. He said – and he got emotional – I came into work one day and read in the newspaper that Jerry Jones had fired me – and it was true. He was arguably one of the greatest coaches ever – and was forced out of the business. Very few people ever retire – they tell you they have – but most of them have either quit or been fired. I bring this up only because I know it’s an issue right now, for me not to bring it up today would be kind of silly. I go back to the verse – trust in the Lord with all of your heart. In all your ways acknowledge him, bank your life on his shoulders, be willing to fall into his arms. He will direct your paths. I stand here today with joy in my heart, knowing that’s how I want to live my life. My path today is to coach as hard as I can, be able to look my players in the eye. They are reading the same things that we all are. Don’t be influenced and swayed by what other people think of you. What’s been in the paper has made me strong – you will see the testament of true character when you’re being squeezed. Bring it on! I put my trust in the Lord, not in the athletic administration, not in what other people think. <Reference to scene from Braveheart> – William Wallace is ready to be executed – he has been so powerful, and has caused such a stir – he says a prayer the night before he is to die – Lord, help me to die well. I don’t know what is going to happen, we haven’t heard anything. But no matter what happens, I want to die well and with character. If you are ready to die well, you are going to live well. Yesterday’s practice was very good. We are using the outward pressure to focus even better. They see that their coaches are not afraid of what other people think, there is real freedom there. What the press is saying can make you bitter or make you better. This is far more important. Mike Vedral came to visit me recently. Started to talk about all the benefits that he got from playing Nebraska football. He never started, never got a national championship, never experienced the glory days. But what he did experience was his teammates, the program, the coaches, the character he gained, married Matt Turman’s sister, had kids and a job, is giving back to the community. You realize that the national championships never solve any problems that you have, they are really meaningless – what’s really valuable is the stuff that you can hang your hat on. To play and coach as hard as you can, that honors God. There is no guarantee and there is no value placed on your life because of that. May sound like I’m preaching, but I don’t really care. *applause* Don’t ever leave this football program and think that’s all about wins and losses – every single coach and player that’s played there has been able gain and stand for things that really last forever. Next time you think about putting someone out on their ear, think about your own self being fired. Next time you think a player should be out of there, think about if someone was saying that about your own son or daughter – put things into perspective. It’s easy when you don’t have to compete. We don’t have a chance on Friday according to many people. Put the pressure into perspective and use it to make you better. Colorado has a lot to play for. They win this game, they go to a bowl. They’ve beaten us two years in a row. They will be pumped up, playing at home. Everybody loves when a team that is supposed to be cast down rises up and overcomes the odds. Our team has a chance. Everyone is questioning who we are, we have a chance for resurrection. I may be preaching to the choir, but sometimes the choir needs to be preached to as well. Questions for Ron: 1. Is Barney Cotton the total complete offensive coordinator – is he being questioned by Frank? Frank has totally endorsed Barney. He’s had difficult circumstances to work under –our o-line has been decimated with injuries and other reasons that they aren’t playing – it’s been a tough deal, which affects the entire offense. Easy to look at numbers, but you have to look at what we’ve had to work with. We are in the top 10 in rushing offense. Our passing game has potential, but dropped below 50% after the KSU game. Offense has been up and down, but we haven’t turned the ball over too much. Have not been consistent enough, particularly in scoring points. But I wouldn’t put that all on Barney Cotton. 2. Thoughts on the young receivers? I am thrilled with those guys, I think they have improved. Have good quickness and speed. KSU has good secondary and our guys ran by them. They are tough, they will bang you around. Good group for the future. 3. What are you able to tell recruits about the current situation? Be honest with them, they’ve already heard about it. There are reading things on the internet, are informed by opposing coaches who are news correspondents as well. All I can go on right now is that it’s perception. Hang you hat on something that is real. Recruits have a lot more resiliency than the average person, don’t seem to get floored by things they read on the internet, etc. I sense excitement about coming to Nebraska. 4. How is recruiting going this year compared to the last few years? I think it’s going very good, have more offers on the table than we’ve had in the last few years at this point. There are a number of kids very excited about us. 5. How was your trip to Ramstein, Germany? That was a great opportunity, Isaiah is really playing well. We were the only school that visited him, and it was right after 9/11. When I was over there, 2 terrorists were captured in Germany – I figured it was kind of nutty that I was there at that time. 6. A lot of personal venom has been spewed by people that claim to be spokespeople for the fans at large – apology for these “fans” behavior was expressed, which doesn’t represent the majority – Ron appreciates that. It’s a sign of the times. The pressure is on you and me, what makes one man break, might be a piece of cake for another man. Analogy made to Piece of paper vs rubber ball that is squeezed – one pops back into shape, the other doesn’t. You don’t have to apologize. If pressure beats you, it’s because you were weak inside. Put on some more weight and let me prove how strong I am. When people get down on you, what do you do with that – are you a piece of paper or are you a rubber ball? 7. What do you think about the perceived need for better facilities to recruit better athletes? Back in the old days, you really didn’t have to have better facilities – we now live in an age where we need this because people are attracted by what they see. It can get out of hand. In the end, it comes down to the character of the people that you chose to go to school with – when you get injured, what you need is people who believe you can come back, you need some love, you don’t care about the facilities at that point. It’s like marriage – it looks good on the front end, but there better be something inside, or you’ll get divorced pretty quickly. 8. Andy Birkel's status? Not sure that Andy Birkel will qualify for a medical redshirt – may have played just a little too much. Still not quite ready to play. He has a tremendous talent. Still a lot to learn. I appreciate you coming today and I want you to know that I’m not chastising anyone in here. There’s a time when you have to mount on eagles wings and fly. I love this about the game – the fact that there is pressure and adversity. Many players have the same questions that you have – our value is not defined about what other people think. For some of us it’s a hobby – but it’s not a hobby, it’s life. I’m coaching football, not to win another national title, the ultimate goal for me is to remind our players and our state of who God really is. If I’m overdoing that, I’ll be gone one day and that will be silenced. Don’t feel sorry for us, look at your own life. God Bless You.

A letter any recruit (or family member) should read when making their very important decision: http://www.huskerboard.com/forums/index.ph...p?showtopic=133

This is a letter written by Richie Incognito's father Joe, who goes by the user name 'Hoboken Joe' on HuskersIllustrated.com's paid subscription message board. Pretty interesting and straight from the heart. He asked that others post it on message boards, so here it is: Letter from a parent From the Parent of a Husker and damn proud of it. Let me start off by saying that this post is not directed towards any select individual or group of people. No one from the school or this board asked me to post this. Just wanted to get that straight I must first bore you with a little of my background in order for you to understand how I tick inside. I was born and raised in one of the poorest run down areas on the east coast, Union City NJ, no crying heart, just the bare facts. I lived in apartment buildings most of my youth and well into my teens. My parents were immigrants from Italy ( father ) Germany ( mother ) both are now deceased. Two brothers one sister, all alive and well. It was a hard nosed working class environment where you learned the ropes of life at a young age. You also discovered the harsh reality that you and your family were not one of the so called chosen ones. It was a community where your word was your word, it meant everything to you. It was your honor, your future, and in some instances, your life. You were witness to the fact that if you worked hard enough and kept your nose relatively clean, there was a good chance you could make it out of the city, maybe get a little house out in the suburbs and start a family. I was one of the fortunate ones to do just that. I learned a lot from those days. I often reminisce of playing all day long in the summer in the school yards. Hanging out at night. We were all kids, none of us realized we were pour because none of us ever left the neighborhood. We didn't even realize what was out there until one summer day a group of us ventured on a bus out to Paramus NJ and actually saw that there were homes with less than 10 floors and did not have flat roofs. GRASS LAWNS, that really blew my mind the first time I saw one, almost put my face through the bus window. Well enough for me, just wanted to give you a background. My Oldest son Richard, is Nebraska's Left Tackle, He is a redshirt freshman. The kid has worked very hard to get where he is today. His work ethic and spirit are beyond compare. He was not raised with a silver spoon in his mouth and the kid is very street wise as he grew up in NJ for the first 11 1/2 years of his life. It wasn't in the crap hole I grew up in, but it was a town, a small town, 6,400 people, that came from the area I grew up in and now bought one of those single family homes we all had dreamed about. All of the town raised their kids the same. No matter how rich or poor. We all raised our kids the same way we were. Family, came first, no matter what. We rode them to do good and keep clean and steer clear of trouble. Sorry for the brief biography, I just felt it necessary for you to know where and how and what ideology was put upon my son growing up. I will now fast forward to our Move to Arizona and Ritchie's' recruiting experience. About a week after school ended in my sons Sophomore year, he received a few letters from smaller schools, New Mexico, Baylor, ASU. He went on to have a great junior year. During the season of his junior year he started getting mail from a few more schools, Nebraska being one of them. Just the normal stuff, keeping him updated on the scores of the prior weeks games and so forth. About halfway through his junior year, I started to realize how much talent the good Lord had bestowed upon my son. Even though his school had a bad year ( 3-8 ) Richie had a super year. In January, right after his junior football season was over, we started getting the letters. At first 3 a week then 10 a week than 3 a day and finally right before May, he was averaging almost 30 to forty letters a week. Regular standard recruiting stuff, Camp requests, handwritten any type you could imagine, he was getting. We went from thinking," Ok, who is going to want my son." To, OH My God, I was even getting confused. I could see Richie and he went from complete and utter joy, to confusion and mixed emotions. We sat down and I told him to put his top five together and we will work on them from there. His top 5 were, and in no particular order at the time, Nebraska, Miami, Stanford, Notre Dame and Georgia Tech. We were hearing from everyone now. Remember, we did not know anything, nothing, nada, ninguno about the recruiting process. Mind you, the phone calls didn't even start yet. Yeah, there were about 5 schools calling his coach once a week, asking him to tell Richie he could call anytime he wanted. We had home numbers, work numbers, girlfriends numbers, Mother of coaches numbers. Anyplace they were going to be, they made sure, somehow, that the number was made available for my son to have. All except Nebraska, they played by the rules, no phone calls were made to us or his school until May 1 of his junior year. That was the NCAA rule at that time, I imagine now it has been tweaked some. I will not condemn any program but I will state a fact, a true fact. There are a lot of schools out there that are going to all out lie. They will tell you anything you want to hear, just to get you son to play football for their program. One particular school comes to mind, I won't name it but it is in the state of Florida and you can't go much more south in the state because you run out of land. Their line coach was in love with my son, we received hand written letters everyday. When the contact period started we got calls whenever he was allowed to call. Needed my son bad, he said, was going to build the line around him, he said, came from t he NY area so he had an in with us, he thought. I wanted to know the stability of the coaching staff, his response was," We all love it here, great place, plenty of sun year round, no one has any inclination of ever leaving here. Before the ink was dry on my sons letter of intent to Nebraska, the head coach was gone and the line coach that was never leaving was the head coach at Rutgers. Nuff said. Well I have more. Remember the five top ones my son singled out as favorites ? All of the coaches are gone, all of the coaches said the programs were the best and that they would not ever coach anywhere else, all of them except one, Nebraska. Funny thing was, none of the Nebraska coaches ever told us that they were never leaving when asked about longevity on the coaching staff. All ever replied was," Well I have been at Nebraska for so and so years and myself and my family are very happy ." I felt that an honest and fair answer. The coaches at Nebraska have never and never will fill a kid up with false hopes. Simply put, all kids get a shot of strutting their stuff, if your kid is one of the best at his position, he may get some playing time early. If he needs work at something to better himself, he will work hard, then get another shot. This board consists of parents and fans and all types of people who have varied opinions. For the most part, the people on this board don't even live in or near Nebraska. They may have lived there at some time in their life or they may just be die hard Nebraska fans. On the other hand, there are a lot of people that do live in the state. They all have an opinion. Are they all right? Of course not. One has to learn how these people tick, as I had to. You see you are dealing with the most knowledgeable, most critical, most stringent, most loyal fans in the nation. At Nebraska a good season is 10-1 and OK season is 9-2 and Heaven forbid, and unacceptable season is 8-3. That's just the pure facts and that's how high the bar is set at Nebraska. It is a school that does not want to be " competitive " in their conference. Its not a school that wants to have at least a winning season. Its not a school that wants to make a " good showing " at the game. The football team at the University of Nebraska is expected to compete for the National Championship every year. That is what instilled into the kids by the coaches and the players expect it of each other. This is not the place for any football player that has the least doubt about his skills. This is a place where only first place is acceptable, all else is considered a breakdown or failure to compete. Plain and simple facts, that's the way it is. I have entrusted my son to be raised by these people for the next four years. I am a loving father. Do you think for one minute that I would let any so called " Doomsday " person on a message board sway my sons dream. Absolutely not. Look around the internet at the activity of some other big school message boards, they are lucky to fill a screen up in a day. This team attracts the best and worst of critics. The football program at Nebraska should and cannot be judged by these so called message board critics. I pray for the love of God that no one actually follows these rantings and ravings on here. Just imagine what it would be like if all of us, the whole world drove white Chevy's because someone or group of people had something bad to say about every other make and color car. I personally think that would suck. Same for this message board, please do not judge a program by people that are not even remotely connected to the program. One thing I can attest to in regards to everyone that posts on this board, is, they all love the Nebraska Football team. Its a deep that has no end to it. I would like to add one more thing. If Norman Rockwell were still alive.( I am a fanatic about this mans work ) he would love to put Memorial stadium and its football team and fans on canvas. Nebraska Football and the city of Lincoln Nebraska is the way America was meant to be. A small town, that is clean, and mostly crime free. Great schools and just a plain old good place for a young man to learn the ropes of life from individuals who actually live a good honest clean life. The coaches are good, the school is good, the team is good, the town is good. I have nothing further to say except one thing. We have had this conversation a few times, if he were to do it over again, he would still pick Nebraska over the other top rated schools. My son was at the Rose Bowl, dressed and on the sideline. I was there in the stands. As the game progressed and it was quite evident Nebraska was not going to take home the Sears Trophy, I was wondering what was going through Ritchie's head. Was he looking over at the Miami side of the field and saying to himself " Man, I could have been on that side of the field, winning a national championship and getting a ring ." Before I got a chance to ask him what he was thinking, he was asked by one of his coaches, Ron Brown. They sat together on the bus ride back to the hotel from the Rose Bowl. As they spoke Ron looked Richie in the eyes and asked " Well Richie, still think you picked the right team to play for?" Without hesitation my son told me he looked Ron right in the eye and replied " I picked the right team coach. I wouldn't trade playing for Nebraska for anything, not even a National Championship. Besides, our turn is coming real soon. I picked the right team coach and have no regrets." For anyone who has the knowledge please put this up on the other boards if you please. Thank You Hoboken Joe

Article Published: Monday, September 29, 2003 big 12 football Civility becomes casualty Kansas-Missouri rude awakening By Bill Briggs Denver Post Sports Writer LAWRENCE, Kan. - The Civil War still lives in the thin aisle dividing sections 45 and 46. You think I'm joking. On the left, trying not to notice the salty spray of anti-Missouri F-bombs hurled in their direction, a mini-mob of Tigers fans squirmed in their corner-stadium seats. They grit their teeth beneath black ballcaps. To their immediate right, crammed into an airtight but well-oiled mass, much of the University of Kansas student body weaved in the Indian summer sunshine. The only thing bluer than their Jayhawks T-shirts was their language. Black and blue. Let's hope not. "Rock chalk chicken hawk!" growled Missouri student Ben, butchering the famous Kansas chant. He was annoyed because someone swiped the Tigers flag he and four dorm buddies affixed to their car Friday night before road-tripping from Columbia, Mo. "Missouri fans wear blue jean shorts!" a KU kid hollered through cupped hands, zinging the Show Me State's southern roots. This was stop No. 3 on The Denver Post's tour of Big 12 football venues. Each Saturday, I sport the visiting team's colors to test the home fans' warmth. And the sold- out house at Memorial Stadium gave me the hardest dose to date of nose-to-nose intensity - not to mention an elbow to my spinal column. They call this game the "Border War." And while many folks in Colorado or California may consider Missouri and Kansas interchangeable prairie territories, natives of each cringe when they have to cross the state line. Heck, Kansas won't even send its marching band to Missouri games anymore because Tigers fans dented the tubas by pelting them with beer bottles. More tragic: Some of the bottles were still full. They've now met 112 times - the second most-played college series in the country. Going into Saturday, the record was a bit tight: 51-51-9. "This isn't a rivalry. This is war," former Kansas football coach Don Fambrough said. "I've known some real nice people to move to Missouri and in one week's time, they're just the biggest nothings you've ever seen. I always thought maybe they gave them an inoculation of meanness at the border." Former KU quarterback John Hadl recalls a postgame skirmish in the streets of Columbia in the early 1960s while he drove three passengers back to Kansas. At a stoplight, a carload of Missouri students began firing obscene gestures at Hadl and his buddies. What the Tigers fans didn't know: Hadl had his entire backfield in the back seat, including 212-pound human biceps Curtis McClinton. "Soon as Clinton jumped out, you should have seen their eyeballs. They threw it in low and peeled out," Hadl said. "We don't like them and they don't like us." That mutual dislike, apparently passed on for generations, stretches back to the Civil War. People in Missouri, which was part of the Confederacy, still talk about the band of Kansas rangers who, trumpeting the cause of anti- slavery, burned and plundered a string of Missouri towns in the early 1860s, killing hundreds of people in their wake. They were dubbed the "jayhawkers." Folks in Kansas still talk about William Quantrill, a confederate captain who assembled a group of Missouri guerrillas, mostly farmers, to retaliate for the jayhawker attacks. On Aug. 23, 1863, Quantrill led his 300 followers in a brutal attack on Lawrence, burning tall buildings and killing between 150 and 200 of the town's men. "Our hatred goes back 150 years. It is born of bloodshed and fundamental differences that have never been resolved," Brad Burgess wrote on a Missouri fan message board days before the game. "I really dislike Kansas. No, I hate Kansas." Walking through the hilly Kansas campus - wearing a black Missouri sweat shirt with gold lettering - the taunts from Jayhawks students were fairly direct: "Go home!" "Get bent!" Several KU students in "Win Or Lose We'll Still Booze" shirts took their slogan to new lengths and shouted lusty "boos" 3 inches from my ear. Two KU cheerleaders smiled beneath blue hair bows and then barked: "Missouri blows!" Even the band heckled me, howling: "Get off our campus!" as I walked by their warm-up spot outside an academic building. One young Jayhawker, with his hat turned sideways, spotted me about a quarter-mile from Memorial Stadium. "I want YOU after the game!" he screamed. On the stadium's south side, one KU tailgater, Anthony Francisco, even showed up in shoulder pads. "Yeah, we've had a lot of good trash-talking with Missouri fans today," said Francisco, a senior business major. "It's a house divided." That house - about 80 percent in home blue - erupted when Kansas scored first and led 7-0. The home fans extended their arms as if to signal touchdown, then began waving them wildly above their heads, back and forth. This is called "waving the wheat," which gives the impression of a breezy Kansas farm field. When Kansas scored again, and led 21-14, some fans broke out their "Rock Chalk Jayhawk" chant. This was invented in 1886 by KU chemistry professor F.H.S. Bailey after returning from a convention in Wichita. The rhythmic clicks of the train gave him the cadence. Away from the swearing and chanting, several hundred KU and Missouri fans watched peacefully and for free on Campanile Hill, a grassy slope overlooking the field. The back of the end-zone scoreboard blocks much of the game, but the hill provided a serene atmosphere with families snuggling on blankets and groups of young boys tossing footballs. Back in the fan trenches, how- ever, the aisle between sections 45 and 46 was filling fast with KU students lining up to rush the field below. As Missouri fans sat silent, the jumping Jayhawks students blasted them with chants of "overrated" and "get out now." Some waved goodbye with Tigers jerseys. And when Kansas bumped its lead to 35-14, the students thundered downward toward the field - and three terrified-looking security guards in yellow jackets. One KU kid slammed an elbow into my back, which caused me to fall into the woman in front, which sparked a human domino effect of sad Missourians. The Kansas students swarmed the field after game's final second. It took them just three minutes to bring down the south goalpost and even less time to drop the north. Like ants lugging leaves, small groups of students hoisted separate chunks of the yellow uprights and began jogging out of the stadium in a thick throng. They were headed up Campanile Hill and then to nearby Potter Lake where the posts would get a good dunking. "If you are carrying a piece of the north goalpost," the stadium announcer pleaded, "we suggest you walk, not run." http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,3...1663459,00.html

Article Published: Monday, October 06, 2003 big 12 football Tension & tortillas A&M's return to Texas Tech cause for concern By Bill Briggs Denver Post Sports Writer LUBBOCK, Texas - It is 1:25 in the tortilla-flippin' morning, but the party is raging again. Horns blare, a Lil' Kim beat rattles the recreational vehicles and, minutes after the last snap, weary fans of the Aggies and Red Raiders peacefully gobble smoked brisket. It's surely better than the postgame feast in 2001 - when visiting Texas A&M rooters had to eat goalpost. It got ugly in Lubbock after Texas Tech won 12-0 that year. In the worst moment of a volatile rivalry, a mob of Tech students yanked down the goalposts and tried to stuff them into a bleacher section thick with Aggies. A brawl erupted. The Texas governor's then-chief of staff, Mike McKinney, got slugged and bloodied by a fellow A&M backer. Tech officials apologized and vowed to snuff future fan violence. Saturday night, the schools returned to the scene of the crime. A 9:10 p.m. CDT kickoff - after two full days of tailgating - infused Jones SBC Stadium with a double shot of tension. Or maybe that came from the small army of cops patrolling the place. This was stop No. 4 on The Denver Post's Big 12 tour. At each football venue, I wear the visiting team's attire to test the home fans' hospitality. Before the series, 34 readers e-mailed the newspaper to vent about the Red Raiders' faithful, some calling them the nastiest bunch in the NCAA. Many complainers were A&M alums who witnessed the Tech melee and double-dog-dared me to go to West Texas. "Wear your A&M gear (and) 12th Man jersey. If you make it out of Lubbock alive, you have done something incredible," wrote Justin Schwertner. At the TexAgs.com chat room last week, one A&M rooter suggested I attend "in full body armor," and another wrote, "I hope his insurance is paid up." So I upped my dental coverage and spent last week in the weight room. No need. No Texas chain saw massacres. Just 12 hours of rival revival. * 1:25 p.m. The tailgaters, flying flags from both schools, continue their second afternoon of "game-prep" in a strip-mall parking lot next to the stadium. They suck down brisket, hot dogs and roasted corn along with a river of draft beer. Barbecue smoke swirls above their RV city. Atop a pickup truck painted with the words "Geezers Gone Wild," a Santa Claus lawn ornament dressed in Red Raiders garb hoists a piece of yellow goalpost. * 7:20 p.m. This is a tough ticket - unless you're in law enforcement. Police on foot, horseback, bikes and motorcycles cruise the streets and parking lots. There are cops in cowboy hats, cops on platforms, cops in a camper watching video screens. One of the fresh safety strategies employed by Texas Tech athletic director Gerald Myers is to swamp the area with officers. They're assigned to arrest anyone obviously intoxicated. "We have probably the biggest number of security working this game that we've ever had," Myers says. He would not reveal the size of the force. Put it this way: They have their own section of bleachers. * 7:36 p.m. Dennis Smith, a Tech fan from Lubbock, takes a pull on a Coors beneath pictures of infamous Aggies fan McKinney. TV cameras caught the image after the 2001 fracas: McKinney's A&M hat is askew, his face bloodied. Smith smirks while reading his home-brewed caption, "Ticket to the Tech game $75.00. Stadium hot dog $3.00. Watching Aggies beat each other up priceless." * 7:59 p.m. The A&M band, dressed in brown uniforms and boots, marches down Fourth Street and into the stadium. Their spurs jingle on the pavement, and Aggies fans cheer as they stride by. A&M was so concerned about the band's safety, the band nearly stayed home. It took a special meeting last week of top A&M officials to OK the trip. * 8:46 p.m. I take my seat smack in the middle of the Tech section above the 50-yard line. To my left is Bert, a hardscrabble guy who served on the battleship USS California during World War II. Bert once traded live shells with the Japanese navy, he tells me. His message is painfully clear: "Don't even start with me, Aggie Boy." "Go team," I whisper. * 9:07 p.m. The Masked Rider, a Tech student in a red cape, leads the home team on the field, galloping atop a black horse named Midnight Matador. The crowd roars. In 1994, a similar noise spooked then-mascot Double T, which threw its rider and then crashed headfirst into a concrete ramp. Double T died. Like a dad fibbing to his kids that the old family dog went to live "on a farm," visiting coach Dennis Franchione lied to his shocked New Mexico team: "The horse is gonna be OK, fellas." New Mexico lost anyway, 37-31. * 9:10 p.m. Kickoff. * 9:16 p.m. Tech scores on its first possession, picking apart the A&M defense with a flurry of pinpoint passes. Several fans hurl tortillas on the field, a tradition since 1989. * 9:30 p.m. Tech quarterback B.J. Symons throws something, too - footballs. All night. All over the field. His second touchdown pass puts the Red Raiders up 14-0. He throws eight TD passes during the game, a Big 12 record. "That's less than three minutes per touchdown!" chirps Tech fan Dale in front of me. "It's too easy, man!" I open my mouth, but Bert flashes me a stern look. "Yes, much too easy. And for that, I am sorry," I say. * 10:49 p.m. Just before halftime, the Red Raiders score again and lead 31-14. The only guy more exhausted than the A&M defensive backs is Mike Van Kleek. Wearing a green camouflage uniform, Van Kleek is one of six Tech students in the Army ROTC who fire blank shells in a black cannon each time the Red Raiders kick off, score, boot a field goal or tack on an extra point. They also trigger the big gun after the national anthem, at halftime and after the game. The cannon will roar 28 times, several after midnight. You had better be a Tech fan if you live in Lubbock. Or sleep with earplugs. * 11:43 p.m. God help us, it's still the third quarter. With their team trailing 45-14, A&M band drummers Bryan Naradory and Justin Partlow wander to the concession stand for a Coke. In their buzz cuts and crisp brown uniforms, the two stand out against the milling crowd of shaggy students. "We haven't given up, sir!" Naradory says. "And our team never loses. We just run out of time." "Can you guys run out of time any faster?" I ask. * 11:50 p.m. A Lubbock cop escorts four tipsy Tech students from the stadium. They demand his badge number. He waves and smiles. It has been a relatively quiet night, he tells me, with just a handful of people arrested for public intoxication. That's surprising, given the marathon tailgating session. "When I heard the kickoff was going to be at 9 p.m., I thought to myself, 'They'd better not light a match near the student section,"' says Tech alum Chris Snead. "It might blow out the east side of the building." * 12:45 a.m. The clock ticks down. About a dozen officers encircle each goalpost and watch the stands nervously. Myers has installed collapsible uprights. The field crew has been practicing, he says. They can dismantle the posts in less than a minute. * 12:49 a.m. It's finally over. Tech wins 59-28. Myers is a man of his word: The field crew drops the goalposts in about 30 seconds. Ringing the field, officers stare down any students who even think of running on the artificial grass. There is no replay of 2001. * 1 a.m. The crowd files quietly into the night as the public address system oozes the warm strains of "Happy Trails." Many hum that song all the way to the parking lot. http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,3...1679081,00.html

Article Published: Monday, October 13, 2003 big 12 football 'Red army' invades Faurot Field on wrong night By Bill Briggs Denver Post Sports Writer COLUMBIA, Mo. - I've been absorbed by the horde. Just outside Missouri's Faurot Field - in the heart of enemy football territory - several top generals of Cornhusker Nation closed their grills, circled their crimson- colored RVs and offered me their secret initiation ritual. I can only reveal that the ceremony involved two milking machines, four hogs and an awkward hug from Tom Osborne. But it was worth the pain. I now am a full-blooded member of the "red army," - that Saturday convoy of Huskers backers who clog college towns from Boulder to Austin - and who sometimes saturate visiting stadiums in a sea of red. My lowly rank in the "corngregation": kernel. My assignment: serve Jammal Lord. "Glad to have you, man," said Chas Gaddis, a Missouri junior from Omaha who suffered a week of taunts for wearing his Nebraska colors on the Columbia campus. "Remember, you always represent for the Huskers, no matter where you go." That was the first of five Huskers tenets I learned as a red army grunt. During week No. 5 of The Denver Post's Big 12 tour, I also got a taste of the cold shoulder the "cob mob" sometimes receives at away games. Each Saturday, I wear the visiting team's garb to a Big 12 game to test the home fans' hospitality. In Missouri, the red army is treated more gently than in Norman, Okla., (where some fans were sprayed with beer) or in Boulder (where some were pelted with snowballs and obscenities), according to Huskers fans. But they exactly don't roll out the red carpet, either. (Actually, Nebraska brings its own.) On Saturday night, the Missouri fans gave the Nebraskans a sneering respect. Overall, they were tolerated but not welcomed, teased but not mocked. Losing has everything to do with that. Entering the game, the Tigers had dropped 24 straight to the Huskers. If anyone in the student section was alive to see that last Missouri win, they need to spend more time studying and less time trying to build the perfect beer bong. Missouri also lacks the deep football traditions of other Big 12 schools - no live farm animals racing around the field after touchdowns, no mascots with shotguns. But like most colleges, they get mighty revved up for the Huskers. "Are these games always this intense?" I asked Dawn, the Missouri fan next to me who tried incredibly hard not to make eye contact with a guy in red. "No. We really dislike Nebraska," she said. "That attitude ..." "Attitude? You mean because the Huskers always win?" "See," Dawn said, "that's what I'm talking about." Indeed, a few Missouri fans clenched their teeth and referred to me as "friend," the way some women call other women "ma'am" yet actually mean another word. But it never got nasty. Not with almost one-sixth of the stadium teeming with Huskers rooters. Although the conference allotted 4,000 tickets for visiting Nebraska fans, Missouri officials expected 10,000 Huskers to blend with the capacity crowd of 68,349. There were sweeping pockets of red in all corners of the upper levels and the southwest stands. Among them were Bob and Colleen Billings of Omaha, retirees who haven't missed a Nebraska road game since 1994. Their home answering machine identifies the Billings as "Big Red fans" and their dog is named "Lady Husker." They drove five hours to Columbia in a motor home. "We're just nuts, but we enjoy doing it," Bob Billings said. Some 2,000 websites are devoted to the Huskers. Wedding plans are affected by the games. That passion is rooted in the state's sweeping sparseness, many fans said. The football team is the only game around, the one event that rallies the masses and gets them moving, thousands at a time. At the 2002 Rose Bowl, a California newspaper carried the headline: "Our beaches are being stormed by Omaha." Two years earlier, at a Notre Dame game in South Bend, Ind., Huskers fans snatched up nearly 30,000 tickets and drenched the stadium in red. Last season, when Nebraska traveled to Happy Valley for a game, one Penn State backer urged Nittany Lions faithful not to sell their tickets to Nebraska fans. He called it "Operation Visine - to get the red out." It didn't stop Bob and Colleen Billings from buying two tickets and driving more than 1,000 miles east. "You love it, you do it," Bob said. But they usually do it with class. That was one of the five tenets Huskers insiders taught me: 1. Be polite. "You keep your mouth where it's supposed to be and you don't have problems," Bob Billings said. Huskers fans are considered some of the best sports in the Big 12. 2. Hate Oklahoma. Despite their niceness, this is the rule because of an old, bitter football rivalry, according to John Potter, a Nebraska junior who wore a giant corncob hat and red face paint to the Missouri game. 3. When you hear another Huskers fan chant, you must join in - any time, any place, Gaddis said. 4. If you don't live in Nebraska, you never admit to that, said Vicki Ragole of Omaha. For example, if you live in Colorado, you tell people you "live in western Nebraska," she said. 5. Spread the seed. Wear Nebraska red to games far and wide, especially into hostile country. In Florida, which has a few decent college football teams, Bob Billings has converted some of his winter Sunshine State neighbors into Huskers rooters, convincing several to don the red. But the Missouri game tested the first rule of Huskerdom as the Tigers upset Nebraska 41-24 with a fourth-quarter points explosion and a satchel of trick plays. As Missouri students merrily toted pieces of the goalpost through the jammed streets of Columbia, the Nebraskans packed up their tents and grills and prepared for a long night's drive home. Missouri report card TAILGATING: B+, This has to be one of the largest pregame parties in the Big 12 with soirees stretched out for nearly a mile down a hill near the stadium. Fans are allowed to stroll the area openly with beers. But it lacks the intimacy of more compact tailgating scenes. (3.5 points out of 4.0 possible) STUDENT SUPPORT: B, A sea of black shirts - except for the front row of guys who wore only body paint on a night of drizzle. They often chanted M-I-Z to the rest of the stadium's Z-O-U. Wild and loud. (3.0) GAME-DAY ATMOSPHERE: C, Take away Nebraska, and you get the feeling the passion would be cranked down several notches. Not many unique rituals. Still, the place was Tiger-striped from head to toe -- women wore tiger ears, cars were affixed with tiger tails. But can they do something about the stadium gridlock? Narrow walkways inside cause massive human traffic jams. (2.0) TRASH-TALKING: C, At the game, it rarely got beyond jawing between rival students. On the Internet, it was better. One Nebraska fan e-mailed a picture of the famous Notre Dame game when the Huskers' rooters swamped the Irish's stadium in red. A Mizzou fan fired back: "Now step away from mommy's computer and hurry along or you'll be late for your day shift at Mickey D's." (2.0) FEAR FACTOR: A, A few drunken Missouri students screamed and slurred at Nebraskans as they walked to the game, but it never got serious. (4.0) GOOD WINNERS/POOR LOSERS: A, Missouri fans were so caught up in the winning, most Huskers backers slipped out without notice. (4.0) GPA: 3.08 http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,3...1694896,00.html

Article Published: Monday, October 20, 2003 big 12 football Fans at Kansas State too difficult to satisfy By Bill Briggs Denver Post Sports Writer MANHATTAN, Kan. - These days, reality bites in the "Little Apple." Sure, the home folks are swaddled in purple, but some fans are singing the football blues as Kansas State routs Colorado 49-20 on a dazzling autumn afternoon. They moan at their coach, they curse at their defense and they call their quarterback, Ell Roberson, "Ellie." Funny, because Roberson has set two school records and pushed Kansas State to a cushy lead over the Buffaloes. Not much to complain about, you would think. Unless your team once flirted with brilliance. And now is merely good. Away from this shower of self- criticism, a few hundred Colorado fans in two tiny clumps cheer for the Buffs in black-and-gold anonymity. No need for extra cops in the aisles or sportsmanship pleas on the KSU Stadium scoreboard. The K-Staters barely notice when we sing the CU fight song. It's all about them. This was Week 6 of The Denver Post's trek through Big 12 football country. At each stadium, I sit with the home fans while wearing the visiting team's garb. That kind of color mixing has sparked some verbal abuse - or at least has drawn notice. But on the grassy slope of the north end zone, where Wildcats rooters are baking in black folding chairs, some fans hold long conversations around me (about hunting or the hot weather) while others pepper only the home team with thoughtful suggestions. "Why don't you just LET them score? They're gonna score anyway!" "Hey, how about we can actually tackle someone on this drive!" "Ellie, you might want to change your skirt at halftime!" Strong safety Rashad Washington heard it from the guy behind me. And all Washington did was block two punts, leading to a safety and a touchdown against the Buffs. As coach Bill Snyder walks through the end-zone seats at halftime - with his team leading 15-13 - he is teased about his hairline and mocked for having the Wildcats kneel down to end the second quarter. All Snyder did was take K-State from the very portrait of a putrid (0-11 in 1988, 1-10 in 1989) and put it in the national title picture by the late 1990s. Of course, that's the deal in Manhattan. The fan psyche is defined by a short memory and tall expectations. In 1989, Sports Illustrated dubbed K-State "Futility U," the first football team to lose 500 times. When it rained, the cramped locker room flooded. Barbells in the weight room were coated with rust. The Wildcats couldn't beat the likes of Austin Peay or Northern Iowa. Back then, the fans at a half-full KSU Stadium erupted in giggles over the hapless play between K-State and Kansas one afternoon. They couldn't help themselves, recalls John Fairman, the Wildcats' director of licensing. It was a comedy of turnovers and bad snaps. Then Fairman wondered: "Is getting laughed at worse than being booed?" Enrollment was down, fund-raising had stalled, K-State merchandise was as hip as Bea Arthur and the football team had no tradition, no buzz, no believers. But when Snyder hit Manhattan, the school piped millions of dollars into its sagging football facilities and eventually added 2 million square feet total to the campus. Alums noticed: Fundraising jumped from $4 million in 1986 to $86 million last year. In 1989, Snyder changed the cartoonish "Willie the Wildcat" logo to the more menacing Powercat design. Fans bought it: K-State retail sales, which earned about $14,000 in 1987, topped $1.5 million last year. Mostly, though, Snyder began luring scintillating talent to wake up the dormant program. He had them in a low-level bowl game in 1993; he had them playing the Cotton and Fiesta bowls in the late 1990s. School president Jon Wefald gave the turnaround a one in 1,000 chance when he arrived in 1986. The rise came so swiftly, Wefald has said, it's "in the realm of biblical miracles." Eleven-win seasons became the norm, then they became the culture. So a 6-6 autumn, which recently beset K-State, or the 5-3 ride they're on now, has some 'Cats fans a tad finicky. "The wheels are off," K-State backer "RioCat" posted last week on a Wildcats message board. "It seems like the old-school people do remember the bad times, so they're probably more in defense of us," said Sean Snyder, Bill's son, who punted for the Wildcats in the early 1990s. Today, he heads K-State's football operations. "You know, they realize it could be 0-10, 0-11 and it's not. But those people have grown accustomed to wins, too. There are a lot of armchair quarterbacks out there." That includes the jet stream of new students pushing enrollment figures to fresh heights - one of the pleasant spinoffs of K-State's success. But as Wefald, one of the architects of the plan, will tell you: "Our students don't know it any other way." They may be a tad bit spoiled. With the Wildcats up 29-13 in the third quarter, the Buffs tossed a sideline completion good for 1 yard. "Come on," I shouted. "We need more than that to get back in this game." "Come on," shouted Deke, a student behind me. "That's 1 yard too many." More than perhaps any other student section in the Big 12, K-State kids are more focused on cheering the boys in purple than dissing anyone nearby in black and gold. In these days of nasty fan clashes, that kind of throwback behavior is welcome. The only near encounter I had in my back Buffaloes sweat shirt was with a passing student wearing only a purple K on his chest who silently shook his head as he stared me down. Other than that, I may as well have been invisible. So are the losers, normally taunted and tormented as they leave any Big 12 field. After a group of CU players finish some quiet reflection in their end-zone prayer circle, they stand and walk through the K-State fans in the north end zone. The Wildcatters merely make a hole and let the Buffs pass through in silence. Kansas State report card TAILGATING: C+ - They take over two full parking lots on the east and west sides of the stadium in a generally low-key, pregame assembly. You can't really call it a party. The music is muted. Most folks are sprawled in lawn chairs. But the food is pure Midwest: lots of steaks. Not as many RVs as you see at some Big 12 schools, but few Buffs fans made the drive for this game. (2.5 points out of 4.0 possible) STUDENT SUPPORT: A - Maybe the hardest working bunch in the Big 12. After touchdowns, the kids pass classmates horizontally through the stands in the always fun sport of crowd surfing. As many as 10 students at a time are lifted onto a sea of hands and passed up the section toward the concourse. They shook sparkily purple and silver pompoms and did a strange back-and-forth dance that looked like it may be some sort of rain ritual - or chicken imitation. (4.0) GAME-DAY ATMOSPHERE: C - They did cheer loudly and late between gripes and groans. And the place was bathed in purple. But often, the game seemed more like a laid-back baseball atmosphere than a college football game day. (2.0) TRASH TALKING: D - With two programs entering the game on downward spins, nobody was chest-thumping about his team. The best of the trash talking was saved for the home team - by the home fans. (1.0) FEAR FACTOR: A - I would be scared only if I were a K-State player who lost a home game. The fans were totally focused on their team and paid little attention to the small contingent of Buffs rooters. (4.0) GOOD WINNERS/POOR LOSERS: A - Usually after a blowout, you can at least count on the home students for some good ribbing. The only comment I got while strolling through the pregame tailgate parties in black and gold: "Hey, how'd it go in there?" (4.0) * GPA: 2.91 http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,3...1710367,00.html

Article Published: Monday, October 27, 2003 big 12 football CU fans not so bad to this 'OU backer' By Bill Briggs Denver Post Sports Writer Buffaloes fans, it's time to face an ugly truth - aside from your football team, that is. All across the heartland, you are considered by many to be the meanest fans in the Big 12 Conference, spewing equal parts beer and bad language at folks who don't happen to dress in black and gold. Your reputation stinks worse than Ralphie's pen. According to recent Folsom Field visitors from Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma and Nebraska, they have been bopped with batteries, spattered with spit, punched in the neck, shoved in the back, cursed for wearing crimson, belittled as "hillbillies" and - in one case - urinated on. (Just so you know, there's no "p" in team.) The CU student section gets much of the blame. But not all. "Your fans are notoriously lewd and unsportsmanlike," Justin Stout, a Kansas State student, told me last week. "The ultimate in poor fans." One stunning indictment came from within the Buffs' own family, from a CU backer named Dan. "I hate to say this," he told me, "but I think you will find out that CU fans - students mostly - are by far the worst fans in the Big 12." Fair or not, this is the not-so- golden helmet you collectively wear these days. Similarly bitter calls and e-mails to The Denver Post prompted the newspaper to send me to each Big 12 venue this fall to compare the Longhorns faithful, the Huskers lovers and the rest of the conference rowdies. At each stadium, I wear the visiting team's colors to taste a big gulp of home crowd hospitality. Week 7 in this tour - Oklahoma at Colorado - offered a football test for Gary Barnett's boys and a chance to examine the theory of Buffs acting badly. I wore a crimson-and-cream Oklahoma sweat shirt, strolled through tailgate parties, sat with OU fans, walked through the student section and circled the CU stadium three times. A quick synopsis: You're not as bad as they say. Using the exact critiques of your rival fans, here's a blow-by-blow assessment from the OU game: * Claim No. 1 - "I have never taken so much abuse from home team fans as I have in Boulder," Walter Hill, a 62-year-old Sooners fan from Oklahoma City, shared with me before the game. The Saturday night reality: One woman in Sooners garb said she saw CU fans toss lit cigarettes at other OU rooters, including some children. The main items I saw thrown were angry looks after Sooners scores. * Claim No. 2 - Again from Hill: "If I were you, I sure would not pose as an OU fan. You will surely risk life and limb." The Saturday night reality: Limbs remained intact. Life, well that's another story. * Claim No. 3 - Back to Stout's comments that CU fans are "unsportsmanlike." The Saturday night reality: CU fans strafed one sideline referee with f-bombs after a questionable call. But there were only a few boos for the Sooners' players. (Nebraska actually earned the most boos - when its winning score was flashed in the stadium.) After the game, which the top-ranked Sooners won 34-20, I heard several homers tell the OU rooters they had the best team in the land and wished them a safe drive home. * Claim No. 4 - Describing past trips to Folsom Field, Jim Waite, a 76-year-old Oklahoma City resident, said: "On several occasions, we were showered with beer, a solid stream, slung in an arc, apparently to get as many of us as possible." The Saturday night reality: One OU fan said she saw folks wearing black and gold hurl several cups of what appeared to be beer at an Oklahoma section. * Claim No. 5 - "CU fans threw batteries and rocks wrapped in marshmallows at the Tech band last year," said Bill Langford, who graduated from Texas Tech in 1987 and now lives in Atlanta. The Saturday night reality: CU students engaged in a marshmallow war at halftime, peppering each other with the mushy white blobs until a hail stone-like pile collected in the stadium's southeast corner. A few saved their candy bombs for the OU players as they lined up to receive the second-half kickoff. A dozen or so marshmallows made it to the players' cleats. * Claim No. 6 - Folsom Field "is a wasteland of ignorant and, apparently, uncouth fans. To say that my family - which includes the Husker Nation - will never return to Folsom Field is the sports understatement of the decade," Nebraska backer Tim Butler wrote to The Post after a recent game. In a follow-up interview last week, Butler said, "Old ladies and young people alike screamed angry f-bombs while walking to our seats." The Saturday night reality: The language can get a little rugged. One OU fan told me he was "cussed out six times" because he wore an Oklahoma hat. But that's true of many Big 12 venues these days, including Iowa State and Kansas. And as far as rival fans never coming back to Folsom Field, Sooners fans packed the north end of the stadium and sometimes drowned out CU rooters with their cheers. Boorishness may be fueled by success. The Buffs' sudden jump into the top 10 in 1989 and into the 1990s unleashed decades of doormat frustrations. It also sparked small uprisings of rudeness that seem to have tainted CU fans throughout the Big 12. But with humility comes hospitality. This season, CU has sputtered to a 3-5 record and many of the home fans seem to have lost their angry steam. Even our usher in Section 1 predicted before the opening kickoff Saturday: "You're going to kick our butts." Still, one glassy-eyed frat boy found something to brag about when we crossed paths during the game: "Hey, we're No. 1 in partying, man! It's the battle of No. 1s!" http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,3...1725813,00.html

Article Published: Monday, November 03, 2003 big 12 football Texas under Brown cloud By Bill Briggs, Denver Post Sports Writer AUSTIN, Texas - It's one thing to waltz into the heart of Texas draped in Nebraska red. You get a few frosty stares. It's quite another to invade the home of the 'Horns and publicly suggest their football coach be canned. Then, you get handshakes, grins and offers of home-cooked meals. Always looking to make new friends, I did both Saturday as the Huskers and their red horde caravanned to Austin. It also marked Week 8 of The Denver Post's visiting-fan tour of Big 12 houses. Over my Nebraska jersey, I wore an orange tee emblazoned with a surprisingly fashionable slogan: FireMackBrown.com "That is a QUALITY shirt!" one Texas rooter hollered from a parking lot tailgate party, hoisting his beer in tribute. "That needs to happen!" chirped a concession cashier as she handed me a tortilla-cradled sausage. "We want him gone," grumbled Peter, a 28-year-old University of Texas alum and one of 10 fuming Longhorns fans behind the Fire- Mack website. They launched the virtual venting room after Arkansas stunned Texas 38-28 on Sept. 13. Brown, they charge, "has no gumption and freezes during critical games like a gutless coward." Yeah, it's getting a tad personal in Texas, where life is big and football is bigger. A homegrown Mack Attack is buzzing through the bleachers like a verbal version of "the wave." It's a civil war set amid a gorgeous football still life: Bevo, a longhorn steer, snoozes on a grass slope above one end zone while a torrent of rowdies in burnt orange flash "hook 'em horns" finger signs and female cheerleaders prance in chaps. "Don't get beat up wearing that shirt," Peter warned me before the game. Hardly. I could have run for governor - or the even loftier position of athletic director. One fan offered me a gulp of his smuggled rum-and-coke to toast the possibilities of a Mack-less team. Another guy promised the keys to his boat if I could "make Mack go away." Brown's sinking popularity seems to defy the numbers - since arriving six seasons ago, his Longhorns squads have gone 56-17, played in five straight bowls and drifted occasionally into the top 5. He's considered a master recruiter. His worst year was 9-5. By comparison, Gary Barnett's Colorado team went 3-8 in 2000 and must win out this season to go 6-6. Here's the problem: Brown's program is most certainly not OK. That is, blood rival Oklahoma has stormed past UT on the football charts - and whipped the Longhorns four straight times along the way. Texas lays 60 points on the New Mexico States and Tulanes of the world, but Brown's team is 4-9 against top-10 opponents. And the 65-13 loss to OU three weeks ago in Dallas cranked the in-house hostility to new heights. The FireMackBrown website got about 1 million hits in the three days after the blowout. "Historically speaking, you can't underestimate the power of the mob," Peter said. He asked that his last name not be printed because the website has received some threats from the pro-Mack Brown crowd. This is Texas, after all. The site offers T-shirts, hats and beer koozies that spread the message. An online poll asks whether Brown should be shown the door: 21,422 have voted to fire him, 18,715 want to keep him - most of whom, Peter said, are sarcastic Oklahoma or Texas A&M fans. Celebrity head shots are topped with wise-cracking thought balloons - Don Zimmer: "At least I'm a fighter"; a Cubs logo: "Welcome to the club"; Al Gore: "What a loser"; Bill Clinton: "Mmmm, college girls." The dump-Mack movement got even hotter after 29-year-old Texas fan and insurance agent Jed Schmidt was quoted in The New York Times last month complaining about the team's direction and urging Brown to fire his top assistants. To the shock of Longhorn Nation, Brown phoned Schmidt personally before the Oklahoma game to criticize his remarks. "I kind of want Mack Brown to call me," Peter said. "I want to convince him to do the right thing. He just needs to be put out to pasture. He's earned a lifetime position to some fictitious job like assistant AD." "I've been anti-Mack for a while," Ryan Dawson, a 29-year- old alum, told me while walking to buy a brat at the Nebraska game. "He doesn't have a lot of heart." But as the threats to the website show, people are polarized in Austin. Brown seems to have the firm backing of the big-money boosters who hired him. When I wore the shirt past a pregame party of 50-something brie eaters in burnt orange, I evoked grimaces and groans. And the bullhorn-voiced man who sat two rows behind me in section 16 - urging Texas to score a touchdown on every single play - saw my FireMack message and flashed a horrified look, as if the shirt read Save The Cows. "You want to go back to John Mackovic (a former UT coach)? We were 4-7 under him! Thanks anyway, friend," the man said. Everything changed once I slipped off the FireMack shirt and exposed just the Nebraska jersey. I suddenly was invisible to the cheering Longhorns fans inside Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium. No taunts, no barbs, no "Husker go home." As Nebraska coach Frank Solich tried to crack the Texas defense, no one seemed to care about the fans of an overrated team getting walloped 31-7. No one, except one woman adorned in red beads and red sweater who saw me clutching the FireMack shirt. "Fire Mack Brown?" she said. "How about fire Frank Solich?" Don't look now, lady, but according to Network Solutions, a website called FireSolich.com is now "under construction and coming soon." http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,3...1740859,00.html

Article Published: Monday, November 10, 2003 big 12 football Little ditty sets the tone to Stillwater Country tune sums up Cowboys By Bill Briggs Denver Post Sports Writer STILLWATER, Okla. - An hour before the Texas Longhorns and Oklahoma State Cowboys kicked off, I was buzzing down Peaceable Acres Road in my rented Ford F-150. (Hertz threw in a free hound dog and gun rack along with unlimited miles). As I sipped my Cowboy Springs premium bottled water, a country-western song crackled on the AM radio. The tune was hauntingly familiar but the words were new and strange. The ditty was about - what else? - losin,' lyin' and drinkin'. Garth Brooks' alma mater marked stop No. 10 of The Denver Post's tour of Big 12 football venues. Oklahoma State has had a long, strange trip of its own: a flirtation with success during the 1980s Barry Sanders era, a bottoming out in the early 1990s following a cheating scandal and, now, a renewed taste of the good times. The whole roller-coaster ride has been washed in country denim - a laid-back and durable corps of fans. Coming off a 52-9 loss to Oklahoma, the home team needed some perking up, the DJ said. So he was dedicating the ballad, "Stillwater Blues," to coach Les Miles, his players and all the fans filing into Boone Pickens Stadium. It mirrored the melody to "Your Cheatin' Heart" and now I can't get the stupid thing out of my head: Their hats were orange And their mullets brown. Still Sooner-bruised Like rodeo clowns. Now the 'Horns rolled in, A burnt-orange flock. How they needed this: A Chance to Mock. So they settled in To their bleacher seats. Cheered the home mascot Named Pistol Pete. Sporting black mustache And cowboy hat: Village People style But firing a gat. With Bullet the horse And Pete's quick-draw charms: A celebration of The right to bear arms 'Course it should be known A way back when, The REAL Pistol Pete Once killed five men. Back to the game, A real butt-whippin.' To buy Les a clue We should all chip in. Cuz the Pokes' boss, Miles Saw his defense drown. But so much worse: Outcoached by Mack Brown. Texas ran wild And boos could be heard. Boone Pickens cleared Halfway through the third. But you never should Expect no greater In a place named for A corporate raider. 'Least they're scandal free! And no 10-loss seasons. Like after boosters Did some palm-greasin'. See in '89 To bring touchdown spikes, They gave free money To Hart Lee Dykes. So no postgame smiles. No Heisman pose. Bought a girl a beer At Eskimo Joe's. But not Cowboy Springs Should I have bought her, Cuz the more she drinks It is Stillwater. http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,3...1756625,00.html

Article Published: Monday, November 17, 2003 big 12 football Sea of red good for soul Nebraska fans stay true to loyalties, sportsmanship By Bill Briggs Denver Post Sports Writer LINCOLN, Neb. - Welcome to the way it should be. To the one place where howling for the home team doesn't mean bashing the visitors - an island of good cheer in a world where sportsmanship is nearly extinct, a Jurassic Park for the touchdown crowd. Welcome to a corn-flavored wonderland of red balloons and the Black Shirt defense, a state where everything halts on Husker Saturdays: work, weddings and, sometimes, the births of babies. You need some sun? Go to Miami. You need some action? Go to Vegas. You need to soothe your football soul? Come to Lincoln - preferably in mid-November when the sky is slate gray and the sea is red. "It's funny," says one Nebraska diehard, Mike O'Donnell from Omaha. "A buddy of mine who is a Michigan State fan actually got mad because the fans were so friendly during a lopsided (Huskers) win a few years ago. He just wanted to be left alone." Better go somewhere else if that's your game. Here, no matter what color you're wearing, it's more family reunion - hugs, handshakes and Nebraska-shaped hamburgers. (Scottsbluff sticks out of the bun.) This marked the 10th stop on The Denver Post's spin through Big 12 venues. At each stadium, I wear the visiting team's attire into a rabid mass of homers. At the house of red Saturday, I donned purple and pulled for Kansas State: the biggest game at Memorial Stadium in years. The winner likely would play mighty Oklahoma for the Big 12 Conference crown, the loser would grab a mid-December bus to the Baloney Bowl. Husker Nation was pumped. That didn't change a thing in the stands. Ever been there in the opposing team's duds? Here's a corn-roasted sampler of a visitor's game day in Lincoln. Along the vehicular thicket that Interstate 80 becomes on certain Saturdays, you sense the first hints of the football addiction 10 miles outside Lincoln. Three hours before kickoff, you notice a higher ratio than normal of red cars, red trucks and red minivans. Flags bearing "Huskers" and "Black Shirts" flutter at 60 mph. Magnetized N's adorn the side panels. Personalized license plates make bold proclamations such as: 1NUFAN1. In Lincoln, tavern entrances seem to simultaneously inhale and exhale men, women and children in red coats, red sweaters, red scarves, red pants, red shoes and red necklaces. (A few free spirits wear yellow corncob knit caps.) On city buses, the destination panels above the windshields flash: Go Big Red. The parking lot attendant points you toward the party, under the Ninth Street overpass next to Memorial Stadium. There, between the RVs and the grills, a ragtag group of men and women wielding a bass drum, trumpet, trombone, flute, clarinet, tuba, saxophone and other instruments jam out Chicago's "25 or 6 to 4" and then bounce into the Nebraska fight song. They wear Huskers jerseys and call themselves "The Drunken Alumni Band." Near a rickety bus hand-painted green with cornstalks, a Nebraska student carries a half-shucked ear of corn above his head while a woman grabs a slice of rye from her wicker, corn-shaped breadbasket. There is something about the corn, something deeper than the school emblem, something remotely soothing. Maybe it's the American roots it represents. The peaceful sound of the rustling it makes. An hour before the game, you stroll past a chain-link fence into the Husker Nation Pavilion, a carnival of Big Red boosters, booths and a band stage set up at the Nebraska track and field complex. Just inside the gate, a woman in a yellow security jacket grabs your arm firmly. You think maybe you forgot to pay. But the woman, Peggy, then clasps your hand with both of hers and says with a smile: "Good luck today, honey. We thank you for coming." On a grass field chalked up with white yard markers, dads and sons toss footballs. Time to go in. Beneath the south stands, you watch about 200 Nebraska faithful line up along a brick walkway inscribed with national championship years and the names of Huskers financial backers. The fans hoot and holler as the home team emerges from the locker room and, wearing one giant game face, heads up the tunnel and then onto the field. Minutes later, segments of the Huskers marching band flow out of the four on-field openings, then merge on the turf. You take your seat as two F-14 fighter jets buzz the stadium, perfectly punctuating the final note of the national anthem. About two rows back, a lone Huskers fan boos as the Kansas State Wildcats take the field. A grandmotherly woman just behind you snaps her head around and lectures: "We DO NOT boo. THAT is bad sportsmanship!" The man does not make another peep. See, Nebraska isn't exactly the tourist capital of the Heartland. Huskers fans quietly beam when folks stream in from other states, checking out the university and the ambiance. "The team is viewed by so many as the front door to the state," says Bill Ojile, a 1985 Nebraska graduate who lives in Greenwood Village. "We're proud of the sea of red. We're proud of the campus. People just like having new folks here." As the Huskers score on an acrobatic, knee-twisting pass from quarterback Jammal Lord, fans let loose hundreds of red balloons that float above the field and drift south toward Kansas. The game is tied 7-7. The home team will never taste a lead. Kansas State throttles the Huskers in the second half en route to a 38-9 waxing. It marks the first Wildcats win in Lincoln since 1968, the worst home drubbing for Nebraska since 1958. But you notice the vast majority of fans stay and watch until the game's final five minutes. As they file out, a military man in a camouflage uniform punches you lightly in the arm and says sincerely: "Good luck against Oklahoma, man." "It's a lot easier to be hospitable when you're on top," Ojile admits. You file out through a north-end portal along with the smiling, back-patting Kansas State players. Above that narrow exit, several dozen red-clad fans are standing. They are clapping. For K-State. Notre Dame's got their Touchdown Jesus. But I'll take football nirvana. http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,3...1771536,00.html

Article Published: Monday, November 24, 2003 big 12 fan tour The silence of the fans Baylor not much to cheer about By Bill Briggs Denver Post Sports Writer WACO, Texas - Dear Mom and Dad, Howdy from Baylor University. Yes, my professors are still asking whether I got dropped on my head as a baby. Also, last Tuesday, my roommate accidentally torched the dorm in a Ramen Noodle hotplate tragedy. But I have a bigger problem: Our football team is driving me to drink. Which might get me kicked out of this Baptist college, because alcohol is kind of against the rules here. So is "the failure to cover the trunk adequately" with a shirt - which really takes the fun out of wearing body paint. (At least they lifted the ban on campus dancing, frowned on since 1845 because of its "associations.") Anyway, back to our God-awful team. The Bears. 1-7, 1-7, 0-8, 0-8 and 0-8. Those are our five most recent Big 12 records after our loss Saturday. Five years, two league wins. Some people talk about booting us out of the conference. They say we're only in the Big 12 because former Texas governor Ann Richards (a Baylor grad) bought us a place at the table. Maybe so, but doesn't every league need a Vanderbilt or a Northwestern to let the big boys fatten their BCS résumés? Well, most of the big boys, anyway - sorry about beating you, Colorado. WE'RE not even sure how that one happened. So here at a school that espouses Christian values, we have one basketball player dead, shot by a teammate. We've also heard that some Baylor hoopsters were smoking dope. (I'm pretty sure that is a campus no-no along with beer). Oh, and there's evidence the basketball players were getting paid under the table. Still, it's the football team that's the conference joke from Lubbock to Lincoln. I guess Saturday's clash with Oklahoma State was all anyone needed to see. This was the last game of the season, the farewell appearance for a crop of dazed-looking seniors who later would stare blankly into TV cameras and admit their four years had not turned out quite the way they had expected. The pre-kickoff scene outside Floyd Casey Stadium had all the energy of a sleepy, 10-and-under soccer game at the neighborhood greenbelt. Scores of empty parking spots. And just a few tiny tailgating clumps where people spoke in the hushed tones of a wake. On a flatbed trailer, a man with a microphone introduced a team of area high school cheerleaders who strutted to a Britney Spears song along with a small pack of grade-school girls in matching skirts and pompoms. The emcee thanked the "ladies and gentlemen" for watching. The "ladies and gentlemen" numbered seven. Inside Floyd Casey, it was so quiet you felt like you should turn off your cellphone so as not to bother anyone. After its pregame stretch, the Baylor squad ran off the field and into the tunnel above which 11 people cheered. They couldn't even muster a 12th man. "It's a little sad," agreed Brian Levings, a 27-year-old Oklahoma State fan and orthopedic surgeon. "It doesn't seem like a Big 12 school at all," said his buddy, 27-year-old Zach Weigel, who works in the computer field. About that time, the Baylor band marched in from the north end zone. A few people turned their heads to watch. No one stood. Baylor's mascot also pranced around - an inflatable bear named Judge. They used to bring a real black bear to these games but that changed after an animal rights group out of Chicago complained that excessive crowd noise might agitate the bear. Excessive crowd noise? Are you kidding? That just proves one thing: Animal rights activists don't know their football. The final seconds before a football game at every other Big 12 school are a crescendo of emotion, a spectacle of tradition. A buffalo or horse or steer may sneer or snort. Cannons may thunder. Rifles may roar. Fireworks may explode. At Baylor, the kickoff just kind of happens. I looked under my seat to grab my Dr Pepper and, next thing I knew, the home team already had gone three and out. Huge, gaping tracts of bleachers sat empty. In the east grandstands, a throng of orange-draped Cowboys fans equaled the number of Baylor backers in gold. No one seemed to think that was odd. The paid attendance in the 50,000-seat stadium: 23,763. But as Waco Tribune-Herald sports editor Kim Gorum joked, "We figure (that) included about 8,000 who spent the whole game in the rest- rooms." On the field, the Bears played with grit and heart while the Cowboys played like their alarm clocks were set for halftime. Which, in the end, just meant Oklahoma State won the game 38-21. Considering we had lost some games this season 73-10, 56-0 and 62-14, most Bears fans left with a smile. When the Baylor team trotted into the tunnel after it was over, this time 15 people stood by and clapped. Anyway, Mom and Dad, all this is just a long-winded way of asking one question: Can you send some money? Baylor report card TAILGATING: F ... Jim Wright, a 1987 Baylor alum, spooned up some jambalaya with half a dozen buddies in a stadium parking lot, but they were a rare sight Saturday. A grassy flat that normally is filled with tailgaters contained just two small tents. Some blamed the turnout on the fact that the game was televised. No beer is allowed at the pregame parties, but some fans sneak sips of brew in unmarked cups. (0.0 points out of 4.0 possible) STUDENT SUPPORT: C ... They were small in number but spunky in nature. A crew of Baylor kids in gold stood the entire game - the only ones in the crowd who did so. They gleefully performed their "bear claw" up-and-down hand motions to the school song, and urged the Bears on to the bitter end. (2.5) GAME-DAY ATMOSPHERE: D- ... A quiet, half-empty house is probably expected with a team that has lost so big and so often during the past decade. At least they were friendly. And hey, no traffic! (1.0) TRASH TALKING: A ... This is a Baptist college. What would Jesus do? He wouldn't talk smack. When the Baylor fans yell at their players, they drop lines such as "Son of a monkey!" and "What are you thinking, you ding-dong?"(4.0) FEAR FACTOR: A ... The lone tailgate party I found invited me to chow down with them. At the game, the guy sitting behind me just wanted to talk football and game strategy, despite my wearing the orange of Oklahoma State. What a concept. (4.0) GOOD WINNERS/POOR LOSERS: A ... The most inspiring thing at Baylor is these fans still have hope. They seem to think the team is headed in the right direction and in two or three years might be competitive. That was the basic chatter after the game. (4.0) GPA: 2.58 http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,3...1786870,00.html