I agree with everything you said. Bill Callahan and staff may be great, but I'm not seeing it thus far. I think Callahan takes an NFL approach and thinks it's ok to lose one or two games, but that's not how it works in college. Every game counts and instead of playing to minimize a loss, lets play hard, lets play to win every single time! That's what I liked about Bo Pelini. I think he took the talent he had an motivated.
Sorry to sort of get off topic with the Pelini comment, but even with the win over Mizzou I'm frustrated. I want our program to be one of the best in the nation again and I'm not seeing it happen. "Winning" the north is setting our sights kind of low in my opinion.
Where have we been? Nebraska has not won the north division since 1999. That is seven years without even making the title game. Colorado and Kansas State have both won the division and the ccg since we last won it. IOWA STATE twice had a shot at it, if they could take care of business. Mediocre is where we were. Callahan took it one step at a time and in only three years got us back to within a win of the division title. I hate it when people question the heart of the program.
The fans that are displeased with a conference player of the week performance question why the player was played in the first place. The mere fact that we have someone directly behind Ruud on the depth chart that can potentially start, shows how talented he is. It's not mediocre. Missouri losing to the big programs, OU and Nebraska, shows that THEY are mediocre. Iowa State never winning the division when they controlled their destiny, is mediocre.
And, we need to realize the south is better than our division. It includes Okie St. now. They have four teams bowl eligible, we have two. We could potentially lose all the games to south teams we play this year. We buried the north teams this year.
Improvements we need are: (1) killer instinct on the road, (2) new d coordinator, preferably one who makes in-game adjustments, (3) a johnny-on-the spot safety like mike brown and josh bullocks, and (4) a PLAYmaker. A lot of our guys have that potential, but nobody can take that position.