Guy Chamberlin

There have been several times the past three seasons where we attempt to feature Imani Cross in a power running game and he "just wasn't that good." He was our short yardage back. Not our every down back. He still looks powerful, but not very savvy. Fumbling has been an issue. Stats don't tell the whole story, but 4.3 yards per carry tells us something. He's been a touchdown machine in his limited carries, and I think he's going to be well remembered around here. NFL teams will give him a look. Imani had a great game Saturday when we really needed him -- and didn't have much choice -- but it doesn't mean you can go back in time and make Imani Cross better than he was when given the chance. And he's been given the chance. But he's been a great guy and a hard worker, and I see no reason not to let him supplant Newby and have the two seniors, Cross and Janovich, take us out of this season in more bruising fashion. Riley and Langsdorf may not be your power running dream team, but they did pull Janovich out of his three season purgatory, and appear to be giving Cross the carries many would have given to Ozigbo and Wilbon.

Gdowski's yards per attempt and TD vs. INT. ratio smoke everyone on that list. And in that same 1989 season, he rushed for 980 yards, 13 TDs and had an 8 yard per carry average.

Bo beat a #7 Missouri and #9 MSU (both badly). I'm really happy for Riley to get this win, but lets not conveniently forget Bo's victories just because it benefits your well-documented position. Bo had some good wins, but for some reason they never had the feel of 'signature' win. Maybe it was that they were afternoon games, or maybe it was that we'd lay an egg the game after, or maybe it was a combination of 100 things. Bo's teams came up in some big moments, but never came up in the BIGGEST moments. There was a stretch of 2010 with Freshman Taylor Martinez where Nebraska rolled Washington at home, a good K-State team, and a ranked Oklahoma State and Missouri. Then Martinez got injured. The CCG against Oklahoma wasn't well played, but it was close. Everything seems downhill after that.

Actually we played MSU straight up for 3 quarters, lost the advantage with the INT in the red zone, which forced the need for two scores late, but the play in general was consistent. Nice to see the penalties completely disappear in the second half. Our offense can score at any time. Our defense can be scored upon at any time. That's a recipe for excitement!

Hey, I hope Imani gets more carries and continues to do well. But the results confirm that Newby averages 5.3 yards a carry, Cross averages 4.3 yards a carry, and Janovich averages 6.7 yards a carry. Janovich is gonna deserve some of the carries in the situations given to Cross. And someone needs to check if the offensive line is doing anything different. But there was something very appealing about seeing Cross and Janovich in the same backfield. The notion that a Cross/Janovich backfield shoulda been obvious to the coaching staff earlier isn't that obvious.

Well you can go by the good games Newby had, and his 5.7 yard per carry average, the bad games Cross has had, running with force but unable to improvise, or the good game Imani had Saturday. I'm not sure anything is that obvious in hindsight. Cross was the same mix of risk and reward the past two seasons. I really want him to go out in style, but I don't think he was particularly misused by two different coaching staffs. We also forget that the decision to pound the rock is often met by opposing defensive coordinators making adjustments. The MSU game shows that this offense can and should get the ball to Cross, Newby and Janovich, and Westerkamp, Rieley, Carter and Moore in equal measure, as they all make deserving and different threats for DCs to consider. There's no bigger beast in college football than Heisman front-runner Leonard Fournette. So LSU had a pretty simple pound-the-rock gameplan. So Alabama simply put 8 men in the box and shut his ass down cold. 31 yards on 19 carries for the best running back in football. There is no indication that simply running him more in the second half would have changed things. Sometimes that's Nebraska's situation, too. We have to do a lot of things well, like most offenses.

Yeah. It's scary when you go ahead with :17 left in the game, and worry that it's STILL to much time for the opposing quarterback.

I've heard Husker fans who've always considered this a Big 12 conspiracy, but this is the first time I've heard someone claim a clear rule was violated. I hated how it turned out, but always considered it the correct move by the officials. The MSU ending shows how it would have been had McCoy simply lofted the ball a couple degrees higher.

I was at that game.

I don't have time to read all the threads, but has it been noted that Nebraska may have received some very late karmic payback for both Penn State '82 and Texas '09 in the same quarter? Stakes weren't as high. Still......

I got a degree from the University of Nebraska in 1981. Wherever I go in the business world, that University of Nebraska diploma means nothing. Perhaps worse than nothing. At best, someone mentions the football team, as if that's our solitary reference point. While the football team was running with authority at the time under Tom Osborne, the broadcasting department was using 20 year old silent film cameras because they couldn't afford video cameras, the equipment graduates would be expected to use in the real world. I was obsessed with Nebraska football as a kid, and still care about it way too much today. But if the University of Nebraska Chancellor doesn't consider the football coach his #1 priority, I'm good with that.

A couple niggles: • Eichorst probably hated seeing Nebraska LOSE to Iowa in 2013, a 38 - 17 humiliation at Memorial Stadium to an unranked, unremarkable Iowa team in the last game of the regular season. Some might remember Bo using profanity while daring Eichorst to fire him after that game. Instead Eichorst gave him a contract extension that March, and perhaps a million dollars more in recruiting upgrades for the 2014 season. http://www.omaha.com/huskers/blogs/is-nebraska-football-spending-enough-money-on-recruiting/article_8036adb4-ab0f-11e4-89cc-773fc56c561f.html • You have no idea how Eichorst felt in 2014, watching Nebraska come back from 24-7 down in the third quarter to defeat an unranked, unremarkable Iowa in overtime in the last game of the regular season. You might have a better idea how Nebraska fans felt. Many considered the Wisconsin debacle the last straw, and the failure to beat Minnesota the next week the icing on the last straw. If Shawn Eichorst had a secret agenda of giving Bo Pelini another season to prove himself, and believed that Pelini had failed in that regard before the Iowa game, it was shared in public by an awful lot of Nebraska fans. Dip back in the Huskerboard archives if you'd like. • We have a much better idea how Bo Pelini felt, because he was really honest in expressing his feelings. He blamed the Wisconsin loss on the fans. You're accusing Shawn Eichorst of wishing for the players to fail, to match a private agenda that was shared by a lot of Husker fans regarding a coach who told the fans, the school and the state to go f#*k themselves three years earlier. Because Bo Pelini didn't want to be here. And yet he demanded loyalty. Not sure you're my go-to guy on matters of integrity, CM Husker. Are you that unaware of the irony (the bolded) you just posted? Gawd, I can't believe the lack of self awareness of some posters. I've read many examples of posters, and not just here, stating, no, speculating, that Pelini would never get over the 9 win hump, yet they will in the same post state that Riley needs time so he can get his system and then he will turn it around, and win championships, I suppose? Never mind that the guy is a career .500 guy. When backed into a corner, because gawd knows, they don't have facts, they resort to bashing the former HC, or worse, the players. Welcome to 2004-2007 all over again. Thanks pencil neck! Self-awareness? Yeah. I'm pretty solid on self-awareness. Not so much on what people I don't know are secretly thinking. You need to slow down, chief. My post started off by addressing CM's boldfaced error in mistaking 2013 for 2014, one year a humiliating loss to Iowa, the other an ultimately meaningless win, and a significant difference in timelines, facts and motivation. That's why I was pretty comfortable stacking up my "probably" to CM's "no doubt." If you want to argue a specific point I brought up in my post, I"m all ears. If you just want to rage at administrators for destroying all that is football, I got that. I'm not attacking the players. But I'll be damned if I'm going to sit here and watch Bo Pelini get rehabilitated because the fanbase is freaking out.

Eh, I think the Nebraska AD can remain as mediocre as he wants in the other sports. Football. Football. Football.

The nuclear option is not the only way out. Good lord, people.

A couple niggles: • Eichorst probably hated seeing Nebraska LOSE to Iowa in 2013, a 38 - 17 humiliation at Memorial Stadium to an unranked, unremarkable Iowa team in the last game of the regular season. Some might remember Bo using profanity while daring Eichorst to fire him after that game. Instead Eichorst gave him a contract extension that March, and perhaps a million dollars more in recruiting upgrades for the 2014 season. http://www.omaha.com/huskers/blogs/is-nebraska-football-spending-enough-money-on-recruiting/article_8036adb4-ab0f-11e4-89cc-773fc56c561f.html • You have no idea how Eichorst felt in 2014, watching Nebraska come back from 24-7 down in the third quarter to defeat an unranked, unremarkable Iowa in overtime in the last game of the regular season. You might have a better idea how Nebraska fans felt. Many considered the Wisconsin debacle the last straw, and the failure to beat Minnesota the next week the icing on the last straw. If Shawn Eichorst had a secret agenda of giving Bo Pelini another season to prove himself, and believed that Pelini had failed in that regard before the Iowa game, it was shared in public by an awful lot of Nebraska fans. Dip back in the Huskerboard archives if you'd like. • We have a much better idea how Bo Pelini felt, because he was really honest in expressing his feelings. He blamed the Wisconsin loss on the fans. You're accusing Shawn Eichorst of wishing for the players to fail, to match a private agenda that was shared by a lot of Husker fans regarding a coach who told the fans, the school and the state to go f#*k themselves three years earlier. Because Bo Pelini didn't want to be here. And yet he demanded loyalty. Not sure you're my go-to guy on matters of integrity, CM Husker.

The Purdue and Illinois losses were both embarrassments. It's an embarrassing season all around. I don't think anyone is arguing that. Is it a perfect storm of sh#t going wrong, or the avoidable choices of a coach who can't do any better? I think that's where we're at. Although the attempts to remember the four loss seasons in a forgiving new light are pretty interesting.

Who was the AD when the basketball program was a consistently under-performing embarrassment to the University? Oh that's right. Every AD. Nobody wants to be Kansas. Until winter.

Feel free to post a link to my actual comments instead of more of your weak paraphrasing and I'll try to explain it to you. Just scroll up to post #117 on this thread. If you've got a second, glance at the number of +1s in the lower right hand corner. Apparently you didn't understand the question. That's the post I responded to. You said "When I pointed out that Bo Pelini inherited a 7- 5 team at Youngstown State, brought in some of his own Power 5 studs, and is now coaching sub-500 football and complaining about the 14,000 seat stadium being half-full, you insisted that context was everything. " So where is the link to the bolded? Then I'll try to explain it in terms you'll understand. (I'm trying to be optimistic.) Jesus, dude. The fact that you defended Bo by trying to put his Youngstown State shortcomings in context WAS the context. If you make me write another post on this, I'm billing you for my time.

Feel free to post a link to my actual comments instead of more of your weak paraphrasing and I'll try to explain it to you. Just scroll up to post #117 on this thread. If you've got a second, glance at the number of +1s in the lower right hand corner.

Unfortunately, we will never know for sure, will we? However one can accurately gauge the sh!t storm that comes if Riley is currently 3-6, and yes, I think a lot of people hollering and screaming at that 3-6 record wouldn't be doing so if Nebraska sat at 7-2. So trying to equate Riley's actual 3-6 with a Riley hypothetical 7-2 and then dis the fans for their hypothetical displeasure is weak sauce indeed. I'm not trying to equate the records. If anything, I'm trying to point out how impossible it is to equate anything. There's nothing hypothetical about whether a segment of these posters would have been disappointed with Riley sitting at 7-2 right now, as they stated their expectations prior to the season. Speaking of which: if Bo Pelini was 7-2 prior to the Michigan State game, I'm guessing it would have been the death knell for Bo Pelini, as neither of those two losses would have been acceptable to the growing horde convinced that Bo had reached his ceiling. I can only base my speculation on years of reading HuskerBoard.

WHOOOOOOSHHHHH!

I actually don't know Perelman's perception among fellow chancellors or his list of verifiable achievements on the academic level. Picking the football coach shouldn't be a top priority, but it's certainly important enough to warrant some thought and scrutiny. I went to UNL when Osborne was coach and the football team was slightly less controversial (Tom's inability to beat Oklahoma/Switzer generated outrage that would be familiar to this thread), but we had the worst Board of Regents of any major university.

I think a clean program and solid leadership of young men is important, too, but the coach who literally spits in the face of his assistant coaches, pits the players against the fans to protect his own shortcomings, fields a team that consistently reflects his own lack of discipline, and calls his boss a kunt, adding to his national reputation as the thin-skinned hothead who represents Nebraska, challenges my definition of "clean." His brother, the defensive coordinator, would have been my favorite uncle, but perhaps not the standard definition of clean, either. The other winning HC who got fired also enjoyed alcohol and young women who weren't his wife. Both were fired for not winning the right games. Their personal liabilities simply made it easier. Or maybe it was the other way around. Either way, let's not kid ourselves. This is still about winning football games, something Mike Riley needs to do very quickly. If it was about clean programs and meaningful experience, we'd be considering Shawn Eichorst's efforts on behalf of the multi-faceted UNL athletic program, including a new national profile for baseball, basketball, women's volleyball and more. Keep spreading the lies. Hopefully, Frank's attorney sees them at some point. Frank's a good guy and a good coach and I didn't agree with his firing. But I'm not the least bit worried about the veracity of this claim.

Imagine a pencil-necked administrator running a major state university? When will Nebraska hire a true football guy to be our Chancellor! By the way, how are the other 22 varsity teams at the University of Nebraska doing, and are they distracting our athletic director?

I think a clean program and solid leadership of young men is important, too, but the coach who literally spits in the face of his assistant coaches, pits the players against the fans to protect his own shortcomings, fields a team that consistently reflects his own lack of discipline, and calls his boss a kunt, adding to his national reputation as the thin-skinned hothead who represents Nebraska, challenges my definition of "clean." His brother, the defensive coordinator, would have been my favorite uncle, but perhaps not the standard definition of clean, either. The other winning HC who got fired also enjoyed alcohol and young women who weren't his wife. Both were fired for not winning the right games. Their personal liabilities simply made it easier. Or maybe it was the other way around. Either way, let's not kid ourselves. This is still about winning football games, something Mike Riley needs to do very quickly. If it was about clean programs and meaningful experience, we'd be considering Shawn Eichorst's efforts on behalf of the multi-faceted UNL athletic program, including a new national profile for baseball, basketball, women's volleyball and more.