brophog

You rang...

Starting to lose that energy

Those plays could be called twice as often and still be ludicrously under called.

I sometimes wonder if he should even play. Not a bad idea.

Illegal cuddling

Off day, dudes solid. 57 percent passer

Energy and an overrated opponent.

The NFL called....they want a refund.

57 percent passer boys and girls and dogs and cats

Now what am I gonna do with all these pizzas?

I guess that's what we said for a week now, It appears Illinois knew this going in, watched the film, exploited it and will win easily. Is the lack of a running game for Nebraska a matter of "can't" or "won't" Wrong logical conjuction.

Sparty only brought little boy pants.

Lil Red

Actually, from media reports that have had access to the information the committee receives the past few years, the committee is still picking primarily on wins and losses. No strength of schedule information is made available, nor is the most useful primary stat to predicting future games in an alternate possession sport: margin of victory. Furthermore, and why I've always been against the playoff, is the amount of useful data one can generate with so few teams playing one another is too small. This solution would tighten the data points between the conferences in question but at the cost of eliminating data points for all other conferences. More significantly, the logistics of scheduling around this would be difficult. The basketball season is much longer, and a basketball home game is worth much less financially than a home football game. Basketball coaches have also gotten good at scheduling around the committee's metrics, such as the RPI (which works poorly in a short season sport). For those kinds of metrics, you're best scheduling a lot of middle teams. You don't get enough credit beating top teams to justify the risk, and you get killed playing the lower teams.

3-9 is absolutely needed for some fans, like the count. The amount of ego that certain fans tie into the football program is beyond ridiculous. That ego needs a beating. However, it happened before, and it didn't seem to do any good then. So, maybe there's just no hope for certain fans. OTH, I feel bad for the players recruited under the previous HC during a season like this. I totally agree. I feel bad for some of the players that have to endure a down year like this, of course they too attribute to that down year. But some Husker fans need a serious beat down on their entitlement and "holier than thou" mentality. There's actually radio show hosts and fans talking about this game Saturday, saying if we win, no way should we rush the field. "Act like you've been there" they say. "We're better than that"! The hell we are. We aren't better than anybody right now. We are right on par with the same teams that storm the field when they beat us. We haven't been overwhelmingly better than the in a long time. Sure we've won a lot of games, more than we have this year, but I've seen nothing on the field that spreads us from the pack aside from a kid named Ameer Abdullah and Ndamukong Suh if you want to go back further. If we win Saturday, hell yes storm that field students. Enjoy the highs when you can. This should be fun. Stop getting so low with the lows. What good does it do. We'll be back someday. I guarantee it. Thanks to some pouty entitled asshat, I'm sitting in their seat Saturday night. Got em cheap! Me and my daughter will enjoy it I promise! What good does it do to storm the field. You endanger your fellow fans, the players, and damage property. And why, because you have self esteem issues? You don't even honor your team doing it, you insult them. Support your team. Applaud their accomplishments, from the stands, where fans belong.

Probably not. Completion percentage across the spectrum doesn't correlate between college and NFL success, but completion percentages under 60% do, and therefore has become a key indicator. Connor Cook is a 57% passer this year, never a season over 58%. The list of sub 60% passers drafted in the first round since 2010: 2011 Jake Locker Not exactly a long list. It should also be noted that while 60% is the traditional number, for reasons listed above, the number is closer to 65% in recent years.

It does sound silly, but the answer may actually be in the affirmative. One of the things found when UAB canceled its program was that despite losing money as a program, which was why it was canceled, it actually gained money for the university (which is why it is being reinstated). It wasn't costing as much as they thought. Studies done a decade ago show millions in economic output to both the city of Lincoln and state, an estimated 110+ million at that time to the city alone from Husker athletics, mostly from the football program. Another most recent study showed the program's value to be over 500 million, as a top 10 program (Ohio St was over 1 billion.) To the university itself, I quote one study: Furthermore, this program in particular has an enormous cultural impact to the state. It is the state's unique identifier, in a way that perhaps no other program in no other state can say. It's certainly harder to quantify something like culture, though.

What kind of fanbase has no heads and no asses. Where will we be then....where will we be then.....

The question of when you lose is interesting. Last year only provides a mild example. Miss St is the only team of relevance to lose late in the season. They started out 1 and stayed that way until losing in week 11, but despite 1 loss stayed in the top 4 before losing for a second time. Despite no other top team losing, we saw all that movement late with teams flip flopping in later weeks, culminating with the last week drop of TCU from 3rd to 6th in the final poll. Definitely a different behavior from the traditional polls. Yet, we don't know if Miss St would have stayed in the top 4 had they not suffered a 2nd loss.

Notre Dame is the most interesting. Obviously the committee thinks pretty highly of them now, but with so many teams having backloaded schedules, they stand to get relatively worse as time goes on. Their big remaining games are Pitt and Stanford. Those two have some tricky remaining games. How well they do, assuming Notre Dame wins out, could be massive towards settling some potential 1 loss debates.

I don't even consider wins and losses.

Not only has MSU failed to look impressive, some of the scores are deceptive. Indiana played them posession for posession for three quarters, even looked like they may have a chance to pull an upset (if they only could kick a PAT). MSU got 3 garbage time TDs to pad that score.

I've been saying Sparty is overrated all year, and while them getting healthier and coming off a bye may make them the most dangerous they've been all year, this is still a team whose performances don't coincide with their record or public image. If they lose this game, maybe they become known as the team that failed late season. They do still have OSU and an improving PSU. They're not in the playoffs, yet. Lots could change about how we ultimately perceive this 2015 MSU team. However, I do agree it will be an important game, at least to the immediacy of the Mike Riley tenure.

The Purdue QB run is not the most disheartening of the game, for me, simply because it's mostly due to pre-snap alignment. Easily the most disheartening for me is the cutback TD run. (Just before the one minute mark). https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Iy7bugNGflU

Lack of information is holding me back from also making that claim. The big difference, numerically, between the two years is rush defense. Both rush and pass were at the bottom of the national rankings in 2007. But, as has been cited, the difference in opponent offensive quality between the two years is the size of a canyon. The best running attack, by the numbers that we have faced is So. Miss. and it is hard to say how much their vastly superior offensive numbers to our other opponents is simply due to the schedule they play. The next best we'll play is Iowa at 4.6 ypc. Many of our opponents offenses are below the 4.0 threshold. The difference between the years is not only did we play several very good rushing offenses in 2007, but we also played very few very bad ones. One of the worst we played in 2007 was Iowa St at 3.0 ypc. We held them to 2.6 ypc on 51 carries, well below our average of 5.2 ypc last year. The biggest piece of missing information is a lack of opponents who use the QB in the run game, a component that tests all defensive schemes. We've seen signs the past few weeks that may be a problem, though these aren't teams that highlight it. Purdue even went so far as to say they only did it because of the success Northwestern had. With the significant amount of man coverage we play, it would be a concern.