Nebraska State Paper article

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http://nebraska.statepaper.com/vnews/displ...1/471c0b0d9a9eb

 

Nebraska State Paper by Samuel McKewon

 

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Good Job Callahan and Cosgrove

[Eric the Red]

As The World Turns, All The Wrong Moves

Huskers struggle to rise above a state of mild depression

 

by Samuel McKewon

 

October 21, 2007

 

This guy wouldn't be happy with the Nebraska football team's mildly depressive state this season.

 

Boy, I can sure see why Steve Pederson didn't want Nebraska's football team gravitating toward mediocrity. It's a waiting line to Hell. Like apathy morphed in Penelope Cruz and seduced the plains with purrs and broken English.

 

The Big Red Purge - both the political and physical kind - seems to drench this team in confusion and weariness, and drive the fans to gossip and spying. Aren't those wonderful poisons? Don't you love playing "better of the evil two?" I do. Man was specially made to run such pointless hamster wheels.

 

Which is worse?

 

Cornhusker coaches and players lamely trying to follow some "we're gutted, but thumbs up!" script that, outside the ivory tower of football, would call for a reduction in psychotropic drugs and a Very Special Visit from Tom Cruise?

 

Or is it fans piling into chat rooms to breathlessly discuss what Husker players were at which bars, drinking this booze, saying those things, bruising our hope and faith in them? Please. Athletes are human, capable of guzzling beer and cursing. Well, holy...they must have got that from their coach, huh? Mr "crusty old f-bomb" himself.

 

So alien, this modern football program. Such angst, this Internet Age.

 

There is a great divide here, and a soap opera, with Bill Callahan and Kevin Cosgrove playing lousy leads.

 

For reasons unknown, Callahan tries to traipse around explaining anything concrete. Probably out of spite to reporters, who watched him stand well away from the offense while Shawn Watson called plays in the first half of Saturday's 36-14 loss to Texas A&M, then take those duties away from Watson in the second stanza. It makes no bloody sense to start something, then junk it, then attempt to explain by suggesting nothing, besides the laws of physics, separated first and second half SOPs.

 

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Callahan seemed to mistrust his offense in key moments against A&M.

 

At least Callahan made the effort. Cosgrove has stopped bothering.

 

Do yourself a favor and check out any news story about yesterday's game. Find the longest Cosgrove quote. Now check the content.

 

Isn't part of accountability - something you demand of players - sincerely answering the questions as they're asked to you? Do you cut people off as they ask them? Do you back up toward the escape elevator, trying to end the five-minute, increasingly awkward chat session you set up every week while you leave your players to explain the strategy?You want to know halftime adjustments? Ask Zach Potter. This isn't the NFL. Callahan isn't Bill Belichick. In college, if you're the defensive coordinator, you have to be a little out in front.

 

And when it's going bad, as it has for six straight games? That's when you really take the heat.

 

What's Cosgrove do? Go to the podium? Please. Never that. That's not football tradition anyway.

 

But neither is walking into the adjacent lounge five minutes before Callahan even speaks, and thus making some interviewers and TV reporters have to choose between you and the head guy. Maybe Cosgrove was unaware. But do you think he's willing to stick around?

 

Accountability isn't about six-word answers. Not at Nebraska. It's about explaining yourself. If you're above that - if you can't help exuding a demeanor that says "you're not a coach" - fair enough. NU isn't your dream job.

 

Cosgrove stoically resists every chance to reach out to fans. He took away the Blackshirts last week, for example.

 

"We're going to earn them back," he said.

 

When asked to explain the rationale - a perfect opportunity to reinforce some of the ideas about the Blackshirt tradition, Cosgrove refused. Twice.

 

"That's all I have to say," he said.

 

Why all the imperialism? It's certainly nothis tradition, and when he's likely dismissed from this program at the end of the year, I doubt he'll take it with him. So why protect that decision from the fans and ex-players who take the most stock in it? That's not pride; that's foolishness. A most basic miscalculation. La Cosa Huskra involves more than the guys in that locker room. It always did.

 

In these times, no, reporters aren't perfect. We sense trouble. Because we have brains, we're able to process contradictions, kiss-off answers and political evasions. We attack this because it lacks honesty. Maybe we seize on something too quickly, too fiercely. Maybe.

 

And Nebraska fans aren't perfect. Some, in their zealotry or misguided excitement, bite off more than they should chew. They worry too much, overreact, and clamor for coaches who not only would be poor fits, but would never dream of coaching here anyway. Invading the private lives of players and reporting their behavior - whether that behavior is profane or not - is unseemly and unpleasant. Booing Cosgrove's son at a football game is rotten. You'd like to wish a pox on those folks.

 

But if this is the job you've taken, how can you, four years into it, still be so resistant of the community? It is a community that wants - that wanted - to embrace this team, if not former athletic director Steve Pederson.

 

It only asks for sincerity. And the slightest bit of transparency.

 

It needs to know that the football team, and these coaches, want their presence. Same goes for the ex-players who suddenly flooded back into Memorial Stadium on Saturday. It's not the just words "they can come to practice." It's the gesture. The honest effort of accommodation. It's the better nature of it.

 

Callahan and Cosgrove's opaque vibe permeates the team. The answers are either confused or clipped. Nate Swift says the locker room is down. Sean Hill says it's pretty positive. Two true freshmen running backs who were a joy to talk to earlier in the season - Quentin Castille and Roy Helu - seem jaded and mechanical. Does losing do that, or is it the spirit of this team?

 

Off the field, what you hear, you distrust. On the field, what you see is distrust.

 

Cosgrove needed to put eight guys in the box - maybe a 4-4 front - to stop A&M's read option. Is that really so unlikely? Denver used it Sunday night to defend against Pittsburgh's running game. He never pulled that trigger, preferring to stay in a base that kept most plays in front of the defense. Phillip Dillard, who has far out-played Corey McKeon this year at middle linebacker, was a little nicked up, so McKeon spent most of the day tackling McGee seven yards beyond the line of scrimmage. Dillard didn't get the chance to play through his pain. What did Cosgrove have to lose? The dye on McKeon has been cast for weeks now.

 

Callahan turned away from a successful running game after falling behind 23-14. He turned away from it on a 3rd-and-2 early in the fourth quarter. He so believes his team must score touchdowns that he eschewed two makable field goals and try and fail to convert fourth downs. Andre Jones is the normal punt-returner if Cortney Grixby isn't in, but he wasn't trusted enough to field a punt kicked into the wind. So Swift muffed it instead.

 

The team is not immune. Sam Keller has opted out of a lot of tougher downfield throws to dump the ball to Marlon Lucky in the last three games. We're not talking about the designed swing passes to Lucky that worked so well, but Keller giving up, too quickly, on the secondary receiver routes. When he try some throws, they were tentative, maybe-or-maybe-not type deals. Keller isn't a gunslinger at all.

 

Mostly, Nebraska acts and plays as if they're trying to deal with depression. Adversity was put on these coaches and players and the reaction was to stick a nose to the grindstone, ignoring larger, more intangible issues. So the USC game turned out to be a flop. So what? Why did NU's defense go into a shell? That's my business, Cosgrove's attitude seems to say.

 

Why did Callahan allow his running game to disappear, and why does he yank it around now?

 

Trust me, Callahan's comments convey.

 

Trust him? That's hard.

 

He doesn't trust us.