Nebraska fans hold Huskers to high standards

[HuskerfaninOkieland]

I thought this was a good read so thought I would share

 

 

 

Linky-dinky doo

 

 

Nebraska fans hold their Huskers to high standards

BY SAM MELLINGER | THE KANSAS CITY STAR

 

LINCOLN, Neb. | The dream doesn’t change much, not in this state. It sounds weird to people from the other 49 states. That’s fine. Nebraska isn’t much like the others anyway.

 

Other kids might dream about becoming Will Shields, the NFL star, or Johnny Rodgers, the Heisman Trophy winner, but those are dreams for other kids in other places. Those aren’t dreams for Nebraska kids. No. Kids here from Chadron to Falls City and from Kimball to Norfolk dream about becoming Joel Makovicka.

 

He grew up in a Nebraska farming town of 350 people, graduated with 17 others, and when the Cornhuskers didn’t offer a scholarship he enrolled anyway. He played fullback, running occasionally but mostly blocking, doing both well enough to earn a starting spot. He helped the Big Red to two national titles before being drafted by the NFL.

 

“You know what’s funny about that?” Makovicka says. “People here, they don’t really care about that. They want to know and love what you did for the program, for Nebraska. I’d say over half the people I talk to don’t even know I played in the NFL.”

 

Makovicka is one of the best-known products of Nebraska’s walk-on program — the soul of Huskers football, and of what Nebraskans want to see in themselves. It is substance over style, humility over flash, and hard work over all. At its best, Nebraska and Huskers football is a two-way relationship, each side trying to live up to the other.

 

One coach ignored this fundamental truth about Nebraska fans. That coach had the shortest career of any Huskers coach in 50 years. This is not just what the people here love about their team, it’s what they demand from it.

 

Obey this principal truth about Nebraskans and their Huskers, and the rewards are enormous. When the Nebraska coach talks, the message gets through with little filter. The coaches talk about sportsmanship, the people respond by clapping for the opposition after games.

 

“There aren’t a lot of distractions, aren’t a lot of loyalties out there to take you away from the message,” says assistant coach Ron Brown. “Hundreds of thousands of people across this state are going to be watching the sports tonight and reading the newspaper in the morning and remembering the quotes from our coaches and players. We’re helping shape a state. That’s what.

 

“Maybe if we’re pointing fingers at the enemy and cursing them, maybe it shifts that way. It’s a great opportunity. Tom Osborne has not only coached the football team, he’s coached the whole state. You’ve got a whole bunch of ‘players’ out there in front of their TV sets, responding. That’s a powerful thing.”

 

• • •

 

Maybe you’ve heard this line. Well, of course football’s big in Nebraska. That’s all they’ve got!

 

It’s usually said as a slam.

 

Except Nebraskans repeat it as a boast.

 

“This is what we do and what we love,” says Lance Vance, a plumber from Fremont whose family has had season tickets for 45 years.

 

“Around here, you’re either a die-hard Huskers fan or, well, I’m not sure.”

 

It’s everywhere, this influence, from conversation to self-esteem. Police say domestic violence goes up when the Huskers lose. Everyone says the collective mood goes up when they win.

 

It is part of every aspect of life here, even major decisions like when to get married. The first rule of getting married in Nebraska is to do it in the spring or summer.

 

The second rule: if you must get married in the fall, prepare accordingly. Do this by looking up the Huskers’ schedule.

 

“You’ll want to avoid the days of any home games,” says Terry Cossel, owner of Grand Illusions Event and Party Decorating in Beatrice. “If you can find a Saturday where there’s no game at all — score! But stuff will probably be all booked up for those dates.

 

“So you’ll want to find an away game, otherwise people with season tickets won’t come. And you’ll have to get a big-screen TV or else half your guests are going to want to go somewhere else. The bride won’t like it, but it’s the only way people will show up.”

 

Eric Wicherski is an enrollment manager and 2002 Nebraska grad house-shopping in Omaha with his wife, Amber. They need a bigger place for a growing family — Benjamin is six weeks old, and Leyna is 2, which is old enough to scream “Go Huskers!” on command — and they notice the same thing about most every house.

 

“They’ve all got ‘Husker Rooms,’ ” Wicherski says. “Everybody has one. Every house.”

 

These are gotta-have features in Nebraska, like swimming pools in Arizona or a reliable furnace in Minnesota. The Lincoln newspaper once wrote about a family that wood-burned images of Herbie and Osborne into their fireplace.

 

Wicherski isn’t that crazy — “well, not yet,” he adds — but he’s working on it. His room is modest by Nebraska standards, which means a hundred or so items on the walls, Huskers blankets on the furniture, and a Huskers toilet in the corner (don’t worry: it’s a display piece, not operational).

 

“This right here,” Wicherski says, pointing at a picture of him and former athletic director Steve Pederson, “is the one thing in here I need to take down.”

 

• • •

 

They call Bill Callahan’s time here “the Dark Days.” The losing is what you think they mean, and that’s certainly part of it. After all, Callahan coached the Huskers in their only two losing seasons since 1961.

 

But that’s only part of it.

 

The first thing he did was scrap the Power-I and the option, the staple of the Nebraska offense for generations. He all but killed the walk-on program, letting it be known that he would work with the best players the most, a philosophy that would make sense at the other 119 Division I-A programs but here sounded more like a mamma joke.

 

“I think he got the thought that the game of college football had evolved to more of a glitzy, pro-type mentality,” says Tom Ruud, a former linebacker with two sons who played for the Huskers. “I think we got away from what Nebraska football really is.”

 

The state played along with Callahan in the beginning, with many high school coaches switching to more of a pro-style offense. But as the undersized kids from tiny towns stopped feeling welcome in Lincoln, the connection between the Huskers and the rest of the state began to strain.

 

The people here say Callahan took the passion out. He ran things like an NFL team, rarely having workouts in full pads, never practicing on Mondays, and overwhelming his players with a complicated West Coast offense playbook.

 

The on-field failures and off-field disconnect peaked when the Huskers trailed 38-0 at halftime against Oklahoma State in 2007 as the school celebrated the 10th anniversary of the last national championship team. Nebraska fans, loyal to the core, left at halftime.

 

That was part of five straight losses in which Nebraska gave up more than 45 points per game, capped by a 76-39 whipping at Kansas that made an entire state cringe.

 

“It wasn’t just a matter of losing games,” Osborne says. “It was like there wasn’t the effort, wasn’t the tenacity, wasn’t the physical nature of the football team that I’d been used to. That bothered the fans, too.”

 

It became more and more difficult for Osborne to watch. At one point, he even began serving as a consultant to Creighton. Nebraska football was broken, in large part because its connection to the state was broken.

 

The only man who could recreate that connection was a man once nearly driven from this place by the fans.

 

• • •

 

Back in 1978, before Tom Osborne was Coach Osborne, he was the young coach running against the wind trying to live up to Bob Devaney’s legend. Osborne lost five straight years to Oklahoma, which didn’t sit well with Huskers fans. This was Nebraska, winners of two national titles in Devaney’s last three years.

 

Osborne finally beat Oklahoma on his sixth try, 17-14 in Lincoln, and that was great until the team’s national title hopes died in an upset loss to Missouri. Osborne was 55-16-2, but there was a fear among some that the program was slipping.

 

“People weren’t very appreciative,” is how Osborne puts it, so when Colorado wanted to talk to him about its open coaching position, Osborne got on a plane. He knew the shaky history of coaches who replace legends and thought it might be easier to recruit to Colorado.

 

But a funny thing happened when Osborne visited. He realized that football was a big thing in Colorado, but not the thing — that people cared about the Buffaloes most of the time, but the rest of the time did other things. It was, in a word, normal. Osborne shook his head. He wouldn’t leave Nebraska.

 

The same tide of fan passion that pushed Osborne out ended up bringing him back.

 

“Colorado,” Osborne says now, “wasn’t Nebraska to me.”

 

His coaching story has a happy ending because he won three national titles and 84 percent of his games over 25 years.

 

He won 83 percent of the vote in the only Congressional election in which he faced any real competition. He lost the race for governor in 2006, but people here like to say that’s only because they knew he’d do more good for their state as athletic director.

 

They couldn’t have known at the time just how true that would turn out. This state values its head football coach more than sound fiscal policies, and Osborne was charged with finding the next one.

 

• • •

 

Tom Osborne had been on the job about two months when he fired Callahan, then hired Bo Pelini a week later. Subsidies for farmers are not as popular as those two moves.

 

Pelini’s love in this state depends on his football decisions, of course, and Nebraskans like what they remember from Pelini’s one season as defensive coordinator for the Huskers in 2003 — the Blackshirts forced a school-record 47 turnovers and ranked second nationally in scoring defense.

 

But it goes deeper than that, just like Nebraskans’ connection to the program goes deeper than winning. Pelini celebrated his hiring by reaching out to the state — in effect, doing the opposite of Callahan.

 

He took a bus to Scottsbluff and Grand Island and Red Cloud, to every corner of Nebraska, where they filled gymnasiums to hear the new head coach talk about bringing the walk-ons and the pride back to Nebraska football.

 

Nebraskans hear Pelini call strangers “sir,” see him uncomfortable taking too much credit, and appreciate the way he grinds at his job like you’d expect someone who prefers grey sweatshirts to suits. He’s one of them, and they love that. It’s been too long.

 

Pelini won nine games, including the Gator Bowl, in his first season, but he knows where he stands — that his current support comes in part because he’s not Callahan.

 

Osborne had to fight following a legend. That made it tougher for him. Pelini’s situation is just the opposite.

 

“They’ll like me until I lose a bunch of football games, then they won’t like me anymore,” Pelini says. “I’m realistic about that.”

 

One place he’s already won is giving boys in small Nebraska towns their dream back.

 

• • •

 

Loomis is a town of about 400 people that is marked by grain elevators in south-central Nebraska. Its current Makovicka is Lance Thorell, a 6-foot-1, 195-pound defensive back with stories about being lit up by linebacker Steve Octavien during kick coverage at practice.

 

Thorell is the third walk-on from Loomis, and the first in more than 20 years. His dream is Makovicka’s life, which is why Thorell turned down basketball and football offers from smaller schools to walk on to the Huskers.

 

“Running out in that tunnel, nothing’s like it,” he says. “Nothing compares to running out that tunnel with a red ‘N’ on your helmet.”

 

For a Nebraskan, the closest thing might be watching a boy from your hometown run out of that tunnel, which is why Thorell is something of a celebrity in Loomis. He was back home this summer, helping with the soybeans and corn and cattle on his dad’s farm, and requests came in from all over Phelps County for Thorell to speak.

 

He did when he could, going to churches and nursing homes and ballfields, a real-life Husker preaching the gospel of hard work and football.

 

“When he comes back,” says Terry Nelson, Loomis city manager, “it’s Big Red football, it’s Lance Thorell, No. 23 for the Cornhuskers.”

 

Most everyone in Loomis already owns a Huskers shirt or three, of course, but they’ve all been doubling up, picking off new stuff with Thorell’s number on the back.

 

Some Saturdays it seems like the whole town makes the 2 1/2 -hour drive to Lincoln for games, holding signs for Thorell during games and cheering for him in the parking lot after.

 

Thorell is what the people here mean when they talk about that connection between the football team in the state capital and the farmers in the hundreds of small towns that give Nebraska its personality.

 

And it’s good to have that back.

 

“We take all kinds of ownership in him, in the team,” Nelson says. “You see something like that, every kid’s dream is to play for the Big Red. They see Lance, it gives them hope, gives them drive, like this is possible.”

 

[In the Deed the Glory]

 

I guess I have never read something that was so positive and shed a light on our culture like this from an outsider.

 

Especially the KC Star.

 

This is a great feel good story, and made my day!

 

Thanks for sharing, man.

[Street Novelist]

from the Kansas City Star? I bet the editor will fire him immediately after reading this story. I thought Husker bashing was the only thing allowed?

[fro daddy]

from the Kansas City Star? I bet the editor will fire him immediately after reading this story. I thought Husker bashing was the only thing allowed?

 

Funny thing is, every team around the area says the same thing. Ku fans refer to it as the MU star. MU swear its the KU star and as of today, I didnt realize that the KC star was now the Lincoln Star...

 

[BIGREDFAN_in_OMAHA]

Awesome article!! Almost as entertaining were the comments after the article.

 

[HuskerJen]

They call Bill Callahan’s time here “the Dark Days.” The losing is what you think they mean, and that’s certainly part of it. After all, Callahan coached the Huskers in their only two losing seasons since 1961.

 

But that’s only part of it.

 

The first thing he did was scrap the Power-I and the option.

 

The part in red...While it's true that Nebraska did run some power I and they did run some option under TO, that was NOT Nebraska's offense exclusively.

[808Husker in KCMO]

They call Bill Callahan’s time here “the Dark Days.” The losing is what you think they mean, and that’s certainly part of it. After all, Callahan coached the Huskers in their only two losing seasons since 1961.

 

But that’s only part of it.

 

The first thing he did was scrap the Power-I and the option.

 

The part in red...While it's true that Nebraska did run some power I and they did run some option under TO, that was NOT Nebraska's offense exclusively.

Some...

[carlfense]

Outstanding article. He hits the nail on the head.

[HuskerfaninOkieland]

They call Bill Callahan’s time here “the Dark Days.” The losing is what you think they mean, and that’s certainly part of it. After all, Callahan coached the Huskers in their only two losing seasons since 1961.

 

But that’s only part of it.

 

The first thing he did was scrap the Power-I and the option.

 

The part in red...While it's true that Nebraska did run some power I and they did run some option under TO, that was NOT Nebraska's offense exclusively.

True but that isn't the purpose of the article.

[junior4949]

After reading that article, I still can't believe TO got beat in the Gov. race.

[HuskerJen]

They call Bill Callahan’s time here “the Dark Days.” The losing is what you think they mean, and that’s certainly part of it. After all, Callahan coached the Huskers in their only two losing seasons since 1961.

 

But that’s only part of it.

 

The first thing he did was scrap the Power-I and the option.

 

The part in red...While it's true that Nebraska did run some power I and they did run some option under TO, that was NOT Nebraska's offense exclusively.

True but that isn't the purpose of the article.

 

I know that wasn't the purpose of the article. But, one would think that a journalist would at least get his, or her, basic facts right.

 

Tom Osborne often characterized his offense as multiple, power running with play-action passes and some option. And for someone, in this case a sports journalist, to say that Nebraska's "offense" was the power I and option is just plain lazy.

 

Other than that...it was a pretty good piece.

[NUance]

Outstanding article. He hits the nail on the head.

 

+1. Surprising this is in the KC Star and not OWH or LJS.

[walksalone]

They call Bill Callahan’s time here “the Dark Days.” The losing is what you think they mean, and that’s certainly part of it. After all, Callahan coached the Huskers in their only two losing seasons since 1961.

 

But that’s only part of it.

 

The first thing he did was scrap the Power-I and the option.

 

The part in red...While it's true that Nebraska did run some power I and they did run some option under TO, that was NOT Nebraska's offense exclusively.

 

No, but what people do remember is the option and the power I. 90% of the video clips are Frazier's 75 yd run, Eric Crouch's run, etc. What they played was smash mouth football, and to steal a term from MMA, the "Ground and Pound". I remember watching games where opposing D linemen, looking like they'd been dropped out of a 5 story building.

[Eric the Red]

Funny thing......did you guys notice who was in the picture or who Eric Wicherski was?????? Hint

[MCAT800]

Excellent read!!!