Good God. I literally go to the damn school and nobody acts this erratic after a loss. We lost to a better team without our starting QB with walk-ons all over the field. This isn't 1995 anymore. Everybody plays on TV, everybody has strength coaches, everybody has facilities. Has the first half of this season not been the most fun in a long time? We got lit up by ohio state, who is in the national title hunt ever year and beat Alabama with a THIRD STRING QB two years ago. And we had a new coach last year with a new scheme in a completely foreign place with players recruited for a different purpose who goes 5-7 and then next year is 7-2 with a close loss at Wisconsin and a bad loss to OSU under the lights on their home field and people want him ostracized?
Why can't people just settle the hell down? If anybody watched that game and saw Tommy Armstrong not moving or speaking for a half hour and listened to Sam Ponder choke back tears on national TV, and then proceeded to criticize play calling five minutes later, you're a monster. It's a football game. We were a TOP TEN TEAM before tonight, and we still have a shot at conference championships and people literally cannot sleep because you think the coaching is that bad? We were unranked at the beginning of the year and took care of business and lost to two great teams.
I'd take Mike Riley over Jim Harbaugh or Urban Meyer any day of the week. And if that meant I go 10-2 or 9-3 every year while they win national championships, so be it. I'm a student here, I love it here, I care more about UNL than anything else in my life. And I;m proud of these players that fight like hell and seem like stand up guys (everyone I've met, anyway) who are proud to wear the N.
Who play for a coach who knows what this is, a football game. Who guides his players through the death of a teammate and best friend. Who brings a sexual assault victim who HE PREVIOUSLY MISTREATED with regard to her case, admitted his wrongdoing, and tried to show his team the mistakes that were made to educate them. Who speaks in awe at press conferences over what he's experiencing for the first time at Nebraska with their incredible fans and who does whatever he can to honor their tradition. Who is looked up to by other coaches and who shows students like me how we should act.
If you want to go back to being 9-3 with a coach who mocks halftime reporters, berates refs, and dares his bosses to fire him, good for you. But Riley is a representative of kids like me who walk through campus proud to be here and who love Nebraska and embrace it, rather than donning some us vs. them mentality. A blowout at #6 Ohio State and too many missed tackles doesn't change that.
