Haters and Husker fans. Can we be our own worst enemy?

I wasn't around here for the successes of Tom Osborne. I've really only been a fan for about 10 years, having lived through Callahan and now the first 5 years of Pelini.

The thing is: what fan doesn't want their team to go undefeated and win the national championship? That is silly to not want, but it is silly to expect. Only one team out of the 125 in FBS football will hold up the crystal football. And while I'm disappointed that we haven't held up a conference championship or been to a BCS bowl, I know that we're knocking on the door.

I also know that things here could be so much worse--we could have players suspended, have impending NCAA investigations, have players that won't run through walls for their coach or a coach that doesn't care about his players. We could have a terrible game day atmosphere. It could be so much worse.

So I think that people need to step back, be disappointed in not winning, but appreciate the fact that we are doing things the right way. When we do win, it will be so much better than if we "cheated" to do so.

 
In fairness to the grumblers, there are acceptable losses when you feel the team moving forward, playing hard and especially when they end the season with a bowl win.

I felt pretty good after the 2008 and 2009 seasons.

I actually felt pretty good when Callahan's Huskers bushwacked Colorado in Boulder and beat Michigan in a bowl to end the 2005 season.

The complete defensive meltdown of Callahan's 2007 team was the hardest to watch. In fairness, the defensive meltdown of Pelini's last two seasons wasn't much better. I don't know how you can love the Huskers and not grumble about the product they're putting out on the field. Technically, they're in the entertainment business. We get to grumble when our favorite television shows jump the shark, too, and root for them to get better.

Personally I start every season fresh and hope for the best.

But I don't expect Nebraska to get humiliated by teams they should be able to beat. I'm probably gonna stick with that.

And Husker fans are no different from other fanbases, at least the 30 or 40 that have tasted any success in the last half-century. My Michigan buddies are the worst. Ask them what they expect from a Michigan game or season, and it's inevitably doom and gloom.

 
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Guy Chamberlin said:
In fairness to the grumblers, there are acceptable losses when you feel the team moving forward, playing hard and especially when they end the season with a bowl win.

I felt pretty good after the 2008 and 2009 seasons.

I actually felt pretty good when Callahan's Huskers bushwacked Colorado in Boulder and beat Michigan in a bowl to end the 2005 season.

The complete defensive meltdown of Callahan's 2007 team was the hardest to watch. In fairness, the defensive meltdown of Pelini's last two seasons wasn't much better. I don't know how you can love the Huskers and not grumble about the product they're putting out on the field. Technically, they're in the entertainment business. We get to grumble when our favorite television shows jump the shark, too, and root for them to get better.

Personally I start every season fresh and hope for the best.

But I don't expect Nebraska to get humiliated by teams they should be able to beat. I'm probably gonna stick with that.

And Husker fans are no different from other fanbases, at least the 30 or 40 that have tasted any success in the last half-century. My Michigan buddies are the worst. Ask them what they expect from a Michigan game or season, and it's inevitably doom and gloom.
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I still feel hopeful about Pelini because in our recent blowouts and all of last year anyway I still see effort and fight. It's obvious it's a talent and x's/o's issue. nothin that cant be fixed in other words. What happened in 2007 was a complete pack-it-in, call-it-a-year type of thing. That an unfixable situation for a particular staff.

 
If you saw the defense put up a fight in the Wisconsin game, while playing for the Big 10 Championship and a berth in the Rose Bowl, we were clearly watching two different games.

And it's not like the defense hadn't been deer in the headlights for much of the last two seasons. There's talent, there's x's and o's and then there's mental toughness. These defenses haven't been able to adjust when things go wrong. They tend to fall apart completely. They don't have the big game mentality.

Of course it can be fixed. Pelni fixed the 2007 defense in one season. One more season and he had one of the best defenses in the country.

But the blowouts the last two seasons have looked an awful lot like 2007 to me, which makes it confusing cause it's the same Pelini.

I'm hopeful though, because it's more fun that way.

 
Pelini's teams dont come out and play as if they have ZERO interest whatsoever in being there. The '07 team, and the 2nd half of the 2004 team DID. That is the point. That's not fixable. That is cracks in the foundation that some (not pointing at you) are always trying to hint at.

 
Guy Chamberlin said:
In fairness to the grumblers, there are acceptable losses when you feel the team moving forward, playing hard and especially when they end the season with a bowl win.

I felt pretty good after the 2008 and 2009 seasons.

I actually felt pretty good when Callahan's Huskers bushwacked Colorado in Boulder and beat Michigan in a bowl to end the 2005 season.

The complete defensive meltdown of Callahan's 2007 team was the hardest to watch. In fairness, the defensive meltdown of Pelini's last two seasons wasn't much better. I don't know how you can love the Huskers and not grumble about the product they're putting out on the field. Technically, they're in the entertainment business. We get to grumble when our favorite television shows jump the shark, too, and root for them to get better.

Personally I start every season fresh and hope for the best.

But I don't expect Nebraska to get humiliated by teams they should be able to beat. I'm probably gonna stick with that.

And Husker fans are no different from other fanbases, at least the 30 or 40 that have tasted any success in the last half-century. My Michigan buddies are the worst. Ask them what they expect from a Michigan game or season, and it's inevitably doom and gloom.
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There's nothing wrong with being disappointed with the product that was put on the field in some games, I'm right there with you. But when it interferes with seeing the good in the games we win is when it becomes a problem.

 
The Curse of Black Friday. Pretty simple. Win that, and we're playing a beatable texas team for the Big12 title and momentum going into the Rose Bowl vs. Miami - not that we'd beat an all-time elite squad like that, but I think more boys wearing red would've put up a fight besides Crouch that night, and maybe we don’t look so horrible in ‘02. As bad as the buffs are right now, many in their program know they took a lot from us that fateful night, and we really haven't recovered from it. Not only did cu beat us, they absolutely took our dignity.

Since then:

0 conference championships

0-6 vs texas

0-4 vs Texas Tech

1-5 vs OU

3 teams have rung up 70+ on the Huskers

2-17 vs Top 10 ranked teams

0-8 vs Top 5 ranked teams.

Since 1/3/2002, Nebraska has been the definition of irrelevance in the college football world. A conference title and BCS appearance/win would go a long way to abolish this curse.

1/1/05 was horrible night in my life as a Husker. Vince Young rallied his fellow longhorns to beat Michigan in an incredible victory that would rank as one of the best Rose Bowls ever, if not for the next incredible Rose Bowl, where Young would once again lead a comeback for a crystal football over the Trojan dynasty. Outside of Austin and Ann Arbor, many don't remember the horns clipping the Wolverines that night, but it bears special significance for the fact that texas took a one game lead over Nebraska in all-time victories, and we didn't have a chance to even it up at the time because the Huskers missed out on a post season game for the first time since 1968. Since then, texas has extended that lead to 11. This will sound weird, but I REALLY don't want to be behind texas in all-time wins. And, I'd like to see the Huskers defeat them one more time while I'm still alive.

Nebraska football has always been about earning what you have, just like the people that support them. Texas claims a shared title in ’70 after getting pounded by Notre Dame in the bowl game while we EARNED it by besting a great LSU team. I’m proud of the Red no matter what, but high expectations have been around Lincoln since the days of Willa Cather.

We can talk about being happy with whatever success the Huskers achieve, but that wasn’t good enough for guys like Ed Weir and the rest of that Husker squad that defeated the famed 4 horsemen not once, but twice. It wasn’t good enough for Devaney, Osborne, McBride, Bob Brown, Glover, Tagge, Kinney, Rodgers, Parella, Graham, Hochstein, Frazier, Frost, Eppley, Rozier, Gill, Crouch, Broderick Thomas, John Ruud, the Peter Bros, Wistrom, Alberts, Rimington, Murtaugh, Suh, all the walk-ons, etc. This list is a lot longer, because we had a CHAMPIONSHIP tradition for so many years, starting from year 1. A tradition of not letting your good enough be good enough. We can talk about recruiting and 40 times all we want, but it really comes down to heart and mindset.

Championships aren’t won by patting yourself on the back after one good play (and then giving up 2 pts on a block fg return). They are won by getting up and doing it again and again until the clock reads zero. They are won in the off-season, when no one sees you; no one sees that extra excruciating rep, that extra 40, extra film-study or technique work. An attitude of 'just being happy with the good stuff' doesn't jive with 'Can't be beat; won't be beat.'

Nebraska has always expected championships, and I don’t think the fans are or ever will be any different, no matter what conference we’re in. It’s just who we are.

 
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I found the best way for me to be a Husker fan was to distance myself. The height of my Husker fandom came when I was freshman in college in 2008. I joined HB and was on here constantly. I checked every thread, posted a couple dozen times a day, read every online article possible, had discussions with Omaha and Lincoln sportswriters and read ESPN's college football blog daily. This constant behavior kept me up-to-date with everything going on in the program. While this conduct has benefits, it also has draw backs. Specifically, the knowledge of how each game would impact our season and how people would view a win/loss turned me into a horrible fan. I was no fun to be around if we were performing poorly, paced the house if I was at my folk's place, dwelled on the loss for days afterwards, etc.

It continued like this through part of the 2010 season. I then started to get really boggled down with school work, work, internships, etc., and spent less time following the program. I also put an emphasis on sports in general instead of just focusing on the Huskers. This course of action has paid off immensely. While I don't follow the program as closely and can't offer as substantial of opinions anymore, I don't dwell on our successes/failures as much and I don't get caught up in all the hoopla surrounding the program. It has made the game, and the sport, far more enjoyable for me.

I believe I've found the perfect level of caring about the program. I care enough to want to see them succeed and make the right choices, but not too much that the games and their outcomes drain me like they used to.

tl;dr some people just need to care less, and they'll be happier fans.

 
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The curse of Black Friday was no curse at all.

Colorado just happened to be the team that was in the right place at the right time. In retrospect, there were plenty of problems with the 2001 Huskers. We just didn't see them. We didn't want to see them. Eric Crouch was being asked to do more and more in every year of his career while he had less and less around him, particularly in terms of line play on both sides.

We had a bad 02 season, a passable 03 season.... SP over reacted, Callahan was hired......blah, blah, blah.

But what this threat was about centers around what Enhance was talking about. Programs that want to be successful have to turn it up to a new level, work hard in the off season, demand more from players and coaches... ETC. But fans are not responsible for any of that. We turn up on fall Saturdays to have fun and watch football.

Sure, we can all gripe about failures, blow outs and humiliating losses, but we should not let those losses ruin our days, weekends or anything like that.

As fans, we should be able to say... man, that game sucked, but that run by T-Mart was outstanding.

Our decision to pick out a highlight or two and dismiss the rest makes our lives happier... dwelling on defeat does not and the suffering we go through in doing so hasn't and won't help Nebraska win any games in the 2013 season or in any campaign after that.

 
Jeremy said:
Since then:

0 conference championships

0-6 vs texas

0-4 vs Texas Tech

1-5 vs OU

3 teams have rung up 70+ on the Huskers

2-17 vs Top 10 ranked teams

0-8 vs Top 5 ranked teams.

Since 1/3/2002, Nebraska has been the definition of irrelevance in the college football world. A conference title and BCS appearance/win would go a long way to abolish this curse.
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Not sure why they are a cause for NU being relevant or not. I understand people don't like those teams but they don't have much to do with NU's history in the long run other than they were a plague to the conference we once loved. It's one thing to complain about the things that actually show the down fall in since then, but you have to wonder why someone would create a random stat to get their point across. Talking championships, bowl games, heisman winners, outland awards, maxwell awards, all-americans etc.....makes since in comparing how relevant/irrelevant the program has been since 2001. Match ups against Texas/Texas Tech mean next to nothing when it comes to the importance of NU's program. I think what's more important is how we competed against other AQ conferences since then.

SEC .......................... 0-5

ACC .......................... 3-2

PAC 10(12 now) ........4-4

Big 10 ........................3-1 (this isn't counting the 2011/2012 where as they are conference foes....though we are tied with Michigan for most conference wins in the B1G since joining)

Big East......................2-0

other than vs SEC teams we've matched up pretty well vs those conferences. Obviously those are not BCS bowl match ups so it wasn't the top program each year, but it was a match up at least equal to our program most years.

 
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AllNRed said:
Jeremy said:
Since then:

0 conference championships

0-6 vs texas

0-4 vs Texas Tech

1-5 vs OU

3 teams have rung up 70+ on the Huskers

2-17 vs Top 10 ranked teams

0-8 vs Top 5 ranked teams.

Since 1/3/2002, Nebraska has been the definition of irrelevance in the college football world. A conference title and BCS appearance/win would go a long way to abolish this curse.
Click to expand...
Not sure why they are a cause for NU being relevant or not. I understand people don't like those teams but they don't have much to do with NU's history in the long run other than they were a plague to the conference we once loved. It's one thing to complain about the things that actually show the down fall in since then, but you have to wonder why someone would create a random stat to get their point across. Talking championships, bowl games, heisman winners, outland awards, maxwell awards, all-americans etc.....makes since in comparing how relevant/irrelevant the program has been since 2001. Match ups against Texas/Texas Tech mean next to nothing when it comes to the importance of NU's program. I think what's more important is how we competed against other AQ conferences since then.

SEC .......................... 0-5

ACC .......................... 3-2

PAC 10(12 now) ........4-4

Big 10 ........................3-1 (this isn't counting the 2011/2012 where as they are conference foes....though we are tied with Michigan for most conference wins in the B1G since joining)

Big East......................2-0

other than vs SEC teams we've matched up pretty well vs those conferences. Obviously those are not BCS bowl match ups so it wasn't the top program each year, but it was a match up at least equal to our program most years.
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Good points. Plus, not many teams have faired well against the SEC.

 
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