Huskers Hire A New Coach

This was my tweet to Coach Mike Riley after watching him ride his bike in an ESPN feature.

Well, that was fast. It only took four days for Nebraska Athletic Director Shawn Eichorst to hire a new head football coach. He's Mike Riley, a 61-year-old Oregon native who has been coaching at Oregon State for 16 seasons. While he's never won a championship of any kind there, Husker fans are excited because he supposedly gets along with everyone (the media included).

As my buddy Bob Cullinan wrote upon hearing that, we'll see how how happy fans are when he fails to win games.

Bo Doesn't Keep His Job

Pelini's sideline antics were not appreciated by many fans.

"That escalated quickly."

That famous line after the TV reporters fight scene in "Anchorman," rang true when I saw the news that Bo Pelini had been fired.

The email to media outlets from the Nebraska athletic department arrived at 9:43 a.m. on a Sunday. Yes, on a Sunday. In the morning. Two days removed from a 37-34 overtime win by the Huskers over Iowa in which I wrote Bo had saved his job. I don't think many people expected he would be let go after pulling that one out. Now the Huskers owe Bo $150,000 a month for the next 51 months as part of a $7.65 million buyout clause in his contract.

Blowout losses, national perception and not playing in a way fans, media and others perceive was possible is what ultimately cost Pelini his job. Reached by my longtime friend Eric Olson of The Associated Press, Pelini texted in response for comment, "I'm good. Thanks for asking!"

Many questions remain, including what happens to "FauxPelini" on Twitter, who had some knee-slappers after the news broke:

Huskers Prevail; Bo Keeps His Job

This was the scene at Kinnick Stadium before overtime. (©Huskers on Instagram)

The Friday after Thanksgiving Day is not only "Black Friday." In Nebraska, it is a tradition that means watching the Huskers play football.

First it was Nebraska and Oklahoma, which instantly brings up mentions of the "Game of the Century" back in 1971 and classic games in the late 70s into the 80s. Then, it was Nebraska and Colorado who battled in the 90s in a forced rivalry. Today, it is Nebraska's neighbor to the east, the Iowa Hawkeyes, who are in the crosshairs of Cornhusker fans as the teams battle for the Heroes Trophy in the "Heroes Game" (sponsored by Hy-Vee).

I have written about Nebraska football before. In fact, I have even written about the demise of Shawn Watson before he was fired. This time, the game between Nebraska and Iowa drew additional attention as some Husker fans called for the firing of head coach Bo Pelini. Calls of "Fire Bo" and "Bo Must Go" were routine on Twitter in the days leading up to Saturday's game.

Through the first quarter and deep into the first half, it looked like Pelini and his movers would have a busy Saturday. But a late second quarter touchdown pulled Nebraska to within 10-7. When the Huskers fell behind 24-7, even radio announcers Adrian Fiala and Matt Davison were having trouble putting a good spin on the situation. But a long run by Ameer Abdullah, two punt returns for touchdowns by De’Mornay Pierson-El and a touchdown catch in overtime – yes, it went to overtime – by Kenny Bell helped the Huskers pull out a 37-34 win.

Nebraska secures its seventh straight nine-win season under Pelini and now appears headed to a bowl game in either Nashville or Santa Clarita, California. But it will hardly stop the talk: should Bo Pelini be the Husker coach? (See more photos on the Huskers' Instagram account.)

Prediction Contest: Nebraska vs. Penn State

It has been a few weeks since we have done a Nebraska football prediction contest with the girls.

We had a bit of a failure when it came to some of the categories from the last time we did this. So we're changing things up. For instance, the "Cornheads" category guess is gone. It would be a much to imagine a lot of shots of fans in the crowd wearing corncobs on their head in Happy Valley. So we've changed it to shots of "Bo Blowups." Specifically, how many times will they show Nebraska Coach Bo Pelini blowing his top on the sideline? See the chart below for the other categories.

Name	Winner, Score	Temperature at Kickoff	Bo Blowups	Penn St. Cheerleader Shots
Emily	Penn State, 32-23	38 degrees	13	3
Lauren	Penn State, 46-30	38 degrees	50	50
Julia	Penn State, 31-27	38 degrees	5	15
Olivia	Nebraska, 36-28	36 degrees	6	3
Veronica	Nebraska, 36-30	40 degrees	17	13
Sean	Nebraska, 28-24	40 degrees	7	11

So Who Won?

Nebraska beat Illinois 39-19 and Sean's buddy, Eric Francis, took this (copyright) photo of it.

Nebraska beat Illinois 39-19 Saturday. So first we needed to figure out who won the prediction contest. Well, only two people – Julia and Sean – chose the Huskers to win. So that certainly narrowed it down. And Sean's prediction (42-34) was the closest. So there you go. As for the other categories? Well, we lost track of the original sheet. We'll do a better job next time. We promise.

Nebraska-Illinois Predictions

So it's Nebraska football time again and I am finally in town to enjoy a game. Last week, the Huskers had a bye week so the girls and I will be watching when the two teams kick off at 11 o'clock today.

Of course, there will always be a prediction contest. And this year, we stepped it up with a variety of predictions in addition to the usual ones (winner and final score). The new categories for today's game are: temperature at game time in Lincoln, number of people we will see on TV wearing corncobs on their head and the number of yards rushing by Nebraska.

Name	Winner, Score	Temperature at Kickoff	Cornheads	Neb. Yards Rushing
Emily	Illinois, 47-23	49 degrees	11	316
Lauren	Ants, 10	1 degree	"10 hundred"	1
Julia	Neb., 51-45	51 degrees	6	245
Olivia	Illinois, 47-43	48 degrees	5	402
Veronica	Illinois, 47-36	45 degrees	6	425
Sean	Neb., 42-34	49 degrees	3	425

As you can see, Lauren is already a bit off the mark. But that's OK, right?

No Holiday For Huskers; Is This It For Watson?

If you watched the Holiday Bowl, you saw a lot of this from Nebraska.
If you're a Nebraska football fan who watched the Holiday Bowl on ESPN, rest assured that you will not be getting those three-and-a-half hours of your life back. Actually, it was only three hours – because the first half-hour of the broadcast was the fourth quarter and overtime periods of the (insert sponsor name) Music City Bowl featuring North Carolina-Tennessee. Err, make that two hours and 50 minutes, because ESPN also spent about 10 minutes cutting in for Stanford's upset of Connecticut in women's basketball (ending an NCAA-record 90-game win streak).

In between all the (non) action, ESPN played a commercial for Ashland University. Or maybe it was Bridgepoint University. Or some college somewhere. All I know is that 1) I didn't know until tonight that the Holiday Bowl was sponsored by "Bridgepoint Education." (Even the official Holiday Bowl site Google entry doesn't mention the title sponsor's name.); 2) Bridgepoint spent so much money sponsoring the bowl that it couldn't pay to produce more than two commercials.

But the real entertainment from the Huskers' 19-7 loss came after the game. That's when Nebraska football fans highjacked Shawn Watson's Wikipedia entry. Preserved for your reading enjoyment here:

Shawn Watson
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Shawn Watson is the Offensive Coordinator and Quarterbacks Coach for the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers football team. He is a terrible offensive coordinator. He has no idea what he is doing.

Shawn Watson was born in Carbondale, IL on September 21, 1959, and graduated from Carterville High School in Carterville, Illinois.

Coaching career
Watson began his football coaching career as a graduate assistant in 1982 at Southern Illinois; the same school where he had completed his playing career. He earned his Masters Degree in Offensive Mismanagement.

His first full time position was at Illinois, where he started as a graduate assistant for two years beginning in 1983 before promotions to Offensive Tackles Coach, Tight Ends Coach and Wide Receivers Coach by 1986. Illinois participated in two bowl games during Watson's time there, including the Rose Bowl following the 1983 season.

Beginning in 1987, Watson coached in various positions at Miami (OH) University across seven years, starting as Wide Receivers Coach, and moving through positions as Tight Ends Coach, Wide Receivers Coach and completing his career at Miami in 1993 as Quarterbacks Coach and Recruiting Coordinator.

In 1994, Watson obtained his first appointment as Head Coach when he was hired to take control of the program where he started his playing and coaching careers; Southern Illinois. SIU had gone 15-29 in the four years prior to Watson's arrival, and his first year was a rough start to his head coaching career as SIU finished 1-10. SIU finished the next two seasons with repeat 5-6 records before Watson moved on, finishing with an overall head coaching record to date of 11-22. During Watson's three year tenure at SIU he produced 20 all-conference players and an NFL-drafted Tight End in Damon Jones.

In 1997, Watson was hired by Head Coach Gary Barnett at Northwestern University as Quarterbacks Coach. When Barnett was later hired as Head Coach by the University of Colorado in 1999, Watson also followed and continued for a year as Quarterbacks Coach. In 2000, Watson was promoted to Offensive Coordinator at Colorado while maintaining his role with the quarterbacks, and remained in that role until Barnett's firing at the conclusion of the 2005 season. Why Nebraska would want a former Colorado coach is still in question. Experts believe that it was part of Bill Callahan's master plan to destroy Nebraska Football.

In 2006, Head Coach Bill Callahan hired Watson to the position of Tight Ends Coach and Recruiting Coordinator at the University of Nebraska, and he was subsequently promoted the following year to the same position he had held at Colorado; Offensive Coordinator and Quarterbacks Coach. When Callahan was fired at the conclusion of the 2007 season, Watson was one of two members of Callahan's staff that were retained under new Nebraska Head Coach Bo Pelini. Shawn Watson has consistently lost games because of poor play calling and stupidity. It is suspected that he is taking bribes from Casey Martinez, Taylor Martinez's father, in order to ensure that Taylor plays no matter how terrible his performance is. No one knows why he has yet to be fired by head coach Bo Pelini.

So where to now? John Bishop from KLIN has a terrific piece that he hammered out no more than 20 minutes after Nebraska limped off the field. Particularly interesting is his opinion on ESPN's coverage of bowl games. I completely agree.

Washington used its head to beat the Huskers.

Taylor Martinez spent a lot of time doing this in the second half.

Pelini told reporters afterward that he takes full blame for the loss.

Is this the last we'll see of Martinez as a Husker?

Nebraska's Back. And We're Here To Stay

Nebraska Coach Bo Pelini drew up a masterpiece Wednesday.
Bo Pelini thanked the Husker fans who turned out in force for Wednesday night's Pacific Life Holiday Bowl. Then he marked the end of remarkable turnaround to the season with a statement: "Nebraska's back. And we're here to stay."

Niles Paul's "Superman" pose says it all...

...and Ndamukong Suh followed suit in his final collegiate game.

It's Only Just A Game, Right?

That one second that would be put back on the clock.
I don't consider myself a Nebraska football fan.

It's not a knock against the state where I was born, grew up in and have lived my entire life. In fact, I will readily admit that I was a fervent Husker fan in my teens. I dreamed of pulling on the Scarlet and Cream, working out in the massive Nebraska lockerroom and hearing the cheers of the 76-thousand plus fans in Memorial Stadium.

Were my aspirations far-fetched? Of course. I stood nearly 6-foot-2 in eighth grade but weighed a paltry 120 pounds. If I had any hope of making a football team – any team (Pop Warner, junior high, junior varsity, varsity, college, etc.) – it would be as a kicker. But my leg strength was awful and the few afternoons my dad and I ventured up to the local high school field, I could barely kick it through the uprights from more than 30 yards (equating to 20-yard field goals).

So what changed my perspective on Nebraska's football team from Husker fan to casual observer? It had to be my "real" career as a sports reporter. I saw my first Husker game in person in 1987. Two years later, I was covering the team on Saturdays, watching from the press box and interviewing Heisman Trophy winners like Rashaan Salaam, future NFL'ers like Roy Williams and Danny Wuerffel and Hall of Fame coaches like Barry Switzer and Steve Spurrier.

So up until tonight, my biggest heartbreak involving the Husker football team dated back to my days as a high school junior. It was Jan. 2, 1984. Yes, the "instant classic" Orange Bowl. The one that followed Nebraska's 1983 season that saw the Husker offense get a cover story in Time magazine for being one of the most prolific in the history of college football. "The Triplets" (Turner Gill, Irving Fryar and Mike Rozier) were poised to earn Tom Osborne his first national title. And, as we all know, it came down to a failed two-point conversion that let Miami steal it all away.

I vividly remember calling my friend, Matt, long-distance (he lived in Des Moines) on that Monday night after Nebraska scored to pull within 31-30. We watched Gill roll out to his right and throw a pass to Jeff Smith, only to have Miami safety Ken Calhoun tip the ball away. The phone went dead. Omaha World-Herald sports editor Mike Kelly wrote a column that began, "The sun did come up," though it really didn't the next day (it was cloudy and overcase). I wore a black armband on my Husker jersey for months (seriously) and we suffered through one of our coldest winters of all time. Talk about piling on...

So when Nebraska saw the game officials put one second back on the clock last night in Dallas, I already started feeling that sinking feeling in my stomach that we had all been here before. The Hollywood Ending that Ndamukong Suh needed to possible vault him into the top three of a Heisman Trophy vote crossed my mind. But before I could start playing it out in my mind, Texas' Hunter Lawrence already had the kick in the air, sailing toward the uprights.

At first, it looked like it was going to go wide. But it kept curving and curving and tucked just inside the left upright. My friend, Bob, whom I had been texting updates to all night long, sent me three different texts asking what happened. For some reason, my texts either weren't reaching him or they were delayed. So three times I had to type, "Texas won on a 46-yard field goal." Talk about having to rub salt on a wound.

Lasting images from this game (off my TV screen):
As the Huskers lined up to kick the go-ahead field goal,
Texas quarterback Colt McCoy couldn't bear to watch.

Does this look like the expression on the face
of a confident Heisman Trophy candidate?

Pelini and the Huskers thought they had won the game.

This is how close Nebraska came to winning.

Big Game Saturday Night

It doesn't get any bigger than this (at least so far) for the Nebraska football team. Saturday night at 6:45 on ESPN, the Huskers take on Kansas State to decide the Big 12 North division title.


If this video doesn't get you in the mood, you're not a Husker fan.

Watch The Ballboy Run

Julia will get a kick out of this.
Watch the ballboy running on the sideline.

What An Adventure

My van - and the flag pole it struck - at an Iowa rest stop.
So we're already four days into the new year and I have yet to post. But there has been a lot to do and plenty to talk about - so here's a quick recap:

New Year's Eve fireworks: The girls and I watched Omaha's fireworks celebration (at 7 p.m.) and had two memorable moments. The first was when a van went flying by the parking lot where we were parked, nearly hitting a telephone poll. The second was when the fireworks started and we realized our viewing spot prevented us from seeing the show. So we missed the first 30 seconds or so while I moved the van to a better vantage point.

Gator Bowl: Nebraska's football team pulled out another win in a game that it could have easily lost. The girls and I particularly enjoyed two plays: the second-half touchdwon catch that was "coming right into your living room" and the time the guy ran out of his shoe, leading the announcer to say, "he blew a tire!"

Trip To Mankato, Minn. - We decided to drive up to UNO's hockey game in Mankato, Minn., Saturday morning but only made it 90 miles north of Omaha before slick roads ended the trip. As we were getting off the interstate at a rest stop, I lost control on the untreated pavement of the exit ramp. I managed to avoid two other vehicles but hit a couple curbs and ultimately crashed (sideways) into a flag pole in front of the rest stop building. Fortunately, the girls were not hurt. I badly bruised my shoulder (X-rays at the hospital revealed no broken bones) and might have suffered a mild concussion as well.

As for the girls, they took it all in stride. We still got to stay in a hotel, they still got to swim in a pool and we listened to the hockey game on the Internet. Most of that "normalcy" to our "adventure" came thanks to the on-the-spot assistance of my sister, Bridget, and her husband, Jon. We also were made to feel right at home by friends Pete and Sheryl and their two children, Emma and Marshall. Having them there to help (they were traveling about 45 minutes behind us) also made great play partners for their girls.

So now I await word on the fate of my van, which was working out very well. Ahead this week is a trip up to the Shrine Hospital for Lauren's semi-annual checkup.