My landscaper was over yesterday. Turns out he is a husker fan so it started pretty quickly and by the time last night’s cocktail time arrived I had that old time feeling.
He’s generally a good guy but listening to him prattle on about their last national championship flicked the bean of my hatred for huskers like few things could. It was ‘97 for Christ’s sake…their chances of another one died with Princess Diana.
The only option they ever had to resurrect that zombie program was to hire a generational talent if it became available. An amazing recruiter, a coach that understands the modern college athlete and their desires and dreams. A coach that knows the game because they’ve lived it. Excelled at it. Achieved greatness through it. A coach that can rally a whole community, a whole university, an entire state, the complete sports media market to their cause with a unique blend of personality, skill and determination. Instead they hired ****-Chet from Weird Science and that pretty much ended all hope of their return to relevance.
But I, for one, expected no less. And expectations are what lie at the core of all of this. huskers cause their own problems with outsized expectations. Expect me to give a single crisp **** about what this team did 26 years ago. Expect naming skeletor your AD to help. Expect hiring your former drunken coward of a QB as head coach to right the ship. Expect the hiring of an 11-27 NFL washout as your next coach to fix things and then sit slack-jawed while your league and rivals all call you ****ing idiots for it. The proud people of Husker Nation need to adjust their expectations. Live your lives, do your thing. You had a good run but it’s over.
Expect more mediocrity and you can find happiness in your canned soup of a life. Never waste a second thinking you’re ever going to be anything more than you are today. Because you’re not. Ever. But it’s cool. Every jungle needs dung beetles.
Tomorrow morning the Nebraska cornhuskers will carry their legacy and all the associated expectations into Folsom and it will cause them nothing but trouble. They’re going to run right smack into a faster, more skilled team lead by more skilled and inspiring staff and they’re going to get pounded into the ****ing dirt. We will respectfully lay their legacy and expectations over them like a flag on a corpse…and then **** their moms.
See ya there cats and kittens. It’s game time.