When Bob Devaney was coach at Nebraska, I was happy, and the entire state was happy, and life was good. He was friendly and smart and genial and won lots of games and got a little tipsy sometimes if not a lot tipsy a lot of the time. When teetotaler Tom Osborne was coach, I was mostly happy, but used to yell at the radio or the tv to pass the ball once in a while. And while Bob Devaney was like the tipsy uncle, Tom Osborne was the serious-minded father figure to troubled kids, the Father Flanagan of football. He saved many a kid from a troubled life, but not all. I wasn't all that happy when Frank Solich was hired as coach, but at least he was homegrown and won a lot of games. He always seemed dour. And he drank in his car alone at night. I was very unhappy when that other coach whose name I will not say replaced Frank after a 9 and 3 year. I yelled at the tv more during those years than all the other years combined. "What the f*** were you thinking?" "What kind of stupid play call was that?", etc., etc. Worst coach in my lifetime at NU. As far as I could tell, nobody in Nebraska liked him. He probably drank a lot. I was glad to see that city-slicker carpetbagger fired. When Bo Pelini was hired coach, there was great promise and high expectations, but I got really tired of his sideline behavior and his adolescent potty mouth temperament. But he won at least 9 games every year (except for the big ones like the first 20 years of TO), and the players loved him, and I didn't have that many issues with his play calling habits that I can remember. But he appeared to have no sense of humor whatsoever and everybody half-expected him to go full blown Woody Hayes on the sidelines one day. Nebraska was mostly glad to see him go. He's the kind of guy that if he drank a lot he'd be a mean drunk. Mike Riley, many thought, would bring out the best in 2nd tier players and could develop quarterbacks in particular -- I wish we'd seen more of the latter. He seems like a very pleasant guy, I don't know if he drinks, or has a sense of humor, but we've got the worst record since 1961, which I think Bob Devaney turned around in his first year, 1962, with a 9 and 2 year. Mike Riley seems less likely to assault a referee than did Bo. I don't really have a big point in all this, I'm just venting about our 5 and 7 season that could very well have been 9 and 3 or 10 and 2 with less Bad Tommy/Good Tommy drama, a whole lot fewer dropped passes, unfathomable passes to no discernible receiver, stupid penalties, key injuries, and more than a few play calls I'd like to take back, etc., etc. Most Nebraskans are patient, I think, but the boundaries have been pushed lately. Nebraska might even go to a bowl game if enough other mediocre teams lose games this weekend, and I'll cheer them on and hope they play well. Nebraska is quite possibly the best 5 and 7 team in the country. Have a nice weekend. I've got a bottle of whiskey in the cabinet. I'm going to have a drink now.
2 Comments:
At last! A 100%-accurate post with no nits to pick. I accidentally got hooked on football in 1972 when I accidentally watched a TV feature showing Gale Sayers in slow motion, dodging and weaving his way down the field, to ballet music (added later, I assume). Hmm, said I to myself, there's more to football than a bunch of guys jumping in a pile, which is how football was played at Central when I was there. The Campbell household was Husker-berserk, Johnny Rodgers was outrageous, and if a Nebraska game happened to be televised we muted Satan's mouthpiece (Keith Jackson) and listened to Lyell Bremser, equally deranged but in a good way. We drank a lot of Coors if someone had recently been to Colorado, otherwise Budweiser. Man, woman, and child, those were the glory days, though Pipi (1962 grad) said that pre-Devaney you couldn't GIVE a ticket away. We need to hope the rich alums don't go apoplectic but stay the course with Riley and look on the bright side, which is also the dark side--soaring alcohol tax revenues. 5.5% of a skillion dollars is .055 skillion, which can buy a lot of tractors but might not support costly rehab for sots and maimed normies, as we say in AA.
Hey Bud,
I was so sick of Pellini's ridiculous and nauseating behavior on the sidelines, and, well, everywhere else too, that I was heard to say more than one time that "I don't care if we go 0-10 if we have a coach who at least sets a good example for those kids (they are kids, after all, and a coach is a role model, after all) and I nearly got what I asked for! Sure, I think that it would be good if Mike Riley could figure out how to coach, (maybe they could send him and his staff to coaching school) and maybe they could send Tommy to basic QB school so that he learns how to get better instincts and technique than a sandlot player, but even if they don't, it ain't the end of the world, and the good thing is, we don't have to wince and cringe and avert our eyes throughout football season as Pellini's legions of demons try and nearly succeed each week to tear themselves out of his body, publicly exorcising Bo in this ritual acting out of his life, with which he can't seem to come to grips.
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