Nebraska vs. Texas-the Closing Thoughts

(The following is an e-mail I wrote to Brian Christopherson of the Lincoln Journal-Star in 2010, before the final Big 12 Nebraska-Texas. The paper had requested that fans send in their recollections of the series with Texas, so I answered, and, while my thoughts were never published, here I decided I might as well share them with you.)

In response to your question of what this game means to me, the fan, I can’t begin to put into words what this game means to me. I’m twenty-seven and the first games that I can remember where in 1994 and 1995. This game against Texas might be the most significance game I’ve seen since either 1995 Orange Bowl or the 1996 Fiesta Bowl , due to both the on-field and off-field frustration against the Longhorns.

The two most memorable games I’ve been to at Memorial Stadium have both been against Texas. The first time, on an icky, sub-40 degree day in 1998, I, the eager fifteen year-old, wanted to go to the Texas game because of how they humiliated us two years prior. At the time, all I had known was Nebraska dominance, and I couldn’t remember a Nebraska home loss .The lose, shuttling out of the stadium with other fans while Texas ran out the clock, all of it shocked me. As watched young players make mistakes (the offensive line, the turnover after Ralph Brown’s interception, Tracey Wistrom’s drop that could have given Nebraska a 20-13 lead), the Huskers looked  vulnerable to me for the first time.

In 2006, I went to the Nebraska-Texas game, and once again the weather was cold and icy (sidebar-how odd is that Nebraska has gotten inclement weather for two of three October games with Teas). The game was a game of rhythms. The first half was Texas-slanting, and at half-time, I thought that Nebraska, down nine points, was lucky to even be in the game with Texas’ missed field goals.

But in the second half, the game gradually became to tilt Nebraska’s way, as if it were actually being played on a flat plane that was slowly shifting toward the Huskers. Gradually, Nebraska became to rise, starting with Brandon Jackson touchdown. (Dane Todd’s helicopter block might be the best Husker block I’ve ever seen live.) When we got the ball back, I’ll never forgot those three plays. First, there was the double reverse for a first down, the 21-yard pass to Maurice Purify. Like magic, we were finally moving the ball. Then Callahan called for the halfback pass that he used the previous year against Oklahoma. When I saw that Marlon Lucky was going to throw the ball, I thought, oh great. They’ll remember the play and have it covered. I think I saw Nate Swift catch the ball, but I didn’t believe he’d actually caught it until I heard the stadium go wild.

The stadium’s roar felt silent. I could feel that little piece of beating Texas, a piece I would feel later on when I would see Colt McCoy sacked and Texas forced to punt, then Brandon Jackson gain seven yards on two carries, then again for a split second when Terrence Nunn caught Zac Taylor’s pass. I it was a piece that said, “We’re better than those arrogant, evenly tanned, Orange-faced losers.” It felt so good, it almost couldn’t last

Nunn's fumble

As we all know, a lot can happen in four year. One disastrous season, a new (old) AD and coach, to rebuilding year, another chapter of Nebraska-Texas in the Big 12 title game, and an off-field fight that led Nebraska down the path to a new conference.

So, after all that, what does this game mean to me? Beyond the on-field frustrations, save the 1999 Big 12 Title game, this game is about putting down a titan with too much power. Since the Big 12’s inception, Texas has pursued its own agenda ahead of good of the league. Texas’ greed ultimately forced Nebraska have to look elsewhere. But wouldn’t fate have it that, on its way out the door, Nebraska has the team give Texas one reminder of what they will be missing: a top-notch football program, the kind that could help keep their league get a huge paycheck for years to come.

(Of course, the game didn’t turn out the way I was hoping for.)

The BCS didn’t fall for Texas’ Grand Plan…and they shouldn’t.

This weekend, the BCS caused a victory for good football when Alabama was selected to play in the BCS Title game over Oklahoma State, and I don’t just mean that because I think the better team got into the National Title Game. Alabama is the better team, no doubt in my mind. But as a fan of college football and a Nebraska Cornhusker fan specifically, I am very happy to see that the new Big 12, a conference set up in order to get teams into the National Title Game, failed in their first opportunity.

Eighteen months ago, with two teams gone, Texas decided to keep the Big 12 together so long as it could do so the way it wanted to. That meant the Longhorn Network, and that meant getting rid of the conference championship game the coaches despise. (Another sign of incompetent leadership at the top of the Big 12. If the conference really wanted the money from a championship game, they would have it.) Now, Texas looked like it was going still play big games when, in the immediate aftermath of Big 12 Championship’s expiration, they went out and scheduled home-and-home series with USC and Notre Dame, but that’s just window dressing. Get a team up at full health in September to play a high-profile, non-conference opponent is much either than getting your beleaguered, beat-up team to play one more game at the end of the year. Even their most difficult game of the year, Oklahoma, is played the second weekend October, and they never have to play at Oklahoma. And also consider Texas’ worst-case scenario: going into the Big 12 Title after scratching through the Big 12 South, only to get upset by a North team that got hot in the last month (as almost in 2009 against Nebraska).

Now, I’m not here to say that I completely disdain Texas for wanting an easier road to the Title Game, that’s their prerogative. The SEC does the same when they play eight conference games and schedule cupcakes in September. But let’s get something straight here: just because the Big 12 has set up an easy road to get into the BCS Title Game doesn’t mean the voters should reward them for it.

Let’s also get something straight about Conference title games in general: they didn’t hurt the big dogs as much as they hurt the upstarts. Oklahoma lost the Big 12 Title Game in 2003 but still got into the National Title game. Yes, Texas did loose a shot at the National Title when they fell to Colorado in the 2001 game and almost again to Nebraska in 2009 (by more their own fault than anything of Nebraska’s doing), but three times times an upstart team from the Big 12 North lost a chance to get to the National Title Game as well (Nebraska in ’96; Kansas State in ’98; and Missouri in ’07).

And coaches like Bill Synder and Gary Pinkel would have their own reasons for getting rid of the conference championship game. Coaches like the possibility of a split conference crown more than a title game so that at least they can put that on their resume and up on a ring in their stadium. Last year, Mark Dantonio and Michigan State could at least claim a share of the Big 10 crown even though they didn’t even have a BCS game to show for it. This year, the have a mere Legends Division Title, a step up from the ole grand Big 12 North Title that Nebraska or Missouri had to win one tough game a year to get. This speaks to the fact, that, when it comes to making decisions about a conference’s future, the university president’s and administrators should have the final word and not the coaches, who don’t want one more tough conference game to play in or a championship to weed out inferior teams. Not that it’s wrong for them to have their own interests (many coaches have only a few years to prove themselves in a high-profile position), but we shouldn’t be served mediocre football because of it.

That’s why I’m glad that Oklahoma State will be playing Stanford in the Fiesta Bowl. First of all, they will be playing on grass, a surface on which the Cowboys have three of their lowest four point totals of the season and haven’t scored more than forty points on all year. They will be playing against a Stanford team known for its physicality and who will run the ball directly at them, a novelty not seen in Big 12 outside of Kansas State. And Stanford’s defense, toughen by facing their wrecking ball offense every day in practice, will have a month to study the Cowboys’ finesse offense. Once the Stanford defense starts hitting the undersized Cowboy receivers in the mouth, Brandon Weeden, Justin Blackmon, and their basketball-on-turf cohorts will go into the same shell they were in at Iowa State and be exposed in a way that the soft Big 12 couldn’t expose them.