Husker News and Notes for 2-15-09

Husker News and Notes

Tickets are still available for the 2009 Red-White Spring Game but don’t procrastinate. The Spring Game was sold out 10 days before the game last year.

Steve Sipple looks at Nate Swifts as he gears up for the NFL Combine and the NFL Draft, and sees him being labeled as a ‘possession receiver’

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“I get tired of people saying Nate’s a possession guy, he’s this, he’s that,” Bo Pelini has said. “He’s just a heck of a football player. He’s a leader, he’s a competitor, he’s everything you want in a player.”

Said Swift : “To me, a possession receiver is a guy who comes in on third down to make the catch over the middle or on a 10-yard route on the outside to get the first down,” he said. “I wouldn’t say that was me (at Nebraska).”

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Nebraska hosts Junior Day , a new trend in college football

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Jeremy Crabtree, national recruiting analyst for Rivals.com, said “Junior Days” began cropping up about five years ago, starting at Texas.

“Mack Brown tried to get a leg up in the state of Texas,” Crabtree said. “And as you know, college football often is imitative. You started seeing it at places like Texas A&M, Southern Cal, Oklahoma, and Florida. Now it’s a very big part of the recruiting process.

“Some schools make a big deal out of it, and others keep it low key. But you’re going to keep seeing it.”

Megan Rogers, coordinator of Nebraska’s on-campus recruiting, said the Huskers are considering having another “Junior Day ” sometime before the April 18 Red-White Spring Game. As for the Spring Game, Rogers said, the Huskers will play host to at least 50 prospects.

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I’m not here to talk about the past, but someone by the name of Kevin Cosgrove breaks his silence about the 2007 Nebraska Cornhuskers Defensive performance. Anyone else think this guy still wets the bed?

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On NU’s statistical rankings in 2007: “I don’t know, I didn’t even look at it, because the way things went down there, it was done before the season was even over. We all knew we were fired before that.”

Cosgrove used the 2005 team, which led the nation in sacks, as an example of his success: “In 2005, we led the nation in sacks, and tackles for loss. You have to put a lot of pressure on quarterbacks to do that, don’t you?… We led the nation, not the conference. I think that’s an accomplishment.”

On whether the 2007 season at NU tarnished his overall track record: “Well, I’m not going to make any excuses for what happened there, but if you look at my past, we’ve had many successes on the teams I’ve been with. If I do remember, I think we won Big 10 Championships on four of the teams I’ve coached, and I won a Big 12 North Championship on a team I coached, so I think my record will speak for itself. If I’m going to be judged on one year in this profession, it seems like the people in blogs will do it, not my peers. That’s just the way it is.”

Cosgrove criticizing the NU fan base for being negative, and himself for listening to it: “When I was at Wisconsin , working for Barry (Alvarez) we never even knew that stuff existed. I never saw anything negative; the only thing I ever saw was positive. Then I went to Nebraska, and I started looking at the negative stuff, and that was probably the worst thing I ever did. It was the worst thing our team ever did, because our players started reading it. They were not only beating up me, but the players, and that’s a bad thing when that happens. That’s their team, they’re beating up the kids, and that’s not right.”

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Catching up with Mike Rozier and his football-playing son JaMichael Rozier .