San Diego 'Sham'bles: Huskies Leave Huskers Searching for Answers

Under the prodigal tutelage of head coach Bo Pelini, Nebraska was thought to be an outside threat to push for a Bowl Championship Series game in year-three of the Pelini revitilization project in Lincoln.

After the dust settled, Nebraska regressed in its last year as a member of the Big 12.

Nebraska looked completely lost at times in 2010.

Pelini was out coached in Nebraska losses this season, none more-so than at home in a win-at-all-costs game against Texas. Mack Brown and his staff owned Nebraska’s coaches.

Nebraska will never be happier to avoid Texas after being completely dominated by the founding member of the Texas 10—what the Big 12 ought to change its name to after losing Nebraska and Colorado for greener pastures.

Nebraska’s only victory over Texas was in the 1999 Big 12 Championship Game.

After making Washington and quarterback Jake Locker look like Millard North’s junior varsity squad in September, three months later Nebraska’s season ended in heartache by the team it mercifully pounded 56-21 on its home field.

If you look at Nebraska's losses in 2010, it only has itself to blame. Penalties and lack of execution haunted Nebraska in 2010, just as it did in 2009.

You would have thought Nebraska would have learned its lesson after being literally three plays away from 12-1 in 2009.

The 2010 slate was 'Taylor-made' to be an unbeaten season for Nebraska, athough it would not have been a player in the national title race—Nebraska would not have mattered because Auburn and Oregon would still be in the BCS National Championship Game because ESPN would have kept the Big 12 out.

Nebraska would have been behind TCU and even Boise State had it not lost to Nevada in the BCS pecking order.

You can forgive the loss at home to Texas, at Texas A&M, and in the Big 12 title game against Oklahoma, but the 19-7 Holiday Bowl loss to Washington, however, is unexplainable.

Is Washington head coach Steve Sarkisian that much smarter than he was three months ago?

He is a solid mind as a young head coach, zero question about it, and is clearly the right man to lead them back into the national spotlight.

If you were to watch a DVR of both games back-to-back, you would have to convince yourself that it was even the same season.

That is how far Nebraska has regressed in such a short amount of time. From all the preseason hype it generated, Nebraska was an average football team at best.

For somebody that doubted Ndamakong Suh's greatness when he was in Lincoln, his opinion of Suh has done a complete u-turn now that he's the best defensive tackle in the NFL already.

If Nebraska plays like it did against Washington in the Big 10 next season, Nebraska will be in 2011 what Texas was in 2010—not going bowling after a sub-.500 record.

The Huskers could, however, get on a roll and have a nice 10-win season.

The Big 10 really isn't all that great either and Nebraska clearly has the be considered the favorite in its division next season.

In 2009, Nebraska only had itself to blame for a respectable 10-3 finish. The Cornhuskers blew a lead in hostile territory at Virginia Tech and committed eight turnovers in a shocking 9-7 loss to Iowa State in Lincoln.

In the Big 12 Championship Game loss to Texas, Nebraska choked away the outcome and allowed the Longhorns the chance to get embarrassed by Alabama in the big game.

From a pro-Big 12 conspiracy theorist, it turns out that this writer has been living a lie for the past 15 football seasons. Nobody defended the Big 12 more or put his reputation as a knowledgable college football fan on the line more than this writer did.

As it turns out, he was the idiot all along. Only it took him 15 years to realize it.

He grew up walking the streets of small town Nebraska listening to the decent games on the radio on a decent autumn Saturday, back before ESPN’s coup attempt on college football became complete.

Everybody was outside mowing their laws or washing their cars during non-conference season and they would have the game playing on the radio as they did their Saturday chores.

Big 8 football was pounded into his head. Three yards and a cloud of dust or three times up the gut and punt. Either way, quarterbacks didn’t throw. Well, backwards when they pitched on the option. When it was throw time, here comes the jailbreak screen.

Nebraska’s offense in 2010 is hardly recognizable from the glory days, but who could blame them?—Running the football is for the service academies.

Look at the Big 12’s performances in the bowl games. If you want somebody who firmly believes that we put too much stock into bowl games because at the end of the day it really doesn’t matter, it’s this guy.

Yet you can’t ignore it when your team plays in a "lesser bowl" than they should have  been in and still get embarrassed in that bowl game.

Kansas State losing to Syracuse, a program that couldn’t win a game not too long ago.

Iowa’s 10th string running back looking like Roy Helu Jr. against Missouri, the biggest Big 12 paper ‘tiger’ of them all.

Oklahoma State's schemed offense looked good against the blind—also known as Arizona at the Alamo Bowl. Nebraska fans know what it’s like to get overexcited after dominating Arizona in a bowl game.

Oklahoma will probably lose to Connecticut in the Fiesta Bowl.

When you enroll to play at Oklahoma, you enroll to play for National Championships. You do not enroll to go to Arizona year-after-year to play some crappy Big East team in a game nobody but your opponent cares about.

It’s the Super Bowl for UConn and another—yawn—trip to the Fiesta Bowl for Oklahoma.

Nebraska fans would commit a felony to be in Oklahoma’s shoes at the moment.

Even though Oklahoma statistically dominated the Big 12 almost winning half the championships (seven out of 15), Texas is seen as the king of the Big 12 nationally.

The most talented team if you go by measurables and potential in the Big 12—Texas— went 5-7 and failed to make a bowl game despite being loaded with Rivals Babies.

In Lincoln, T-Magic Mania was premature.

If once-ballyhooed signal-caller Taylor Martinez ever takes another snap at Nebraska, this writer would be shocked. It appears the closer trick of the magic act is where Martinez vanishes for good.

It’s not that Nebraska’s future isn’t potentially bright at the position without Martinez in the fold. If he wants to go play safety in the Pac-12 somewhere, let him.

Cody Green has been jerked around so much since his arrival in Lincoln, who could blame him for looking shaky at times while running an offense that has zero identity.

One of my best friends played for Nebraska offensive coordinator Shawn Watson at Southern Illinois. A tight end that had some success at that level playing behind future NFL player Damon Jones, he came highly recommended when he was at Colorado when the Watson’s work came up in casual conversation.

Watson, though, can sometimes outsmart himself.

If Watson gets into a groove, nobody is better. Insert Joe Ganz footage here.

Nebraska will roll anybody it plays in the country by 40 points if Watson is in a zone.

When Watson’s game plan isn’t working, that is where the trouble begins. Nebraska’s attempted transition to a Florida-style running game looked amazing at times.

However, it can be stopped and when it happens early, you can be very successful defensively against it.

If you make Nebraska play outside of its comfortable level, a finesse offense can be overpowered with speedy defenses. Texas, Texas A&M, and Oklahoma are loaded with Texas produced speed everywhere and it hurt Nebraska’s pretty rushing game.

On film in the recruiting department, Houston product Jamal Turner and Kansas starlet Bubba Starling look like serious candidates to make some noise if given the opportunity. Local media in Nebraska has a habit of making some of the recruits coming to Nebraska seem Ruthian.

In fact, some of the things Starling is able to do, albeit against lesser competition, is startling. If Starling can accurately hone that 94 mph fastball he has on the baseball diamond, Nebraska might have discovered itself a gem.

This coming from a man who covered Sam Bradford in high school because knew he was special and also went 70 miles to check out this young, raw prospect named Justin Blackmon after getting tipped off.

Blackmon had something like six catches for 275 yards and three touchdowns if memory serves me correct. I kept the notebook and laptop at home that night and went as a casual observer. I immediately regretted that decision.

When Martinez was rolling all comers early on, this writer wasn’t buying it. Something seemed fishy. Almost as if what we were seeing wasn’t real, wasn’t very impressive, and wasn’t going to last.

DeAngelo Evans, the next Barry Sanders during his true freshman season in Lincoln, comes to mind.

How patient will Pelini be with any of the quarterbacks?

When Martinez was benched in the loss to Texas, he looked as if he was at a loss for words.

Pelini’s temper may lose him the services of Martinez and may start to wear on an extremely impatient fan base.

It is classless behavior from a face of the college football program to berate a teenager in front of 90,000 people in the stands and millions watched at home.

Shut up and coach.

Call Lou Holtz to see what he did during his days as a head coach, and a very successful one despite his senile performance as a college football analyst. Make them hate you during practice when nobody is watching.

If I were Martinez, I would have already been gone. If you want a program that has a stable of fans that deserve to be impatient, it is the ones that call the Cornhusker State home. College football and Lincoln, Nebraska go hand-in-hand.

Nebraska is a top five program of all-time, no debate, no question, and no point in even discussing it.

If you want a place that does more with less, it is the people behind the scenes at Nebraska. Nebraska doesn’t have two gigantic cities with loads of football talent around like they do in Oklahoma.

Nebraska relies on the homegrown players in a state with less than two million people to be the backbone of its program.

How many NFL players has the tiny state of Nebraska produced? It is pretty amazing considering the climate in Nebraska and how little some of the high school football players have worked at it in the off-season.

If you play football in Nebraska, 99 percent of the time it’s straight to basketball or wrestling and then straight to track.

Even though this writer no longer supports the university in any way shape or form after covering a lot of these players during their prep days, he sees and acknowledges how great this program has been.

His angst against Nebraska is not against Nebraska itself necessarily, it is a whole stance against the fiber that is college football.

I firmly do not believe Pelini is the right man to lead Nebraska. If Nebraska wants to progress into the future as a member of the Big 10, it needs to have a coach better suited for this change.

Despite the quagmire known as the Bill Callahan era in Lincoln, the erased-from-memory-this-never-happened dark age of Nebraska football, the best season each Pelini and Callahan had were very comparable.

So, how is Nebraska so much better in 2010 than it was when Frank Solich was fired in 2003?—the event that the entire state of Nebraska wishes it had a DeLorean to erase

Nebraska better hope to go 8-4 in the regular season in 2011.

A brutal schedule, possible staff changes, and a complete change in culture are going to be very hard to overcome for the Cornhuskers.

2011 is just going to be weird for Nebraska. After playing Kansas, Kansas State, Iowa State, and Missouri since Columbus discovered America, suddenly Nebraska will be locking horns with Minnesota, Iowa, Penn State, and Michigan State

Weird because Nebraska has a significant history with those programs. It will seem like a bunch of non-conference games and two huge non-conference games involved in there too.

Mentally the trip to Ames, Manhattan, and Lawrence will be coming soon, but they'll never happen.

Having said all that, Nebraska is probably making the right move. This coming from somebody that absolutely pummeled them from the start about it, hated it, and wanted the news to go away. When it happened, he was in total denial and still is in a lot of ways.

The whole product is an illusion anyway with debatable National Champions seven out of 10 years, giving the award of the best player in college football to the best quarterback or running back on the best offense in the country playing in the BCS.

It’s not as if the Big 12 is any good, so why stick around and wait for Texas to let its financial aspirations kill the conference?

Nebraska might as well go 8-4 or 9-3 in the Big 10 every year and go to the Alamo Bowl anyway.

What is the difference between a 9-3 season in the Big 10 or the Big 12? Another holiday jaunt to San Antonio for the Alamo Bowl.

After looking like two completely different football programs with the same players during the same season, Nebraska is left with many more questions than answers as it leaves for a new chapter in its history.

Goodbye, Nebraska. And don’t let the door hit you on the way out.