Sizing up Solich
Undoubtedly, more people remembered watching the play than actually did on that afternoon in late September of 1965. Not even all of those among the crowd of just over 37,000. According to Lincoln newspaper accounts, as many as 3,000 ticket-holders were still in cars pulling into the parking lot at the Air Force Academy’s 41,000-seat football stadium. The cars were backed up for more than a mile, the traffic jam a result of a bridge on the four-lane highway from Denver to ...
A Brief History of Husker Recruiting Rankings: 1987-2012
On the surface, recruiting class rankings are an exercise in subjectivity. Individual players are rated by individual experts and you inherently get some wildly divergent opinions on the hundreds of high school player who end up playing college football. With that many kids scattered across the country, it would be more surprising if there weren't differences of opinion. But overall the recruiting services do a good job of evaluating high school talent. Matt Hinton -- of CBSSports.com, SB Nation and Yahoo! ...
What winning looks like at Nebraska
At a place like Nebraska, you're expected to win. That's the baseline. And at a place like Nebraska you can probably win about 70-percent of your games simply by being Nebraska. When you factor in the seven or eight home games every year, the significant advantage in money over most schools, the significant advantage in resources over the bottom half of your conference, and simple name recognition, that's where you start. Not incidentally, that's the school's all-time winning percentage -- ...
A quick, historical look at Nebraska’s 2012 offense
We all know that Nebraska's offense is good. At the moment, it's the best in the Big Ten and 20th nationally in terms of yards per play. The real question is how good? Just to satisfy my own curiosity, I decided to look at Nebraska's numbers this year against those of the past 20 years. I wouldn't call it historically good quite yet, but it's close, and a year of experience in offensive coordinator Tim Beck's offense has made a significant ...
Hot Reads: Saturday Night Lights
FOOTBALL & CORN >>> Interested in some Michigan players' take on what they expect from Memorial Stadium? Of course you are. Here's defensive linemen Will Campbell: They don't have anything down there but their college football. It's going to be exciting. Great. Flyover state jokes already. And while no Michigan player has played at Memorial Stadium since 1911, the Wolverines' coach has been here. Brady Hoke led Ball State into Lincoln and lost 41-40 but that game showed the cracks that would ...
Hot Reads: Historical Perspective
THE MORE THINGS CHANGE >>> Thanks to Twitter, specifically @JeffieHusker, this Sporting News article from Sept. 16, 1999 came across my virtual desk. Maybe you remember that year. It was year two for Frank Solich and Nebraska was hoping to rebound after going 9-4 the previous year. It should be noted that the alarm bells, at least the on-field alarm bells, weren't ringing quite as loudly as the author of that story suggests. The Huskers' four losses in 1998 were by ...
Hot Reads: Hanging On
HUSKERS HOLD AT NO. 5 >>> While Nebraska dropped out of the AP poll for the first time in nearly three years, the Huskers maintained the No. 5 ranking in Big Ten Network correspondent Tom Dienhart's conference power rankings. OK, it's largely because half of the teams in the Big Ten also fell on their faces, but, hey, it's something. Here's Dienhart's take on Nebraska after two weeks: After that promising opening 49-20 win over Southern Miss, the Cornhuskers struggled mightily ...
Hot Reads: Frank’s Waterloo
THE QB DERBY >>> Southern Miss has decided on its quarterback for the opener against Nebraska. Junior Chris Campbell will be making the first start of his career on Saturday. From afar, it looks like the Golden Eagles might have more electric options behind Campbell at quarterback but, use your Jedi voice, those are not the qualities offensive coordinator Steve Buckley is looking for (at least for now). The thing that Chris brings us is some stability right now. We're going ...
