Ghosts of Cornhuskers past
A couple years back, I interviewed Trev Alberts for a story about Nebraska football.
For whatever reason, the story never ran, but I found myself thinking about that conversation this week. Nebraska fired athletic director Steve Pederson, then brought back Tom Osborne to be its interim AD. No doubt the Cornhuskers are trying to reconnect with the glory of yesteryear.
Who can blame them?
Nebraska football hasn’t been the same since Dr. Tom left, and of late, it’s been abysmal. The Huskers have lost their last two games by a combined score of 86-20.
The balance between reconnecting with the past and living in it can be a tricky one to strike, but frankly, Nebraska may have tried to go too far away from their roots. That’s why I started thinking about that interview with Alberts. He played at Nebraska, then became a television commentator, and while to miffed many a football fan while on TV, he knew Husker football.
He told me that day that after Osborne left, the Huskers strayed from one of the things that brought them the most success over the years. Their walk-on program produced several All-Americans and even a handful of NFL players. Basically, Nebraska asked a bunch of kids every year to come and be walk-ons. Many of the players were life-long Nebraska die-hards. Some could’ve been scholarship players elsewhere. Some probably didn’t have that much talent. But Nebraska gave them a chance, and occasionally a great player emerged from the program.
The walk-on program was all but done away with after Osborne.
Despite the loss of players, Alberts said the biggest problem with that decision was that it cut tied to the Husker faithful. Kids came from all over the state to be walk-ons. Beatrice. York. Valentine. Little bumps in the road. Every Saturday, folks from those places tuned in sometimes just with the hope that they might see their hometown favorite. It helped create the state’s intense passion for the Huskers.
When the walk-ons were reduced, some folks in those little towns started to lose that sense of belonging to the Husker Nation.
Alberts wasn’t suggesting that alone was the downfall of Nebraska, and neither am I. A mighty program like that does not fall from glory without several missteps along the way. But Nebraska may need to reconnect with some of the methods and some of the people that led them to greatness in the past.
The only trick for Nebraska is making sure they learn from the past rather than living in it.
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Comments
As a die hard Husker fan that was happy to see the Sooners bounce back after some forgettable years, it is nice to see a similar view about Nebraska from the Oklahoma media. We may have been two of the greatest rivals in college football, but it ‘s refreshing to see that by and large we have tremendous respect for each other. Hopefully within a few years the Sooners and Huskers will be a regular Big 12 title game.
Oh wow, an article about my huskers! Oh wait, everything you write is garbage!! So, after “a couple of…” oh that’s right, you probably make all this up! You should go work for the gazette in Colorado Springs with Kate Crandal, then you guys could make up all kinds of fun things about the CC hockey “scandal”, she doesn’t have any credibility either. You make me puke!!!