The Husker Experience

There is a particular phenomenon that Nebraskans have accepted as part of their everyday lives, an experience that most do not understand, and trying to explain it is difficult, but I will do my best. What I am talking about of course, is Nebraska football.

A friend once told me that even Forrest Gump talked of the mighty Big Red, “we was playin them cornshucker bastids from Nebraska”, a testament to how much Alabama fans hated the Huskers. This was a sentiment held dear by many football faithful who liked any team OTHER than the Huskers. I’m quite certain that belly didn’t know what she was in for when we began dating, how Saturdays each fall are set aside for several hours of hooting and hollering, jumping around, nail biting, and high fiving. It’s a time for reverting back to your caveman roots, and she seems to accept it now, albeit with a funny grin and shake of the head. But I don’t know if she really understand the true influence of Nebraska football.

Nebraska football has enjoyed 35 years of success unlike any other time period in the history of major sports. By major sports I mean the money making sports, NFL and NCAA football, NBA and NCAA basketball, Major League Baseball, Hockey, and even NASCAR. Nebraska has had the best winning percentage over the past 35 years of any team in these sports, and 5 national titles, along with an astonishing 109 wins, 16 losses, and 1 tie in the 1990’s, for an 86.9% winning percentage with 3 national titles during that decade. In the argument about who has the best team of all time, Nebraska consistently fields 3 to 4 teams in the top 10, along with the most widely recognized team for the top spot, the 1995 Nebraska Cornhuskers.

It’s hard for someone outside of Nebraska to understand the tenacious love we have for our team, the undying loyalty to the crimson and cream. They fail to understand how a big win can solidify our faith that all is right with the world, how a loss is a devastating blow that crumbles the very foundations of the earth. Nebraska has no pro sports franchises. Nebraska basketball is mediocre at best, and many times you can find the people who are at those games or watching them at home using the time as a forum to get together and discuss football games from the past year, or to discuss current recruiting for the season coming up.

Sure, the Husker baseball team has been doing well, but hey, that’s only for a few years now, and look around at any baseball game and you’ll see as many Husker football jerseys as you see baseball ones. It’s not meant as an insult to the baseball players. That’s just how things work in this region. You have Nebraska football, then you have, well, everything else.

If you are in your 20’s and 30’s and have lived your whole life Nebraska, you don’t remember becoming a Nebraska Cornhusker fan, because there was never a time when you were NOT one. As sure as you were born with 10 toes and 10 fingers, you were born with the Big Red “N” stamped into your heart. Growing up in this blanket of red, you become accustomed to Nebraska football and the winning that goes with it. On the day I was born, Nebraska was on the cover of Sports Illustrated and the number one team in the land. I didn’t nearly so much become a Husker fan as much as I reverse inherited my way into it.

Of course I do not remember this, but it should demonstrate the atmosphere that I and a million or more other Nebraska children grew up in. Some of my earliest memories are of my dad and his cousins, sitting around the television at the farm, watching Nebraska play Oklahoma. This by no mere coincidence was also where I likely had my first taste of the more “colorful” elements of the English language, as pillows were beaten, desperate prayers were said aloud, and all with the hope that “we” could beat those lousy Sooners.

Referring to the team as “us”, and how “we” were playing, is commonly heard throughout the state. No, we aren’t sitting in the locker room, we aren’t out there on the playing field, no we are not on the team. But “we” are all in this together, win or lose, how “we” play can dictate how the next week goes at work, or how the talk over the 7 months of the off season is directed.

Game days were as religiously followed as going to church itself, maybe even more so than that. The meat, charcoal, chips, and beer are purchased in preparation. Phone calls are made, “where are you watching the game this weekend??”, and whenever you had a chance to secure tickets to the game itself, you did whatever you could to join 80,000 other Husker faithful in the Sea of Red at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln. If you could, you’d buy tickets to some of the away games too, and make sure that Lawrence, Manhattan, Boulder, Ames, and other college towns were painted red for just one day, so that they would know who they were dealing with.

If you had to work, well you damn sure had the game on the radio so you would never miss a play. Regardless of where you were in the world, you seemed to always be joined by other Husker faithful, surrounding that radio, Husker gear out and worn in full gala, to listen to Nebraska lay a whipping down on another opponent. You wore that “N” with the utmost pride, supporting your team with gusto.

Winning in Nebraska was expected, it always happened. Yeah, you had Oklahoma and more often than not, the game with them was a life altering tragedy, at least for a few days following. Sure there were plenty of *@(*#’ing bowl games that didn’t go according to plan, but those were always the last two games of the season, and you could deal with that, as painful still as it was. The rest of the year, however, wasn’t about if Nebraska would beat someone, it was about how badly the Huskers were going to crush their opponent.

Ending the year with a loss, even two, was never the end of the world. Oh, sure, it stung like hell, it hurt, but you knew that next year, oh yah, next year, we’d be right back in it again, going into the Oklahoma game undefeated, with another chance at a national title on the line (Nebraska v.s. Oklahoma was the final game of the season for both teams for many years). “Next year, we are gonna win it all!!” And you never knew anything else, you could basically deal with failure in every other area of your life, because the Huskers were always going to catch you when you’d fall.

You could easily measure everything else in your life by Nebraska football, it was the gold standard, there was nothing else remotely like it. Crappy week at work? Bad morning fishing or hunting? Girlfriend dump you? Hey man, don’t worry about it, you always had the huskers to fall back on. Forget about your worries and watch the Big Red destroy Missouri for the 25th year in a row. No need to feel down, the Huskers just put 48 points on the board against Iowa State… in the first half!!

The 1990’s were the pinnacle of this time period. Championships were won, expectations were fulfilled. The world was right, nothing could go wrong. Then, suddenly, Dec. 10, 1997, Tom Osborne holds a press conference to announce his retirement following the end of the season. This was as close to a 9.9 magnitude earthquake as Nebraska has ever known. I was shaken, born in 1972, to me, Tom Osborne WAS Nebraska football, he embodied everything that being a Husker was, he was the only person that I had ever known as the coach, and this was the first crack in the previously unshakable foundation I knew as Husker football.

Oh, the team did reasonably well for a few years, things still seemed okay. Nebraska even played for a national title again in 2002, and we lost, but there was next year right? No, the next fall the world came crumbling down. Loss after heartbreaking loss, and suddenly for the first time in my life, my beloved Huskers were mortal, average at best, going 7-6 in the regular season and losing the bowl game to finish even at 7-7. You couldn’t count on a win religiously every Saturday any longer, and it was devastating to behold. That rock, that immovable force, that “sure thing” by which all else could be measured, it was completely gone, and gone with it the innocent faith in the world you’d become so accustomed to. For the first time, next season wasn’t about getting to another national title game, it was fear, fear of the unknown, fear of another horrible season.

After another year, a new coach, and on the surface, more realistic expectations. Teams throughout football are more evenly matched than ever, you can’t just expect huge wins over every team you play. But underneath it all, deep inside, there is still that innocent 15 year old boy, who still holds dear that Husker tradition as the foundation of his life, still bleeding red to support his team, still waiting for that next big win, that next shot at the national title. It is this that defines the Husker faithful, that builds the undying loyalty that, despite what any fans of any other team may claim, brings the Big Red faithful together as the best fans of any team on the face of the earth.

Current Lyrical Ramblings

The sky is falling on this setting sun
Echoes of silence ringing loud and long
This isolation is the king of pain
A lost horizon in an ocean of flames

Desert Song - Def Leppard

And The White Line's Getting Longer, And This Saddle's Getting Cold

So, I think I have been at the place we are deployed to for a total of about 3 days this year thus far, other than that we are continually on the road, picking up everything from junk to concrete barriers to HUMVEEs. I don't think there has ever been another time in my life where I have so completely lost track of what day it is or even what TIME of the day it is, other than if the sun is out or not.

I have fielded a variety of questions about one particular thing lately in my email and from other people I know, basically revolving around "How are you able to do what you guys do, I would be so scared!!!" Well, I suppose you could dwell on that, but honestly, you have the risk of wrecking your car every time you go out the door and get inside to go for a drive to the grocery store, but do you think about it all the time? No. On my first convoy I was scared shitless, I was staring at the road all day, then that night I was still staring into the ditches, at every bump alongside the road, in every crater, pothole, up at ever overpass, until I was about losing my mind.

The next day I revamped my thoughts about that, what good does it do? There is so much junk alongside the roads here that you really can't keep track of what is or is not a bomb or just random shit laying out there, so to stare at every pile of junk, dirt clod, etc, while flying down the road, is pointless. Honestly, most of the people being killed by roadside bombs these days are those people who get out of their vehicles and do stupid shit and stand on the shoulder without checking to see if there is anything suspicious out there. I try to not even get out of my truck.

The other nice thing is that our semi trucks sit high off the ground and are very well armored. If you wear all of your armor in combination with that, you are well protected. I just want everyone to know that things, while dangerous at times, are not something to dwell on constantly, or it will drive you bonkers.

Now, about other things. Baghdad is interesting. We drove thru it late at night, and talk about crazy, the area we went through was cluttered on either side with a plethora of roadside stands, junk EVERYWHERE, and 5 story buildings on both sides. It's eerie because in a city of 6 million or so, there was NOTHING going on, for good reason I am sure, at night is when the insurgency is at it's most active, so a lot of the Iraqi people try to avoid these murdering foreigners who call themselves 'freedom fighters' by staying off the streets at night.

Chow halls are pretty much the same everywhere we go. And they aren't all that bad. I think Baskin Robbins probably makes a killing over here, and that's fine with me, I love Cookies N Cream ice cream haha. Anyways, that's about all I have to say at this time. I hope you are all doing well, I have a lot of posts ready to be typed up but they are out in the truck and it's pouring rain right now so I'll wait till I get back to Tallil to actually type them up!!

Current Lyrical Ramblings

This ol' highway's getting longer
Seems there ain't no end in sight
To sleep would be best, but I just can't afford to rest
I've got to ride in Denver tomorrow night

Much Too Young - Garth Brooks