As the dark cloud of season ruining doom settled over Husker Nation the morning after the McNeese State game, I was enroute London on business.
Being stuck on a WiFi-less plane for 11 hours is a great way to forget about a lousy game, though Ameer Abdullah’s catch and run was certainly worth a fourth quarter filled with stress eating and palm sweat.
The first order of business after touching down in ol’ Cockaigne was seeing if I could run into a Husker fan or at the very least someone who knows the appropriate response to seeing a pasty goon walking down the street with Herbie Husker on their torso is to say Go Big Red.
Nothing says out-of-towner like repping your favorite team and carrying a man purse.
I set off from the hotel wearing my most scarletest Husker shirt. In all honesty, had the Big Red lost to McNeese State, this shirt would have stayed at home. No need to drag shame across the pond.
Here’s a glimpse of how things went down. Sadly, not a single person lost the ability to contain themselves at the sight of Herbie Husker.
[quicktime]https://bigredfury.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/IMG_9432.mov[/quicktime]
The Clash didn’t write enough songs to cover all the video that was shot.
But…
Later in the day I was served a cold, hard reminder that no matter where you go in the world, a Texas fan will come crawling out of the woodwork.
I was on (or is it in?) the Tube minding my own business when a guy in a well worn Texas Longhorns cap sat down directly across from me.
We made eye contact and instantly locked in a stare down. Potential topics for smack talk flashed in front of my eyes like a college football Terminator.
“Put any time back on the clock lately?”
“What’s it like being the worst team in Texas?”
“Did BYU really put up 28 points in the 3rd quarter?”
Across the aisle, the Texas fan was doing the same thing. Seeing him mouth the words “Is this the year the Big Red finally beats Minnesota?” was a dead giveaway.
In the end not a single word was exchanged. We were like a couple of forgetful gun fighters running into each other on a dusty street. We both had the want to take the other one down but not the means.
It’s funny how a few years of college football mediocrity will that. Trading barbs would have just been a thermonuclear race to the bottom, pulling bandages off wounds that were still a little too fresh.
Here’s hoping that next time an epic smack talk war will be waged across the pond.
One can only imagine the stuffy British heads that would turn.
