Tag Archives: wisconsin badgers

Big Ten, College Football, Huskers

The Season Isn’t Over Until It Starts

Hey there dear reader(s)! Remember us? The blog that said it was going on hiatus until August 3rd? Well, with the first game of the season kicking off next Saturday, it’s time we make our staggering return to mid-level glory, new website or not.

Lucky for us, the guy we hired to redesign our site finally found a new Adderall hook up (his old one bolted off to college) so his productivity levels should be returning to normal any day now and he swears he’ll have our updated site ready before the season opener against BYU.

Kickoff is still at 2:30, right?

But enough about us. Let’s get to the reason why we’re all here- the Huskers.

Since we last left off, the Huskers have had their share of drama. Fortunately, most of it was just of the silly kind and not the a-linebacker-stole-a-truckload-of-bikes variety.

To recap —

Wisconsin running back Corey Clement talked more trash than a sanitation engineer convention (hiyo!)when he said the Huskers were a flip phone compared to the Badgers who embodied the far superior and sleeker iPhone.

This in turn caused the Nebraska sports media to unholster their flip phones and furiously text reaction tweets to 40404 as fast as their thumbs could T9 their way to coherent thoughts.

Meanwhile, we mined our kitchen junk drawer, unearthed a Motorola lounging in a weathered Cell Phones for Soldiers shipping bag (hey, it’s the thought that counts) and cobbled this gem together.

Badgers Huskers Flip PhoneGet it? 5 x CHAMP. Are jokes from a month ago still even remotely funny?

Not long after Husker Nation’s big flip out of the summer, the first fall camp of the Mike Riley era was underway and optimism for the season was running high…

UNTIL COACH RILEY ANNOUNCED THAT De’MORNAY PIERSON-EL INJURED HIS FOOT AND WOULD BE OUT FOR 6-8 WEEKS.

Faster than DPE can take a punt to the house, Husker Twitter went straight to DEFCON 1. 

Meanwhile, Husker Facebook was surprisingly rational and borderline optimistic.

Husker Extra Facebook Reaction
Could these comments be a sign that Coach Riley’s inherent mellowness is spreading like a virus among the Husker faithful?

To learn more about DPE’s injury, listen to Dr. Rob Zatechka’s always interesting Husker Doc Talk podcast. Plus, you’ll get to hear a bonus story about Dave Rimington’s love of Burning Man.  (Seriously, WTF?)

While losing an All-American who figured to be a key cog in the Huskers’ offense  is not exactly an ideal start to the season, the important thing to remind yourself is that it hasn’t even started. To put things in the parlance of Vacation, the O.G. National Lampoon version, not this summer’s turd of a reboot, we’re still lost in St. Louis our way to the proverbial Walley World.

The script for the 2015 Huskers’ season has yet to be written and not even a million football savvy monkeys armed with a million typewriters and a communal copy of Chris Brown’s great new book The Art of Smart Football could predict how the season will play out so we might as well do our best to sit back and enjoy the ride.

Because getting there is half the fun. You know that.

GBR!

ps: Check it out. We made a pump up video.

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College Football, Huskers

Hey Jack Gangwish, Don’t Take a Selfie With These Animals

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As the news of Mike Riley’s hiring began to sink in, we lit a candle for a rather peculiar aspect of the Bo Pelini era, the weird and wacky news and outrageous highlights that were a hallmark of his time at Nebraska.

Thankfully, defensive lineman Jack Gangwish came through with one last swan song by getting bitten by a raccoon while trying snap a selfie with the critter.

Luckily, he’s not going to have to be taken out back behind Memorial Stadium for the Old Yeller treatment.

He’s going to live. But to ensure the he (hopefully) doesn’t have a repeat incident, we put together a list of animals Jack should avoid when the urge to take a selfie strikes.

THE HONEY BADGER
honey-badgerEven if he’s just chilling, don’t even think about it. Besides, it would be so much cooler if you wait a year and take a selfie after flattening a Wisconsin Badger on the turf at Memorial Stadium. Who cares about the penalty? Think of how awesome it’d be if you dug your phone out of your jockstrap while standing over a leveled quarterback. YOU. WOULD. BE. A. LEGEND.

Do it and we’ll let you have the Rocket Raccoon mask we were given at the Guardians of the Galaxy premiere AND we’ll throw in a season pass to the Henry Doorly Zoo. (After your NCAA eligibility expires of course. This site does not dole out illegal gifts. Then again, we may have just put out a bounty on Wisconsin’s poor quarterback. Those guys are so doomed next year.)

Guardians of the Galaxy Rocket Raccoon
See Jack, we’re Raccoon selfie enthusiasts too.

CROCODILES
Steve_Irwin
Jack, do you remember Steve Irwin, aka The Crocodile Hunter? You would have been a wee 5’9″ 175lb 12-year-old when a stingray cut his life short with a million dollar shot straight to the heart when he tried to pet it while scuba diving. Steve made crocodile selfies look easy because he was Australian. If you’ve never met an Aussie, they’re all 100% crazy as evidenced by the below photo of Steve holding his infant son while feeding a crocodile. If there was one thing worse than Michael Jackson dangling his baby off a balcony, it was dangling a baby in front of a hungry crocodile in the name of entertainment.

STEVE IRWIN SPARKING OUTRAGE AS HE HOLDS BABY SON IN FRONT OF CROCODILE, QUEENSLAND ZOO, AUSTRALIA - 02 JAN 2004
Imagine the outrage if Twitter existed when this happened.

ANACONDAS
AnacondaBut if you really, really insist, have a buddy take the photo. You need to use both hands to secure the head.

WOLVES
wolves1Yes, they’re basically big, cuddly dogs and howling at the moon together would be a blast but seriously dude, if LIAM NEESONS  goes mano-a-mano with a bunch of wolves and the movie ends before you even find out if he makes it out alive (SPOILER ALERT! You should have seen The Grey three years ago.), just think about what they would do to you. Granted, you are a 6’2″ 260lb bad ass but Liam Neesons had bottle claws and a very particular set of skills. Skills he acquired over a very long career.

LIAM NEESONS

VELOCIRAPTORS RIDING GREAT WHITE SHARKS
velociraptor-riding-a-shark
This picture may be Photoshopped. It’s hard to tell. Either way, the Velociraptor could stand to take a remedial course in gun safety. Look how carelessly that Uzi is being held.

And one final thing, from this point forward, your new nickname is THE BEASTMASTER. Wear it with pride.

beastmaster_poster_02

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Huskers, Mike Riley

The Best Reaction Tweets to the Mike Riley Hiring

Well, it’s safe to say no one in Husker Nation saw Mike Riley signing on to take over the Big Red.

Even Vegas would have given our off the radar candidates a better chance of ending up in Lincoln than the man who guided the Winnipeg Blue Bombers to two Grey Cups.

And the way Huskers announced the news was about as stealthy as the search itself.

Naturally, such a subtle announcement made fans burned by days of coaching rumors highly skeptical.

Still, Derek remained undeterred by this dose of logic and doubled down by saying a “news source” is better than a Twitter account- even if the people behind the account would be telling the “news sources the news.”

And if Derek trusts, the “news sources” surrounding the Huskers, he clearly wasn’t on Twitter yesterday.

Here’s your “news source”, in action Derek.

Faux Pelini couldn’t believe the news.

(If Faux would have dropped the Twitter mic right here, he would have gone out like a boss but he had to get some things off his chest before apparently peacing out for good.)

Every Day Should Be Saturday couldn’t believe the news either.

But when they did, they got on board the Mike Riley Express quick.

Quick true story that makes us kinda stoked about the Mike Riley hire: The night of the Huskers’ comeback win against Wisconsin, I got too hammed to drive home so stumbled from our watch site to the In-N-Out (a Mike Riley favorite) across the street and told a group of skaters I was buying Double Doubles for whoever could ollie over a bus stop bench. One kid could do it. Good times.

Back to the tweets.

There was disappointment.

Then a great voice of reason chimed in.

Along with some retorts.

And mildly drunken rage.

And a fond remembrance for the dearly departed.

But who has time to get sentimental when there are god damn parody twitter accounts to make?

 

 

 

 

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Bo Pelini, Huskers

Monday Rage: Who Woke Up Still Mad About Minnesota?

Well, it’s safe to say things did not go as planned for the Huskers against the Minnesota Golden Gophers.

With the blowout loss against the Badgers still stinging, this week’s stop on the Get Pummeled by the Upper Midwest Tour was such a foregone conclusion that it really wasn’t shocking that Minnesota went home with the Bits of Broken Chair Trophy.

Pitchforks have been sharpened and the tar is starting to bubble in Lincoln. If the Huskers can’t get a win against Iowa on Friday, look for Bo Pelini and company not to be allowed to cross the border back into Nebraska.

If Pelini does go, be it by force or he decides he’s had enough of the “classiest fans in college football” and chooses to peace out, we’d just love to be there when the latest savior of Husker Nation arrives. “Quick, hide the pitchforks! The new guy is here and we gotta act nice… until he loses.”

By this point in your post-Husker loss coping cycle you’re probably in no mood to re-hash Saturday, unless of course you’re an avid contributor to the Huskermax forums where there’s no such thing as beating a dead horse too much.

Seriously, a horse could die, be cremated, have its ashes sprinkled among the seven seas and the average forum poster could find away to bring it back to life just so it could be beaten to death all over again.

So on that note, we’ll just leave you with a few observations.

This was the first text message I received on Saturday.

FullSizeRender

This is what being a Husker fan is all about. Getting up butt ass  early on a Saturday so you can meet up with your buddies for a few hours, cheer on your favorite team, and have a few laughs, no matter the outcome.

Our official Californians for Nebraska watch site that averages around 50 – 75 Husker fans (big games are often standing room only) was down to 14 for Minnesota. Yes, a 9am game on ESPN the weekend before Thanksgiving was a factor but it’s safe to say many fans have called it a season.

FullSizeRender-2Downstairs, a room full of Ohio State fans were having a great little Saturday.

A couple notes about the game-

Yes, DPE’s untimely fumbles sucked but what was he doing during Kenny Bell’s only reception of the game?

KENNYBELL
Kenny set the table for the Minnesota defender to get blocked into next week and DPE just… yells at him? WTF?

Does anybody know the condition of this gentleman? Is he OK? Did he survive the game?

Huskerfan

Compared to last week, the Monday morning mood on Twitter is not so much rage filled as it is business like. When we started writing this post this morning this is what the #Huskers chatter looked like in real-time.  Yes, we know it is now outdated thanks to the speed of Twitter but please forgive us, we had to do some urgent work regarding a little movie known as Star Wars Episode VII. (That big news that came out today? We knew all about it last week.)

So Greg, are you saying every game doesn’t matter? What if the Huskers only lost games that “didn’t” matter? Wouldn’t that suddenly make games that previously matter, matter? What if C-A-T really spelled dog?

Gotta give Jeffrey the edge over Murray on this one. Number one rule of joke writing- get to the punchline in as few words as possible.

And one bonus burn from last night…

DO YOU SEE WHAT YOU’VE DONE, PELINI? CELL PHONE BACKGROUNDS ARE CHANGING BECAUSE OF YOU.

(If you’re keeping score at home, the background on our phone is the pride of all Nebraska, the hallowed McRib.)

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Big Ten, College Football, Huskers

What if the Huskers Had Beaten Wisconsin?

The dark clouds of the college football apocalypse have settled in hard over Nebraska this week thanks to the Huskers getting taken behind the woodshed by the Wisconsin Badgers.

In just 42 brutal (and record setting) minutes of football at Camp Randall Stadium, all the anxiety, anguish, and rage that had been (mostly) contained by a (mostly) solid season finally breached the dam, causing all hell to finally break loose among Husker Nation.

Days later,  the body blows and nut shots keep coming at Bo Pelini and the team. On Tuesday Omaha World Herald staff writer Dirk Chatelain administered an atomic purple nurple of his own by illustrating how Pelini’s D can be just as horrid as the unspeakable Kevin Cosgrove’s.

But the question we have is this: Would Husker Nation really have been any happier with a win at Wisconsin?

While the obvious, no duh answer is a resounding YES, there’s more to it than that.

Let’s take a journey to an alternate dimension where the Huskers came away with a victory over the Badgers.

In this wholly hypothetical game, we’ll pretend the Huskers won 31 – 17 with all the elements of a solid Husker victory being present and accounted for-

Tommy  went 15/25 and 200 yards and 2TDs.
Ameer ran for 120 and a score of his own.
The Blackshirts added a TD off a scoop and score fumble recovery. AND held Melvin Gordon to under 300 yards rushing.
Drew Brown eased doubts with a 45 yard field goal right down Broadway.

A wave of jubilation immediately follows the game as two years of Badger induced shame and misery is released by the Husker faithful. It is a wholly cathartic moment. Tim Beck is a genius! We never doubted Bo Pelini’s system! The ink is barely dry on the requisite “The Skies the Limit for the Huskers” columns before the first seeds of doubt are planted.

It starts with a contrarian tweet here. A piss in your Cheerios Facebook post there.

Big deal. The Huskers beat a team that lost to Northwestern.

The Badgers scored 17. Plan on Ohio State doubling that- if we can get past Minnesota and Iowa.

Wake me when the Huskers’ biggest win isn’t against a barely ranked team with two bad losses.

We’re still not going to make the playoff.

Our win would have looked so much better if Miami could have held off Florida State.

A few hours later, a snarky column by a certain Omaha World Herald staff writer is published that pinpoints a dire Husker week spot- 2rd down inefficiency on running plays to the short side of the field with less than a minute remaining when going into the wind during the second quarter. It’s such a bizarre nit to pick that fans rally to the defense of the team and coaching staff, righting the good ship Husker Optimism.

And then the College Football Playoff rankings are released.

Even with a convincing victory and a strong Miami effort against Florida State, the Huskers are the lowest ranked one loss team hovering just outside the top 10 and well out of playoff range.

Those same fans who weren’t impressed with the win in the first place are suddenly full of rage at the level of disrespect shown to the Huskers and Big Ten. Angry emails are sent. Calls are made to sports talk shows. An old-timer writes his Congressperson demanding an investigation. Family vacations to Disney World are canceled in a vain effort to keep money out of SEC territory.

HUSKER FAN VENN DIAGRAM
Husker fans diagrammed.

Even if the Huskers won out and finished the regular season 12 – 1, there’s a better chance a one loss TCU team (that doesn’t even have to play a conference championship game) would  snag the final playoff spot leaving the Big Red out in the cold and f-ed in the drive-thru by Texas and the Big XII yet again. In the inaugural year of the College Football Playoff, Husker Nation would have set a high bar for what it means to be a butt hurt fan base.

On the flip side, there’s still a chance the Huskers could lose out and finish the year 8 – 5, snapping that streak of 9 win seasons that didn’t mean much anyway. Just imagine if that happened. That’s six or seven SOLID weeks of justified complaining. Without a September loss or leaked tape this season, that would really make up for lost time on the bitching front.

Long story short, if there’s one thing Husker fans love as much as finger banging their egos with a winning football team, it’s getting to piss and moan about a losing one.

As hard as it can be, just sit back and try to enjoy the ride.

It will be over before you know it.

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Huskers

Who Woke Up Still Mad About What Happened in Madison?

Welcome to Monday! So how about that game up in Madison? Still upset? Don’t worry, you’re not alone!

A lot of fans started off their week by waking up with a rage boner about the Huskers and Pelini.

Here are some selected highlights. Just click the linked hashtags to get a real-time update. Things could really heat up when the weekly press conference kicks off at 11am Central.

Searching #Huskers–

I’d bet big money @jeremywidner wrote this on the can.

Trolling the homestate team and trying to drive lunchtime business. Poor form @DonohuesPub.

This tweet comes on Monday because took all day because R&D took all day Sunday.

Searching #FirePelini–

The rage torches must have been extinguished because these tweets slowed to a crawl very quickly.

#SocialActivism!

So according to his infographic, an average of 34 teams a year finish with 9 wins? WTF? This makes no sense. We may need to do some research.

If you’re going to stoop to using a meme generator, at least use some of the time you save to crop out the watermark and class things up a bit.

And finally, to add an air of mystery to things, twitter user @FirePelini hasn’t tweeted in over a year?

Did come to accept Pelini is here to stay?

Did he run out of data on his Go Phone?

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Big Ten, Huskers

Recap: Badgers Bugger Bug Eaters in Backbreaking Blowout

If Melvin Gordon, eventual Heisman Trophy winning running back of the Wisconsin Badgers, needs a nickname, we suggest calling him “The One Man Gangbang” because he ran a filthy, nasty train on the Huskers.

Gordon jammed the ball down the throats of the Huskers’ defense to the tune of 406 yards, or just 26 feet less than the friggin’ Empire State Building, if you prefer to have your record breaking yardage totals presented in terms of skyscrapers.

Seriously, the Huskers would have had an easier time containing Tecmo Bowl Bo Jackson than Melvin Gordon.

In his Heisman Trophy winning season, Jackson ran for 1,786 yards and averaged 6.6 yards per carry on 278 rushing attempts. After his plowing of the Huskers, Gordon has amassed 1,909 yards on only 223 carries, an average of 8.8 per.

He still has at least three games to go.

Sure, you could try to spin that and say, “Well, the Huskers went up against a special, once-in-a-lifetime player and came out on the wrong side of history. Them’s the breaks.”

Except for the fact that Gordon put up the following numbers in his other games this season-

LOUISIANA STATE – 16 rushes/140 yards/9.0 YPC
WESTERN ILLINOIS – 17 rushes/38 yards/3.0 YPC
BOWLING GREEN – 13 rushes/253 yards/19.5 YPC
SOUTH FLORIDA – 32 rushes/181 yards/5.8 YPC
NORTHWESTERN – 37 rushes/259 yards/9.8 YPC
ILLINOIS – 27 rushes/175 yards/6.6 YPC
MARYLAND – 22 rushes/122 yards/5.6 YPC
RUTGERS – 19 rushes/128 yards/7.1 YPC
PURDUE – 25 rushes/205 yards/8.4 YPC

Then there’s his line against the Huskers-
NEBRASKA – 25 rushes/408 yards/16.4 YPC

Gordon’s record setting night was so brutal to watch in real-time that this nutshot compilation only scratches the surface of the pain the Huskers and their fans endured at Camp Randall Stadium.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGBhpWXTBYM

It’s one thing to get your ass kicked but an entirely different story to get whupped up on in the same manner as the Huskers in that 52 – 24 pasting. It doesn’t matter if you lose by a single point or four touchdowns, a loss is still a loss but there comes a point when you just gotta ask, WTF is wrong?

Even if the Huskers would have lost by a field goal, the fire Pelini because he can’t win the big ones train would still be chugging along at full steam. That’s a given. The only time the guy ever caught a break with a loss was against Texas in ’09. But still, there comes a point when you gotta wonder why so many of the signature losses involve total woodshed ass kickings where the team and coaching staff just shutdown.

Even a day later, tying to put what transpired into words that aren’t an incoherent mess of all caps swearing is proving rather difficult so we’ll just let the YouTube do the talking for the rest of this recap.

Last night, the Badgers and Melvin Gordon were King Kong Bundy and the Huskers were Little Beaver.

The only difference is Melvin Gordon’s avalanche looked more like this.

Exhibits A and B for putting a better fight than the Huskers:

The Black Knight

http://youtu.be/dhRUe-gz690?t=2m29s

Scratchy

Exhibits A and B for not melting down as bad as the Huskers

Richie Tenenbaum

The Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark

Until the Huskers can (hopefully) find some redemption against Minnesota, it’s going to be a long week. Remember, you weren’t on the field. You weren’t calling the plays. You had absolutely nothing to do with the outcome of the game.

It’s not your fault.

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College Football, Huskers

Is Tom Osborne Behind the Huskers’ Drop in Playoff Ranking?

After a bye week that saw a major reshuffling of the College Football Playoff deck, the Huskers found themselves on the short end of the stick, falling three spots to number 16 and well out of playoff contention.

College Football Playoff Rankings

Naturally and all too predictably, Husker Nation was outraged by the disrespect shown to the 8-1 Big Red as evidenced by seven two-loss teams being ranked ahead of the Huskers.

From Husker Extra’s Facebook Page –
Angry Husker Fans

These same fans who will talk until they’re blue in the face about how you “need to run to set up the pass” apparently don’t have the foresight to realize that early November rankings don’t mean a thing. The playoff isn’t this Saturday. It’s in January, after the regular season has ended and conference champions have been crowned.

With the exception of the non-conference-championship-game-having pussy ass Big 12, every team ranked ahead of the Huskers has to tip toe through a minefield of a schedule and/or win their conference title before making plans for the playoffs.

Luckily, at least one Husker fan realizes this.
Husker Voice Of Reason

And all this leads to our first ever Big Red Fury Conspiracy Theory.

What’s the better way to motivate someone-  tell them how good they are or how bad they suck?

While it does have its critics with regards to development of emotional intelligence, reverse psychology has been proven to be an effective tactic.

In what field of study did Tom Osborne earn a master’s degree and doctorate?

Tom Osborne’s area of expertise is the field of Educational Psychology. While he could go by Dr. Tom, he prefers to be called Coach, even today.

Which legend who is synonymous with the Nebraska Cornhuskers is on the College Football Playoff Committee?

That would be Tom Osborne.

It’s not that far out of the realm of possibility to think that Bo Pelini could have called in a back alley favor to T.O. requesting his team get knocked down a few pegs ahead of their biggest game of the season.

Or, more likely, T.O. went rogue and decided the best way to help the Huskers is to temporarily hurt them.

Think about it. A win over Wisconsin would have the the Huskers trending upward ahead of a likely showdown with Ohio State for the Big Ten crown and put the winner in a good position for a playoff slot.

If they lose to the Badgers, it’s much less embarrassing and harmful to lose as the 16th ranked team rather than being on the cusp of the top ten and losing to a number 20 team that lost to friggin’ Northwestern.

Coach Osborne knows how to work a room and it wouldn’t take much for him to convince his colleagues that the Huskers might not be all that, especially after a weekend where he could devote more time to watching all other teams since the Huskers weren’t playing.

If the Huskers win on Saturday, don’t be surprised to see them inside the top 10 this time next week.

College football is a fickle mistress.

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Big Ten, Huskers

A Wisconsin Horror Story

This is a story about the time Nebraska played Wisconsin for the Big Ten Championship.

It’s a night Husker Nation would love to forget but the gruesome events that transpired on December 1, 2012 will be forever seared into the collective psyche of the unfortunate souls who witnessed the massacre at Lucas Oil Field.

While I was lucky enough to not see a single second of the game live, I felt nearly every Badger gut punch in real-time.

On that fateful night, two of my favorite things collided. It was a classic case of the unstoppable force vs the immovable object. In one corner you had the Huskers’ showdown with Wisconsin and in the other, my biggest cyclocross race of the 2012 campaign. It was getting late in the season and I was locked in a vicious battle for a mediocre ranking in a mediocre division. It was a race I couldn’t afford to skip. (Full disclosure: amateur bicycle racing has about as much at stake as a slow pitch softball league.)

My race started at 5:15, the same time as kickoff. With a little luck, I could make it to the watch site in time for the second half. The only snag in the plan was the weather. It was as bad as it could get for Los Angeles in December, low 50’s and rain flying in all directions. Thanks to a couple of ill-timed crashes late in the race, I plummeted out of a spot comfortably in the top ten and crossed the finish line in a battered 21st place, soaking wet and covered in mud from head to toe. For the record, it was a very hard fought 21st place. I didn’t quit and kept racing to the end.

As soon as I recombulated myself, I made a beeline to the car and dug out my phone to get an update on the game.

36 new texts were waiting for me. Immediately, my mind start racing about I how could possibly fill all the requests for Rose Bowl couch space without ending up divorced.

Then I started reading the messages.

They started out hopeful. Some Huskers! and GBRs! around kick off. My brother sent me a pic from his seats at the game. An enterprising buddy who knew of my personal crisis recorded T-Magic’s ridiculous touchdown run off his TV and sent me the video.

He closed his message by saying “It’s still early. Hope the Huskers can make a comeback.”

Wait, what? Taylor’s run made the score 14 – 7. The Huskers were only down a TD. So what. They’ve come back from much worse.

Then I checked the current score. 35 – 10 Wisconsin.

If the Huskers could get to 17 by the half, a victory for the Big Red would not be out of the picture. By the time I finished my comeback calculations, they staggered off the field down 42 – 10.

I was so stunned I didn’t know what to do. I was all packed up and ready to go watch the game but I wasn’t about to schlep over Hollywood just to be the muddy faced weirdo who randomly showed up for the second half.

In a daze, I walked back over to our team’s area on the race course. There would be beer there. I was greeted by a teammate who went to CU and was in the stands for the Huskers meltdown in 2001. “I saw the score. Sorry man. I don’t even know what to say. It’s just brutal.”

We then hugged it out as only people who understand the misery of college football can do.

Texts continued to pour in. Even friends who couldn’t pick a Husker uniform out of a police line up were checking on my well being.

We’re at a bar and saw some scores on the TV. Nebraska’s your team, right? Hope you’re OK. If you need anything give us a call. We’re here for you.

Hey dude. Holla back so I know you’re still with us. Suicide is never a good option.

Stay strong buddy. It’s only a game.

Sorry about the Huskers. Do you have any connections for Rose Bowl tickets?

What happened to the Huskers? Sorry we keep racking up the score. Not.

 That’s what revenge is all about!

Do you have any room at your place if we come out for the Rose Bowl? We promise we won’t wear any Badger gear in the house.

As luck would have it, half my family hails from Wisconsin. Most are UW alums and all are avid sports fans. Packers, Brewers,  and the Badgers and apparently not just for basketball.

I never heard a peep out of any of them about Badger football until Nebraska first met Wisconsin as a member of the Big Ten. Once they blew out the Huskers on their home field, the floodgates opened. Seriously, they could teach a class on Reddit about how to troll for maximum effect.

When Nebraska returned the favor the following year, I took the TO high road and didn’t say a word and neither did they. Unfortunately, their silence just meant they were working on material for the championship game.

It got so bad I turned my phone off midway through the third quarter and didn’t turn it back on until sometime Sunday afternoon.

A text from my brother was waiting for me. It was short. Simple. And to the point.

Dude. I was so depressed I went back to the hotel and ate a $60 steak with my bare hands.

And fuck those cheeseheads!

Can’t wait to see how Saturday plays out.

GBR.

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