Opinion

The predicament in Lincoln

Saturday, January 10, 2004

As an observer of human behavior, it has been a fascinating experience to watch the goings-on in Lincoln over the past couple of months in regards to the future of the football team and I believe, without much overstatement, the future of the psyche of this state.

I never thought the weather would lose its top spot as the favorite topic of most conversations in Nebraska because of it's vital importance to the livelihood of so many people who live here.

But for the past several weeks, in many quarters it has. It was overshadowed a few weeks ago when Nebraska's head football coach, Frank Solich, was fired, and it has remained overshadowed because of the confusing search that has ensued since then.

This is not a sports column. I tried that last week with my prediction of who the next Nebraska head coach would be and failed in my effort. It was close but no cigar and Houston Nutt stayed home. As I write this at 10 a.m. on Friday morning, ESPN, the Omaha World Herald, and the Lincoln Journal Star have all announced that Bill Callahan was offered the job and accepted the job Thursday night, after his wife flew in to town to check out the school their children would be attending. Callahan is the recently-fired coach of the Oakland Raiders, who took them to the Super Bowl last year in a loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, then fell to a 4-12 record this year amidst a mutiny by his own players who accused him of losing control of the team. Tim Brown, a wide receiver for the Raiders, was quoted in Time magazine this week as saying that "nobody trusts a word he (Callahan) says."

Other people will write volumes about the fitness or unfitness of Callahan to be the head coach of the University of Nebraska football team and I'll leave that to them, at least in terms of the X's and O's. What I want to talk about today is the effect that Nebraska football has on the social fabric and self-concept of this state and how the coaching decision could impact on players who are already there.

The people of this state bleed Cornhusker red. Their jacket of choice to wear to the grocery store or to church, or to anywhere else they might be going is a Nebraska jacket, and the bigger the N on the front or the back, the better. They have personalized Husker license plates and instead of putting Santa Claus on their roof during the Christmas season, they put up big, brightly lit N's. They host "watch parties" every time Nebraska plays a game.

They're thrilled when the football team wins and absolutely devastated to the point of depression when they lose.

We all know, at some level, that to place our identity and self-definition on a bunch of 18-21 year old kids playing a game is perhaps not the most mature and productive thing we can do. But we do it anyway. As Nebraska football goes, so goes the rest of the state. This comes as a result of a 40 consecutive year winning tradition with Bob Devaney and Tom Osborne at the helm. 40 years of being ranked in the top 20 teams in the country, both pre-season and post season. That's longer than a generation. There are tens of thousands of people in this state who, until two years ago, never knew the heartbreak of several defeats, or worse, embarrassing defeats, when it came to Nebraska football. Nebraska always won ten or eleven games, were ranked in the top 5, and regularly competed for national championships. That all came to an end and now a desperate attempt is being made to return this football team to its former position of excellence and achievement and, in the process, to reclaim the states "definition of self" at the same time.

I hope that happens. Some of you aren't much fun to be around when Nebraska isn't performing the way you've come to expect.

I also hope the new coach and whatever coaching staff he puts together doesn't overlook the young men who have been there through the turmoil. I hope they don't overlook their efforts everyday in practice, especially if they're non-scholarship players, because it's an easy thing for new coaches to do. The walk-on tradition at the University of Nebraska is not only time-honored but has proven to be extremely effective in finding those "diamonds in the rough" that go on to become productive members, sometimes even standouts, on the team. Ben Eisenhart, the all- everything running back and track star from Culbertson, falls into this category. Ben could have gone lots of different places on full-ride scholarships but chose to walk on at the school he has always loved and now he and several others like him find themselves in the lurch with their futures uncertain.

I've written before in this column that you can't teach love. You can't coach love. You can't demand love. Because love is something that can only be given, never taken. That kind of loyalty and selflessness on the part of walk-ons is what has made this program great in the past.

I only hope that the new coaching staff continues to give young men from Nebraska the opportunity to pursue their dreams and to go where their heart takes them because everyone who has the opportunity to be around young men like this benefit from their effort, their persistence, their commitment and their love for what they're doing.

And it's worth more than any salary you could ever pay a coach.

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