Anyone who isn't SEC oriented is gonna talk crap about our conference....There's one word to describe it.."Jealousy"
Link: Bo Pelini: Some SEC Teams Not Named Alabama Wish They Were Nebraska
- Thread starter RTR91
- Start date
Nebraska 71 team gave us a whipping I will never forget, & we had a really, really good team.
Last years Alabama team & that 71 team of Neb were the 2 best I have ever seen.
They have pride & I think Bo is just trying to rally the troops.
Last years Alabama team & that 71 team of Neb were the 2 best I have ever seen.
They have pride & I think Bo is just trying to rally the troops.
Yes, some other teams in the SEC wish they had the "tradition" or reputation as past winners as teams like Nebraska, Michigan, and Ohio State...I think that's what he is saying.
BUT therein in the problem and he's acknowledging that the SEC is a league way out in front of everybody else right now. Nose to nose, the SEC bottom 6 can match up with the top teams of most conferences with a decent chance to beat them (see Vandy or Ole Miss).
Bo is talking about Nebraska's tradition...not their ability to compete right now with the SEC.
LOL. I certainly wouldn't go there. Nebraska has had some or the truly great teams in the history of college football. Mississippi St. has never, ever done anything to distinguish itself except as a doormat. They just aren't the program now they have been in the past. Nebraska like Alabama will someday return to greatness. Mississippi St. will never reach that level.
Pelini made his reputation as a DC at LSU which proves not every DC or OC is HC material. NU unloaded Frank Solich after he posted a 59-16 record and hired Callahan because he had NFL experience and would open up NU's offense, failed experiment. How long will NU keep this psycho on as HC?
Nebraska may make it back to the top, but they won't do it like they did in the 90's - feasting on cream-puffs.
I'm not so sure that if Mittippi Tate played the same schedule Nebraska played in the 90's they wouldn't have looked really strong, too. Not taking away from those Nebraska teams - they beat a few quality opponents and had a nice run - but the MSU team of today might have looked at least similar record-wise playing the schedule Nebraska did.
Right now, everybody wishes they were Alabama.Nebraska wishes they were Alabama...
College football is cyclical, and even the current Golden Age -- depending on exactly how you count, the 4th to 6th one -- we're experiencing will fade someday. Thing is, we and everybody else know that, even when that happens, we'll be back yet again.
Agreed and I know that we need to enjoy where we are today because it won't last forever, but even then as you said we will be back. We have always been back after we were down. Nebraska, as great as they have been, is still no Alabama. Their great teams of the 70's and the 90's, while they beat some quality opponents (including a certain Orange Bowl that I never got over), were built mostly against cream puffs . I well remember every year it was down to who won the Oklahoma-Nebraska game to know who would go to the Orange Bowl. Everything up to that was just warm-ups. Even giving them their due they haven't had the number of "golden ages" that we have. There is, there has always been, and there will always be only one Alabama... RTR! :biggrin:
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Mississippi State had some really good teams in those days too. Jackie Sherrill had them going pretty strong and they were always Alabama's toughest SEC West game. Sleepy Robinson was a good QB for them back then.
But, as for Nebraska's possible return to greatness, they are in much the same boat Tennessee finds itself in right now. Nebraska's empire was built on strong, corn fed farm boys playing on the lines, but they went outside the Midwest for a lot of their skill position talent. Those recruiting strongholds are now being dominated by schools in those territories. So while I admit it is possible for them to return to greatness, it's not the given that it was for us because of the recruiting territories and the dynamics of having to go out of your region in order to obtain top notch talent. We don't have to do that, and probably never will. They do, and I don't think their current staff has what it takes to accomplish that. I also do not think they helped themselves in this regard by leaving the Big 12, though I do understand why they did it.
Northwestern finished 10-3 in 2012 ranked 17 in the AP and 16 in the Coach's Poll, and as someone else mentioned, they beat Mississippi State in the bowl game.
This.
Demography is destiny, and the demographics combined with the growth of rural poverty have doomed Nebraska.
While that may be true for an economy as a whole, I'm not so sure it's the case in big-time college athletics, now or in the past.
The demographics of the state of Alabama go a long way toward explaining why its economy has lagged. But they don't come anywhere near explaining why the football program of the flagship state university is one of the top 5 in history. And, much as we like to denigrate it, the football program of the land-grant school is top 20.
Also, those same demographics are becoming irrelevant in Tuscaloosa due to nationwide recruiting. Whereas Auburn has historically recruited SE Alabama, Georgia, and northwest Florida, Alabama is now recruiting coast to coast and Canada to Mexico.
I think Nebraska's post-Osborne struggles are more a function of abandoning their distinctive competence than demographics. They were to Midwestern football what we were and still are to the South: Built on strong line play (a hair more OL tradition for them, a hair more DL tradition for us), defense, running, and just enough passing to keep the other team honest. In their heyday, as in all our Golden Ages, everybody in the stadium knew what was coming on 3rd and 3. But knowing what's coming is an entirely different exercise from stopping it.
Nebraska fired Solich mainly because he wasn't Osborne. Think they'd like to have that call back today? I do. They hired Bill Callahan, who tried to install a style of offense wholly unsuited to the players he had. Compounding that, he de-emphasized defense to the point that good players didn't develop because of a lack of coaching. Essentially, nobody on the staff cared. Then, after four years of that, they tried to go back to their roots with Pellini.
The problem there is twofold: First, the players Callahan had recruited were themselves wholly unsuited by physical traits, psychology, and S&C training to Pellini's smashmouth style. Second, even though his philosophy is much better suited to Nebraska's tradition, Pellini himself is a loose cannon, prone to embarrassing himself and the institution. I have yet to see that he's not in over his head as the public face of a major college program based on a tradition of class, respect for its own tradition, its opponents, and itself. Tom Osborne has to have been ashamed of some of Pellini's conduct, and Bob Devany may have turned over a couple of times himself.
So the way I see it, Nebraska's problems are largely self-inflicted, not thrust upon them by outside demographic forces over which they have no control.
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