HOMECOMING
Like boybands, ‘Seinfeld’ and a general belief that this country was headed in the right direction, the Nebraska Cornhuskers football team were big in the 90’s. Very big. Three national titles in the second half of the decade cemented Big Red as a dynasty, and Tom Osborne as one of the greatest coaches to ever play the game. You messed with the Blackshirts at your peril, if you didn’t value your life, or simply hated the way you looked and wanted your face rearranging. They were mean. They were swaggering, imperious, the bully who sits on you because he knows he can. They came to handle business then party like no other. It looked like it was going to last forever. But boybands gave way to rap metal, Seinfeld came to an end, and the less said about the direction of the country the better. George Bush was coming in, Jack, and Nebraska was headed out. The fun was finally over, this ugly and doom filled new century ushered in by the crashing of two commercial airliners into the Twin Towers and the subsequent War on Terror, filling us all with a constant, gnawing dread that we’ve never really been able to shake off.
Nebraska football has suffered a miserable period of dreary mediocrity, despite continuing to sell out every home game since 1962, a record that is still being added to and will likely never be toppled. Last December, though, the children of the corn got an early Christmas present. Scott Frost, their QB during those glory years of the 90’s, fresh off leading UCF to a perfect 13-0 season as head coach that went on to include a New Years Day win in the Peach Bowl against Auburn, was coming home. Nebraska were going to be great again. The good times were coming back to Memorial Stadium. The prodigal son was returning to his rightful place, a chart for the promised land stuffed in his back pocket. Excitement in Lincoln reached such a fever pitch people were foaming at the mouth more than Bo Pelini during his insane, bug eyed, player berating, rage filled tenure. The season could not come soon enough.
After a false start because of heavy weather which resulted in their game against Akron being called off after one kick, the new look Nebraska would open up at home against former rivals Colorado. As someone who has watched a borderline unhealthy amount of college football over the years, I can honestly say there have been fewer more electric scenes in the sport than the Cornhusker players gathering in the mouth of the tunnel, swathed in lights and smoke as though at a rock concert as music boomed and 90,000 fans dressed in red bayed for their entrance like sex crazed tourists in an Amsterdam brothel, demanding to see the goods. It was time to party like it was 1995.
It did not take long, of course, for Nebraska to find out that it is no longer 1995. Two fumbles on their first two series, spotting the Buffaloes 14 points, had them in a deep, dark hole. Their true freshman Quarterback, Adrien Martinez, admirably recovered, beginning to play with the carefree attitude common of all young people that have not been cowed by the brutality of life yet, and still know no fear. He escaped one attack like he was made of air, the onrushing defender with his arms outstretched like a jabbering zombie as he had his target dead to rights, his hands then going through the seemingly ethereal Martinez’s shoulders as the QB spun away and through a miracle pass to set up a touchdown on the next play. Nebraska scrambled into the lead and, as the teams traded missed field goals and Martinez continued to look poised, it looked like staying that way. Who says you can’t go back again?
Well, everyone, really. Martinez would injure his calf and Antonio Reed would give away a boneheaded, game shredding penalty that, allied to some baffling clock management when they were still leading, would see Nebraska snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Scott Frost appeared at the post game press conference, visibly shaken and clinically depressed, his homecoming laid in tatters. ‘Great teams find a way to win’, he whispered sadly, ‘they don’t find a way to lose.’ It was hard to not feel sorry for the guy, but football does not care about such things. You are where you are, in football as in life, and Frost will have to wait a while longer before he has his first win as the head coach of the Nebraska Cornhuskers football team. In the meantime, there are reruns of 'Seinfeld' to help us remember the good old days.
Nostalgia, it seems, is not what it used to be.