Four more days until we learn how good this year’s team is.
Four more days of non-idle speculation about the outcome on Thursday night.
ESPN will be there. College football fans from around the nation will be glued to their sets. Nebraska and Mizzou fans will be tossing things at their sets and making loud sounds as their respective teams move the ball, or fail to.
Tom Shatel of Omaha World Herald believes that the Missouri-Nebraska rivalry is about “to blossom, mature, combust and boil over.”
Since losing Oklahoma, Nebraska has had many paper rivals, but this one has a chance to stick. It’s not choreographed, like Colorado. This one’s got hard-hitting and emotional history, complete with accusations of cheap shots. The fans have never liked each other, for whatever reason. Which seems to be a good definition of a rivalry. Just because.
Correction: We haven’t lost Oklahoma as a rival. We just don’t get to line up against the Sooners every year (which sucks) and they’ve been dominant when we do play them (which sucks worse). But I like where Shatel, a Mizzou grad, is going with his argument.
Another sports writer, Blair Kerkhoff of Kansas City Star says Mizzou has the better program at this time. After listing a string of facts about more wins, more bowl games, more players drafted into the NFL, etc., Kerkhoff concludes:
In Gabbert and wide receiver Danario Alexander, Missouri has superior playmakers.
Something else works for Mizzou. There’s not a player in the program who has ever thought of Nebraska the way Tigers, Jayhawks, Wildcats and everybody else did a few years ago.
I might agree that Mizzou’s players, coming in to this game on Thursday night, aren’t scared of Nebraska. After all they have whipped our butts for the last two years and they’re playing at home. But I’m more interested in how they feel about us on Friday morning, when they wake up sore.
The Pelini Brothers are focused on wining championships, just like the rest of Husker Nation. Championships mean beating Mizzou on the road (and Kansas) to win the Big 12 North. Championships mean beating Texas and/or Oklahoma in early December every year for the conference title. And championships mean beating any comer on bowl game day.
Lots of people inside and outside Nebraska are saying this team is not yet ready for all that. Yet, no one inside the program is ready to say that, and that’s what counts.
I keep hearing the same thing out of certain media sources (more so in the preseason) about teams like KU and MU having more talent. It’s kind of interesting once you start stacking position for position.
Lets start with the “D”: After watching MU’s performance against Nevada, they can make the argument that Witherspoon is a better linebacker than what we currently have; BUT as for the line and D-backs, we are two deep on the line that are better than MU’s number ones, and our backs have proven their worth — can’t say MU has more talent there either.
Now to the offense: Our line is definitely more dominating and overpowering than MU’s. Quarterback? Yes, Gabbert is a big kid and has put up a lot of yards on bad teams; BUT I haven’t seen any indication that he can manage a game or even run better than Mr. Lee. Running Back? No brainer — Helu is one of the premier backs in the conference.
More talent? I think not. The only good thing out of the Callahan Era was they were able to recruit big time “talent” — even though they didn’t know how to use it defensively (Suh, Lee, Castille, Helu, Paul, Turner, Allen, Brooks, Asante, Thenarse…. Just to name a few).
I’ll way to show why we outmatch KU also; this one will be easier.