During the college football season, I'll have ten thoughts on the Mizzou game specifically, then ten on the weekend around the country and then we'll do our regular Monday morning ten. But there weren't that many games last weekend so we're kind of rolling everything into one here for week zero. We'll focus on Mizzou for most of this, but we're starting nationally.
1) College football is back and it's good to know that some things haven't changed. For example, Scott Frost will continue to be a terrible in-game coach and Nebraska will continue to be good enough that Nebraska fans think they are just a play or a player away but bad enough that the rest of the country can continue to celebrate their misery. Frost is now 5-21 in one-score games. He is 15-30 overall at Nebraska. He would need a 15-game winning streak to match the winning percentage of Mike Riley, the worst coach the Huskers have had since Tom Osborne. He would need a 22-game winning streak to match the winning percentage of Bill Callahan. He would need a 51-game winning streak to match the winning percentage of Bo Pelini. And he would need a 76-game winning streak to match the winning percentage of Frank Solich. Nebraska fired all those guys because they weren't good enough. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
2) Here's what's unique about college sports: It's as much about celebrating the failures of the teams you don't like as it is about celebrating the success of the ones you do. It's different in the pros because it's not as emotional. Chiefs fans don't root for the Broncos or Raiders, but I really don't think there's the same level of outright dislike. Don't get me wrong, you like to see them lose. But you're not celebrating every Denver or Vegas loss (or to go to the other side of the state, Cards fans aren't tweeting till their fingers bleed every time the Cubs lose a game). In college sports, the fans enjoy seeing others fail at a very similar level as they enjoy seeing their own teams succeed. It's what makes it great. For anyone who grew up a fan of a Big Eight team, there's joy in seeing Nebraska suffer. Because for 25 years, they beat your brains in and then they gave you the "Thanks for trying, but we knew and you knew how this was going to go" clap on the way out. And then they applauded themselves for being kind enough to clap for you. And to see them having suffered through relative irrelevance for about a decade before sinking into downright crappiness, well, yeah, everybody outside the state of Nebraska has enjoyed that. Or, to put it more succinctly, this is exactly the attitude that has earned them the scorn of every other fanbase:
3) I do feel for Nebraska fans in one regard: This season is now simply a death march to a coaching search. They know it. We know it. Scott Frost and Trev Alberts know it. Here are a few names I think they should consider when they eventually make the move:
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