[Husker] Husker Dan editorial

[Nick Chevance]

On Fri, Jan 6, 2012 at 3:00 PM, Aaron Wolfson <awolfson0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> The only thing I'm tired of is not winning conference championships.
>
> Aaron

Well, you must be REALLY tired, because we don't have a history of
winning conference championships recently.  The last one was in the
last century (gee, I sound so old when I say that).  In the Big XII
(when it was the big twelve) we won two conference championships -
1997 and 1999, though we competed for six of the 15.  So you have to
go back to the Big 8 where we won 30 (and co-champs in 11 others) over
about 86 years in the conference (from 1907 to 1996, with a few years
off between 1918 and 1921).  That means on average we were the Big 8
conference champion (or co-champion) every other year.  But that
hasn't been the case for over 15 years.  And then, there were only 8
teams, and only Oklahoma regularly contended for those titles (with 33
total) with us.  So, you beat Oklahoma and you probably won the
conference.  Today, we gotta beat up to 4 ranked teams just for the
chance to play for the title.  Them are long odds.

I'm fine measuring success by number of wins, as long as there are
quality wins and quality loses.  Quality wins this year were Michigan
State, Penn State, Ohio State, and maybe Iowa.  There were no quality
loses this year - no one we lost to was a game where we competed with
but just didn't have the horses to eke out a win.  Blow outs at
Wisconsin and Michigan, and melt downs against Northwestern and South
Carolina (though I lean toward a melt down at Michigan, the result was
a blow out), do not qualify in my book.  I want to see us compete
better in those games we lose, to show true progress.

And this next year should be a good test.  We have those teams that
beat us coming here next year, and in a somewhat diminished capacity.
And we visit those teams that we managed to get wins at home.  How do
we compete against the Michigan State's, Wisconsin's and Michigan's
will tell me how we've progressed.  We don't have to win them all, but
we need to do more than just be in the game.

Nick
-- 
“You can lead a horse to prune juice, but you can't make him drink it.
Nor would you want to.”
Space Ghost