Showing posts with label Memorial Stadium. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Memorial Stadium. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Bo Pelini: Classy to the #@#%&*$! end


Is there any doubt Nebraska is well rid of ex-football coach Bo Pelini?

If you had any lingering misgivings about NU's firing of the underachieving coach, who just was named head gridiron guy at the Economically Depressed University of Misfit Jocks Youngstown State, this article in the Omaha World-Herald ought to dispel them.

The newspaper came across an audio recording of Pelini's final meeting with his former players Dec. 2, and he went out the door in the classiest of manners. Or not.
A guy like (Eichorst) who has no integrity, he doesn’t even understand what a core value is," Pelini told players. "And he hasn’t understood it from the day he got here. I saw it when I first met with the guy.

“To have core values means you have to be about something, you have to represent something, you have to have something that is important to you. He is a f------ lawyer who makes policies. That’s all he’s done since he’s been here is hire people and make policies to cover his own ass.”

The World-Herald on Wednesday listened to an audio tape of Pelini’s address that night. He spoke conversationally, rarely raising his voice. It’s a rare window into the mindset of a coach who increasingly felt besieged by his own administration and fan base.

During the tape, Pelini expresses gratitude, support and advice for players. The majority of the tape, however, reveals Pelini’s thoughts about Eichorst. In the first minute of his talk, he uses two vulgarities associated with female genitalia to describe his former boss.

“I didn't really have any relationship with the A.D.,” Pelini said. “The guy, you guys saw him (Sunday), the guy is a total p----. I mean, he is, and he's a total c---.”

The administration’s lack of support, Pelini told players, wore on him and his family.

“I said to (assistant coach Rick Kaczenski) at one point, I said this job is killing me. I said I don't want to die doing this job. I meant it. I was like, I don't want to have a heart attack on this job.”

Pelini was fired Nov. 30 and was due to receive a $7.9 million buyout, mitigated slightly by his next salary.

On Wednesday, Youngstown State announced Pelini as its head football coach. He’ll return to his hometown and work under President Jim Tressel, who led Youngstown State to four FCS national championships.

During his introductory press conference Wednesday in Ohio, Pelini called Tressel “a president who understands football, who’s going to support me, something I don’t know if I’ve ever had.”
YEAH, Jim Tressel is just the kind of guy who oozes integrity and understanding of how to conduct a college football program the right way.

Remember that Tressel is the guy whose football program at Ohio State had gone rogue under his leadership. Remember, too, that Tressel is the guy who withheld what he knew about an improper-benefits scandal involving Buckeye players and a shady tattoo shop from his own administration and then lied to NCAA investigators. From ESPN at the time:
Former Ohio State coach Jim Tressel, who was forced to resign in May, committed the ultimate sin for a college coach when he withheld information about the scandal from OSU officials and NCAA investigators. In fact, according to the NCAA's infractions report released Tuesday, Tressel had four opportunities to reveal his knowledge of the scandal to the NCAA, but never once told the truth.

The NCAA also didn't buy Tressel's excuses for remaining silent. Before Tressel was forced to resign, he said he didn't reveal that former OSU quarterback Terrelle Pryor and other players were trading memorabilia for tattoos and cash because the tattoo-shop owner, Edward Rife, was under investigation for drug dealing. Tressel said he didn't want to jeopardize the federal investigation and feared for the safety of his players.

"The committee found [Tressel's reasoning] not to be credible," the report said. "The former head coach's inaction on four different occasions was in the committee's view, a deliberate effort to conceal the situation from the institution and the NCAA in order to preserve the eligibility of the aforementioned student-athletes, several of whom were key contributors to the team's highly successful 12-1 season in 2010."

SEC associate commissioner Greg Sankey, who serves on the NCAA's infractions committee, called Tressel's conduct "very serious and, frankly, very disappointing."

Now Meyer and the rest of the Buckeyes get to pay for Tressel's sins.

As part of its punishment, the NCAA made it nearly impossible for Tressel to become a college coach again. The NCAA hit Tressel with a five-year show-cause penalty until December 2016, under which any school that wants to hire him must submit a report to the NCAA detailing why it needs to employ him and how it would monitor him to ensure he doesn't break its rules again. Any school hiring Tressel during the five-year period would be subject to more severe sanctions if he cheats again.

Even if a school hires Tressel, he will be suspended for the first five regular-season games when he returns, as well as any postseason contests.
YEAH, Pelini's kind of guy is a man the NCAA doesn't trust to coach college football . . . but apparently is just the kind of guy to run Youngstown State. And Bo Pelini apparently is just the kind of guy a man who can't be trusted to coach college ball thinks ought to be coaching at Youngstown State.

Gotcha. It seems the birds of a feather have flocked together.


Jim Tressel's guy is a grown man with obvious anger issues who goes before a bunch of 18-22 year-old kids -- most of whom stiil have to be at NU. play for the Huskers and presumably stay in the good graces of their athletic director -- then speaks about that AD in the most vulgar and demeaning manner. "Oversharing" hardly begins to cover Pelini's actions in that meeting.

With a bunch of college kids.


For whom he set himself up as a role model.

Role model? Bat-s*** crazy cult leader, perhaps. Role model, no. Unless, of course, you expand the definition of "role model" to include being a hell of an example of how not to conduct oneself.



 
Pelini's not-so-greatest hits: EXCEPTIONALLY NSFW

I GUESS in Youngstown, role models do their damnedest to poison the well for the poor saps who have to clean up their overwrought messes. The Huskers' new football coach, Mike Riley, has his work cut out for him, it would seem.

And so do those Nebraska football players who thought Pelini was just the kind of man they wanted to be someday. Breaking up is hard to do, but for these poor guys, growing up is going to be even harder with a role model like their former coach.

Bo Pelini is not what Nebraska football has, by and large, been about. May it never be again.

In firing this underachieving hothead -- the Freudian concept of the human Id personified -- Shawn Eichorst has done not only Nebraska football a great favor but done a great favor to the entire state of Nebraska as well. If that makes the man a P-word and a C-word, those are labels he should wear with pride.

Pelini is Ohio's problem now. Thanks be to God . . . and Eichorst.

Monday, December 02, 2013

I second that emotion (No, not Pelini's)


I've been an LSU fan for as long as I can remember. I've been a Nebraska fan for more than 30 years.

My allegiance to both schools is unquestioned, and the only time I'm not bleeding purple and gold is when I'm bleeding scarlet and cream. I mean, I married a Nebraska grad. We were engaged at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln . . . at Husker football picture day.

'Nuff said.

There's only one thing about this Nebraska-fan thing. Now we're in the Big Ten. We're supposed to hate our "rival," Iowa. Yet I'm finding myself in the amen corner of . . . a Hawkeye football blogger, Adam Jacobi.

When the dude is right, the dude is right. And Jacobi nails it here on Black Heart, Gold Pants:
Then there's the remarkable stay of execution Bo Pelini got from AD Shawn Eichorst. The consensus, myself included, was that Peiini had coached his last game in Lincoln by the time the smoke cleared from his press conference. His team played terribly, he swiped his hat at a referee's face, he sniped at a sideline reporter at the half and he called an admittedly sketchy penalty "chicken shit" and dared his boss to fire him.

Eichorst did no such thing, instead publicly casting his support for his hot-tempered head coach. It's eminently possible that if Nebraska biffs its bowl game, the brass takes a renewed look around and sees a five-loss team with the most high-maintenance coach in the Big Ten (if not the nation) and decides it's not worth it. Rich Rodriguez's team laid down in its Gator Bowl appearance and Michigan axed him for it, so it's plausible. But it wouldn't make much sense, since if Eichorst wants to fire him, he could have done it right now without a problem.

Either way, Pelini's just been done the most impressive favor we've seen from an athletic director in quite some time, and if this quiets the hounds in Lincoln for a while so be it. Coaches get fired too often in this zero-sum game anyway. It's just, I've never seen a man so ready to be fired. It's amazing he didn't throw the microphones at the presser back at the reporters.

I'd be so sick of that crap if he were my school's head coach. I don't know how Nebraska fans even tolerate it. I know he's not like this every week (or really at all since 2010) but that's just embarrassing behavior from someone who's supposed to be one of the faces of a major university.
YES, yes, a million times yes! And there lies the rub.

Most Husker fans -- beaten down by a decade of incompetence and burned by then-AD Steve Pederson's firing of a 9-3 coach, Frank Solich, and his ushering in of the disastrous Bill Callahan reign of gridiron error -- will forgive Pelini anything short of first-degree murder or the forcible rape of Herbie Husker. Some even think his Incredible Hulk shtick is somehow admirable, because "he's passionate."

Well, Woody Hayes was "passionate" when he punched a Clemson linebacker, Charlie Bauman, toward the end of the 1978 Gator Bowl. He also was a hell of a lot better head coach than Bo Pelini.


PELINI'S ANTICS during and after Friday's Nebraska-Iowa "Heroes Game" was just half a psychotic break short of what got the Woodster, the Buckeyes' greatest coach ever, canned the very next day after 28 years at Ohio State and five national championships. I guess Bo just wasn't "passionate" enough, alas.





AFTER BEING half an inch from being taken off the field in handcuffs, Pelini then dared his boss to can him. Wow.


And then . . . and then . . . in one of the most stunning examples of cheap grace ever, he didn't get fired. Double wow. 

Then again, I guess a press release offering a cheap apology is all you need to get cheap grace -- particularly when it would cost a not-so-cheap $7.6 million to buy out the "penitent's" contract. Note to Husker AD Shawn Eichorst: Put your lawyer pants on and tweak the "for cause" language in all future contracts.

I don't think it's too much of a stretch to predict that Pelini's cheap grace from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln will pay a dividend of more cheap displays from Mr. Accountability and more costly public-relations black eyes for a school and an entire state.

Yeah, Husker fans love them some "passion." Let's hope they don't get thrown by that wild horse.


If they -- if we -- do, better change the Nebraska fight song to Warren Zevon's "Lawyers, Guns and Money." Because the chickenshit will have just hit the fan.

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

The communion of Cornhusker saints


Nebraska spring game, April 6.

I was fooling around with our little idiot-proof digital camera, trying to de-idiot-proof it enough to take time-exposure shots around Memorial Stadium.

This is what happened when I put it on the "Fireworks" setting and plopped the thing atop an ice machine. When I saw the ghostly images of the passing crowd, it reminded me of what I see in my mind's eye whenever I find myself in an old church -- the generations upon generations of the faithful who sat in those pews, most of them now departed.

It's much the same thing with college football, isn't it?

As far as I'm concerned, those ghostly images of today's fans just as well could be the spirits of all the fans who have packed into Memorial Stadium for nigh on 90 years, cheering on the Huskers come Bill Jennings or Bill Callahan. (Or better, come Bob Devaney or Tom Osborne.)

And the choir eternal sang "There is no place like Ne-braaass-kaaa, dear old Nebraska U. . . ."

Monday, April 08, 2013

Keep Lincoln weird


Sometimes, when you go to a ballgame, the least interesting thing is the ballgame -- am I right?

Never is this more true than a spring football game. One, you know your team is gonna win. Two, you're not gonna see much of the playbook.

Think of it this way: You go to Baskin-Robbins, only to find the 31 flavors have been reduced to chocolate, vanilla and strawberry . . . but you can get strawberry for only the first 30 seconds after you walk in the door.

That's your typical college spring scrimmage.

Saturday at Nebraska's spring game, you had little Jack Hoffman's touchdown run for the ages, and then. . . . Exactly.

So I was thanking God that at least He showed us the tender mercy of putting our state university in Lincoln, because them people there just ain't right. And when people just ain't right, things are about to get interesting.

Take the picture above, for example. Every coffee shop in the world has a wall o' fliers. Many people overlook walls o' fliers like this one at the Scooters in downtown Lincoln.

But this is Lincoln, and that would be a mistake.


I MEAN, the Kicker Country Stampede in Manhattan, Kan., or the Widespread Panic concert at the Pinewood Bowl might not be everybody's cup o' joe. People in Lincoln, a progressive and diverse state capital and college town, understand this. That's why Christopher H. Merritt of our fair capital city invites you to drop by his April 24 arraignment in Lancaster County District Court.

If we're lucky, there will be a little contempt-of-court action. If we're really lucky, maybe somebody'll get tazed, bro.

Let's just hope Mr. Merritt doesn't decide to play it like George Jones and not show up at all. Alternatively, though, let's do hope he plays it like George Jones and putts into the courtroom on a lawn tractor.



OK, I JUST as well confess that I'm all about the Husker-striped overalls.  I want me some scarlet-and-cream striped overalls.

But you can overdo it . . . or underdo it, as the case may be. I only wish that the kid had a really stupid tattoo on his chest or, at a minimum, a little hair. Maybe he should drink a little of my coffee -- that would help.



YOU WANT PROOF that this country is is dire need of a dictatorship of the proletariat, or at least a little Fabian socialism? Dude's probably only making minimum wage to wear a giant weenie on his head.

The running-dog bourgeois establishment clearly has gone too far this time.

Power to the people now! And let it begin in Memorial Stadium.



ON THE other hand, sometimes the people are freakin' idiots. Giving them too much power might not be the best idea.

I'm not sure what's worse here, the sentiment behind "I'd Rather Have A Lesbian Sister Then Be A Hawkeye Fan" or the violence done to the king's English. I am assuming that the dude is linguistically challenged and thinks that having a lesbian sister is a fate worse than death -- but better than being an Iowa fan.

Of course, it is possible that the shirt means what it says, and Joe Football really, really wants a lesbian sister and swings both ways when it comes to college athletics. After all, this is Lincoln, where all things not only are possible but, indeed, probable.



FINALLY, after the spring game, we headed to the outskirts of town and Pioneers Park. Saw a herd of buffalo . . . and this.

Luke A. Heritage hearts Jennifer. That's very sweet, and I'm sure Jenny is a lucky gal.

Now let's hope some of her luck rubs off on the lovestruck Luke. Otherwise, he's totally going to get his identity stolen. But at least he won't be able to blame me.

Because being from Omaha has its advantages.

Sunday, April 07, 2013

There is no place like Nebraska

 
When the missus and I headed to Nebraska's spring game Saturday afternoon, little did we know that we'd end up seeing the best thing we'd ever witnessed in a football stadium.

College kids don't always put their best feet forward. That goes double for too many college athletes. But just when cynicism threatens to overcome one's jaded self, you see a bunch of college kids and their coaches do something extraordinary for a 7-year-old cancer patient -- one who had been befriended by former Husker running back Rex Burkhead when he was 5 and undergoing brain surgery. That led Burkhead to enlist his coaches and teammates into a Team Jack campaign, and now a larger effort to fight pediatric brain cancer.

But on Saturday, what this all meant was giving a little boy who has known much suffering a moment of great joy as 60,174 people in red went wild. I was yelling; my wife was crying.

It was wonderful.

Whether little Jack Hoffman lives to age 10 or -- may God will it -- to age 100, he will be a Husker fan for life. So will we lucky people who got to witness this moment of grace at Memorial Stadium.

Go Team Jack! Go Big Red!

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

So, an impressionist goes to a football game. . . .


You know, the university powers that be won't let you bring cameras with "detachable, professional lenses" into Memorial Stadium. So, you're pretty much stuck with your average, "idiot-proof" point-and-shoot camera when you go to a Nebraska football game.

I guess that's enough to turn anyone into an impressionist.

Or something like that.


Thus, the view from the stands when Minnesota came to town to do battle with Our Cornhuskers on a lovely Saturday afternoon.

Yay, team!

Monday, September 17, 2012

To infinity . . . and beyond!


At halftime of Saturday's Nebraska football game, you got the marching band and stuff, sure . . . but you also got to watch some teenagers commit science.

With a little help from a homegrown astronaut.

And they launched some experiment-carrying weather balloons to infinity . . . and beyond! Or just shy of 100,000 feet, whichever came first.


SUNDAY, the Omaha World-Herald got the scoop:
It takes a lot of work to gain the privilege of standing on the field at Memorial Stadium on game day in front of 85,000 fans.

It takes dedication, hours of practice, weeks of preparation.

But the cheers Saturday weren't just for touchdowns, and a football wasn't the only flying object.

A group of students and teachers led one of the biggest science experiments Husker Nation has ever seen.

During halftime, the group released three high-altitude balloons, also known as weather balloons.

The balloons, 8 feet in diameter and typically filled with helium, floated to heights of up to 20 miles into “near space” to collect data. Astronaut Clayton Anderson of Ashland, Neb., assisted with the launch.

One balloon carried specimens of E. coli, red and white blood cells, oranges, motor oil and experimental planting seeds.

A second carried special devices to collect environmental data so students could measure such things as air pressure and cosmic rays. The third carried an identification banner of the different groups.

The data were expected to fall to Earth a couple hours after liftoff.

Michael Sibbernsen, science and technology coordinator at the Strategic Air & Space Museum, said near space is an area in the atmosphere where conditions are very cold and relatively similar to those of outer space.

Many of the experiments measured how near space and high altitudes affect the specimens. Thanks to a NASA grant, such research is now accessible to students and teachers in Nebraska.
WATCH the video (above) from the university. Cool stuff from the very edge of space.

Sunday, September 16, 2012

Cornhusker Nation


Behold Cornhusker Nation.

Mrs. Favog and I were at Saturday morning's Nebraska-Arkansas State game, and I walked right into this scene on the way into Memorial Stadium, not too far from the spot where in 1983 I asked her "Will you?" and she said "Yes" and we were engaged. So I raised my little point-and-shoot digital camera and . . . voila!

As a Nebraska transplant -- and as a Husker fan of 30 years -- this seemed rather iconic to me. A photographic metaphor for the Midwestern phenomenon that is Husker football.

Go Big Red!