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.

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.

Videos of the year: The SEC edition

1) There was a 109-yard runback in a Big Ten game once. I think it involved a bad batch of bratwurst and a distant restroom at Camp Randall Stadium.

2) SEC, baby! SEC!

3) "Rammer jammer, yellow hammer, go to hell, Alabama!"

4) You have to begrudgingly hand it to Nick Saban for his professionalism and good sportsmanship. If that had been Nebraska's Bo Pelini instead of the Alabama coach on the wrong end of that wild finish, right now we'd be rearguing the whole deal about "Should crazy people be allowed to have automatic weapons . . . even if they make $3 million a year and we say 'passionate guy' instead of 'psychotic break'?"
 

Apologies to #*@!%+$ Simon and Garfunkel

 

Where have
you gone Bob Devaney-o, a lonely Husker Nation turns its eyes to you, ooh ooh ooh. . . .

FU2, Bo. Now, with the pleasantries all done. . . .

I can't get too mad at Nebraska's football coach and undisputed-champion F-bomb dropper, "Mad Man" Bo Pelini.

Yes, after a big comeback against Ohio State in 2011, the coach had some choice words about Husker fans and a couple of Omaha World-Herald sports columnists, as reported (and illustrated) by the website Deadspin. Then again, what the hell do you think I was saying about him Saturday afternoon?

Nebraska's second-half performance against UCLA would have been enough to make the pope drop a few choice expletives. I wonder how you say "stupid #@!*#+% a-hole" in Spanish? Or Italian or Latin . . . whichever.

Pelini's real problem is that his teams keep having UCLA-game meltdowns. Or is that Wisconsin-game meltdowns? Ohio State-game meltdowns? Maybe Texas A&M- or South Carolina-game or Georgia-game meltdowns.

You get the gist, I presume.

 Audio is exceptionally NSFW

ONE HAS to wonder whether Coach Bo's infamous id too often mucks about with his coaching superego. Whatever the reason, though, it looks like we have a foundational failure in the Nebraska football program, which follows on the heels of the somewhat more spectacular foundational failure that was Bill Callahan's Reign of Error down there in Lincoln.

That's no way to keep the fans streaming into Memorial Stadium, and no way to keep the Huskers' legendary home-sellout streak alive through Year 51 and into Year 52. Mess that up and you've just screwed up the one thing Callahan's benighted tenure as Nebraska coach couldn't.

That. Would. Be. Bad.

When you couple meltdowns on the gridiron like Saturday's with behavioral meltdowns like Pelini occasionally has both in public and in private (or in private that goes public), you're flirting with both Public Relations Armageddon and Sellout Streak Apocalypse. Especially when you insult the very fan base that's stuck with the Huskers through a lot more thin than thick for the past decade.

BARRING a drastic turnaround -- and a drastic change in the on-field character of his Nebraska football squads -- I think Coach Bo is gone. Involuntarily, despite his threat to walk on the leaked 2011 audio.

Pelini's foundational problem, to put it in LSU terms, where he was defensive coordinator before heading to Lincoln as the head man, is that he seems to be Gerry DiNardo following the abject disaster of Curley Hallman -- an improvement, but definitely not the guy.

I think this is as good as it gets under Pelini, and that's not where NU needs to be . . . and certainly not where Nebraska football has the potential to be.

The big question here is who's out there to get the Huskers where they need to be without sacrificing all the values that make Nebraska football special and keep the program's nose clean with the NCAA. Athletic Director Shawn Eichorst has some hard thinking to do as this season, like most of the rest under Pelini, remains mired in the muck of mediocrity.

Expect a rousing victory this week against South Dakota State. Whee!

No, son, they're not calling you a whale

 

You have your freshman mistakes, and then you have your freshman mistakes that you can't wait to share with the world.

World, meet Ishmail Jackson, Nebraska football walk-on. He was set on being a Husker, and damn if he didn't make the team. The upside to that is obvious enough.

I imagine he's just about to experience the downside -- Coach Bo Pelini's survey course on the cold, hard facts of life. One of those is that Husker football players, even the walk-ons, are public figures. And public figures, if they know what's good for them, do not go on Twitter to disparage Nebraska womanhood.

For example, "98% of the black girls at this school are just disgustingly ugly."

For another example, "Yall [sic] thought florida [sic] had ugly girls? omg lol"

I THINK more than half the University of Nebraska-Lincoln population will be calling young Mr. Jackson something, but it won't be Ishmael. It looks like Uncle Matt -- as in Damon, of movie fame -- never got around to explaining public relations, how it works and why it's important. Or the whole public-figure thing.

Now that talk will come from Coach Bo, who sometimes could be mistaken for Mount Vesuvius. He won't be nearly so smooth as Uncle Matt.

Let's just hope that Jackson, post eruption, isn't mistaken for Pompeii. Which, actually, wouldn't be the worst thing that could happen to him.

After all, being an 18-year-old male, he might do something even stupider than scorning half the population, with a soupçon of racial je ne sais quoi for bad measure: He might actually ask a coed for a date. That probably wouldn't end well.

Cheap grace: The football edition

You ever notice how football coaches are quick to say, after a big loss, "It's all on me. I'm responsible." 

You ever notice, likewise, how snippy and defensive football coaches get when a sportswriter has the temerity to suggest that what happened just might be due to some shortcoming of theirs?

In other words, "It's all my fault; how DARE you suggest this is my fault?! Now where's my raise."

You ever notice how Nebraska's Bo Pelini pulls this cheap grace act over and over again after his Huskers lay egg after egg in a Really Big Game? Here's Pelini doing it yet again, getting snippy with a favored target for his wrath, Omaha World-Herald sportswriter Dirk Chatelain. 


70-31.
 
The Huskers fell to a five-loss Wisconsin team 70-31 in the Big Ten championship game. You know what a team that loses to a five-loss Wisconsin team in the Big Ten championship would be called if it played in the Southeastern Conference, as opposed to one of the weaker major conferences? 

Kentucky.

This year, the Wildcats went 0-8 in the SEC, and head coach Joker Phillips was forced to take real responsibility for his team's poor performance. He got fired.

LISTEN, I don't know whether Pelini ought to be canned. or even how you could explain getting rid of a coach who won 10 games, even in a notoriously weak conference. But I do know a pattern when I see one -- this particular one being meltdowns in big games against beatable opponents.

I also suspect that another pattern's emerging -- that this is as good as it gets for Nebraska football now, that this is the new normal. Tom Osborne's gone, and he's not coming back. 

Go Big Red! But make a trip to the liquor store before the next big game -- we're all going to need a drink.

Yep, this is Bo's team, all right

You know how a football team ostensibly takes on the personality of the head coach?

Well, I think this little moment at Saturday night's 63-38 Husker implosion at Ohio State explains a lot -- about both the personality thing and why Nebraska's big-game meltdowns just keep coming and never get fixed. Long story short, this is Bo Pelini's team, and Bo's boys are just as clueless as their coach.

Who, for pity's sake, goes out on the field to warm up while the marching band is still playing . . . and marching? 

Who in the world takes the field to practice field goals when the Buckeye marching band is doing the sacred "Script Ohio" to close its halftime performance?

Who, for the love of Johnny Rodgers, is that clueless? Or maybe arrogant? Or, most likely, arrogantly and willfully clueless?

Bo's boys.

WHAT'S a little interfering with your opponent's most revered tradition on its home field when your coach can say this about the hiring of Nebraska's new athletic director: "You know, I've been concentrating on Ohio State. I don't know anything about that."

No, why should Bo know anything about that after serving on the chancellor's AD-search advisory committee? More importantly, though, what kind of clueless idiot fails to even fake some sincere enthusiasm for the guy who will have the power to fire his underperforming self?

That would be Bo Pelini. I'm a little surprised it took the Omaha World-Herald's Lee Barfknecht until this morning to put in print what Husker fans have been saying since Clueless Bo stepped in it Thursday afternoon.



I SWEAR, letting that man in front of a live microphone is like handing Barney Fife a loaded gun. Or letting Bo's boys on the field for a big game on national TV. Or, for that matter, letting 'em anywhere near Ohio Stadium when the Buckeye band is practicing its scarlet-and-gray penmanship.

"Look, Daddy! Teacher says every time a gunshot's fired, one of Bo's boys needs a new pair of shoes."

My name is Suh. How do you do? Now you're gonna die. . . .

The National Football League has its standards to uphold. It's not lawless, you know.

Commissioner Roger Goodell had to sit Detroit's Ndamukong Suh for two games just on account of the flying body parts.

By the way, the Taiwanese are deeply, deeply weird people. Entertaining, granted, but deeply, deeply strange.

You know what? I cannot wait for the guy who taught the Motor City Mauler everything he knows about being out of control -- that's FOXSports.com writer Jen Floyd Engel's reasonable-enough assessment of Nebraska Coach Bo Pelini, at least -- to do something worthy of the Taiwanese-animator treatment himself.

I'm just sick that way.

How to be publicly pissed off

You're a head football coach. You have a beef with a member of the fourth estate.

And boy howdy are you pissed.

Listen, it's not just that somebody wrote a column you didn't like. It's not even that somebody questioned your manhood in print.

That's just sticks-and-stones stuff. For the smart coach, that's no big whoop.

ON DEC. 1, 2007, though, Kirk Herbstreit of ESPN erroneously reported that LSU's Les Miles was about to jump ship to his alma mater, Michigan. In hours, Miles and his Tigers were going to play Tennessee for the SEC championship and a slot in the national-championship game.

And then this:

A source has told ESPN's Kirk Herbstreit that barring any unforeseen circumstances, Michigan will announce early next week it has reached an agreement with LSU coach Les Miles to be its next head football coach.

Herbstreit is also reporting that Miles will make Georgia Tech defensive coordinator and interim head coach Jon Tenuta part of his staff at Michigan.

Miles, who played at Michigan and served two stints as an assistant under the late Bo Schembechler, will succeed Lloyd Carr, who stepped down after the Wolverines' loss to Ohio State last month.

Miles has been head coach at LSU since 2005. LSU is 32-6 with Miles at the helm, including 22 wins in his first 26 games as coach, and won 11 games in 2005 and 2006. The No. 7 Tigers (10-2), whose two losses this season both came in triple overtime, will play Tennessee in the SEC Championship Game on Saturday.

Miles also coached at Oklahoma State, posting a 28-21 record between 2001 and 2004, and was tight ends coach for the Dallas Cowboys between 1998 and 2000.

Miles has a 60-27 overall record in seven seasons as a head coach.

A STORY like that, on a day like that, just might blow up everything.

One can imagine exactly how furious Miles must have been. The man also had to be the next best thing to panic-stricken.

And it was absolutely imperative that he talk to the press right then. The coach barely had the luxury of counting to 10 before opening his mouth.

Look at the video. If you're totally pissed off, but go before the assembled sports press you must . . . that is how you do it.

THE THING about Nebraska Coach Bo Pelini's petulant performance Saturday night after beating Ohio State was that his moment of crisis had passed. He had won the game. He ought to have been ecstatic.

Instead, he chose a very public venue to take very public shots at an Omaha World-Herald columnist who had the gall to have an opinion Pelini didn't like. About a column that, in light of Nebraska's win and its quarterback's second-half play, had just become a moot point.

IN 2007, Bo Pelini was Les Miles' defensive coordinator. The man learned nothing.

I wonder how long he'd keep around a player that willfully dense.

If looks could kill. . . .

Go to 4:45 in the video for the fireworks

You watched the press conference. You figure it out, huh? What do you think?

Well, Bo Pelini, I'll tell you. You seemed really angry at the Omaha World-Herald's Dirk Chatelain over what he's written about you and your quarterback, Taylor Martinez, the past week. If looks could kill, Coach, you'd be in jail right now.

But that's what the man gets paid to do, Bo. The state's biggest newspaper sends him out there to cover the Huskers -- and you (!!!) -- and then share his analysis with readers.

Sometimes you won't like that. Neither will Martinez. On the other hand, if the University of Nebraska-Lincoln wants to pay me about $2.775 million a year to take s*** from sportswriters when life hits a speed bump, I would not only take it like a man, I would write the columns for him.

After all, nobody knows what a true f***-up you are better than you, right?

Actually, I take that back. If NU only would pay me $2.775 million to take s*** from Dirk Chatelain, I would have my wife write the columns for him. I'm sure there would be some really good stuff in there.

Meantime, Dirk and I would be eating onion rings and knocking back a few cold ones at Lazlo's.

COACH, times are tough. Some professors at the university have lost their jobs due to budget cuts. I'll bet most of them were damned good at what they do . . . uh, did.

You, on the other hand, get to toil away in the sandbox of higher education, you get paid about 40 or 50 times better that those profs do -- did -- and you get a multiyear contract with annual raises as the cherry atop the ice-cream sundae of life.

If Dirk Chatelain gets really furious at you . . . and if he does his job really, really well and harnesses the full arsenal of his persuasive weaponry . . . and if Nebraska Athletic Director Tom Osborne picks up the World-Herald and -- upon reading Chatelain's vicious, Pulitzer-winning column about how you're the biggest putz ever to stumble out of Youngstown, Ohio, and quoting Bob Stoops as saying he always thought you were an idiot and a girlie man -- thinks "You know, Dirk's right! I've been a fool!" . . . and if T.O. then calls you into his palatial office and fires your sorry ass, triggering a bunch of boosters to buy out your contract . . . and if you've been living halfway frugally . . . you get to retire long before you hit the big 5-0.

You will find that you're pretty much set for life, and that's before you hire on as an outraged sports-talk radio host, where you actually will be paid reasonably well to be a gigantic d*** to people. Right now, you're doing that on the side, gratis.

Bo, for a man who likes to accuse sportswriters of having no perspective, you seem to have precious little yourself. You can't see that you're like the proverbial chef who can't stand the heat of the kitchen. You're a poor, angry millionaire whining that you're being repressed by an evil cabal of five-digit thousandaires.

You want to legitimately complain about all the pressure on your 21-year-old quarterback? Then kick him off the team, get him kicked out of school, hand him a crapload of student-loan debt, a wife and three kids, and then tell him to have a nice life as he scrambles right into the maw of the Great Recession.

Perhaps you can get GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain to heckle him, telling the kid it's his own damned fault that he's not rich yet.

ALTERNATIVELY, Coach, you could just lose the glare, lose the 'tude, shut your mouth and get a clue.

Assuming you wish to continue as a college head football coach, someday you'll have to learn there's no percentage in being an a-hole. Not with the press, not with anybody.

See, nobody's perfect. Everybody screws up. At some point in life -- or at many points -- the bag of tricks comes up empty, the heavy artillery is firing blanks, the Answer Man just shrugs his shoulders, and we're forced to throw ourselves on the mercy of the court.

For you, Bo, that moment almost came Saturday night against a not-that-good Ohio State team. (You do realize your team won 34-27, right? Right?)

Soon enough, though, you'll be singing a tune different from your usual Johnny Rotten karaoke. You'll fake your best "Hey . . . GUYYYYS!" smile as you plead your case in the court of public opinion . . . presided over by the folks you've just spent years abusing.

And you'll pray the verdict -- that of folks just like Dirk Chatelain -- doesn't come back "No future, no future, no future for you."

Good luck with that.


P.S.: Don't think I don't understand a little bit about the Nebraska football coach. My wife probably is going to laugh really hard after reading this post.

Not suffering #$@*&%! fools gladly

Last Saturday, after Nebraska's football coach left a blue cloud wafting over the scorched moonscape of the Husker sideline in the wake of a ref-assisted loss at Texas A&M, I mistakenly mentioned to my lovely and charming wife that "I get Bo Pelini."

"Really?" she asked. "You get Bo Pelini? Really?"

I am not a bright man, but neither am I Forrest Gump. I was starting to think there might be sarcasm in play here.

"You understand Bo Pelini? Really?"

Yeah, it was sarcasm, all right. You don't have to throw a yellow flag with "SARCASTIC" written on it at me and hit me right in the eye with the weighted end and scratch my cornea or anything. I'm not Nancy Pelosi, for pity's sake.

"Honeybun, you are Bo Pelini."

The woman always goes for the kill. Every time.

And after 27 years of marriage, the woman also still doesn't understand those of us with a majority of Mediterranean blood hotly coursing through our bulging veins. I blame the Swedish blood treading cautiously, yet efficiently, through hers.

ON THE OTHER HAND, after watching this press conference this evening after Nebraska's 45-17 final beatdown of Colorado, she may have a point. If you're in a hurry, skip to the 4:55 mark.

Here's a transcript of the relevant exchange:

Reporter (who really should have known better):Do you tell the guys to just, to celebrate this? I mean, do want them to enjoy tonight, or is it something you don't even want to. . . .

Pelini: No, I want 'em to be pissed off and feel like they got their butts kicked.

I mean, come on. Yeah . . . yeah I hope they would enjoy it. They earned it. They did a lot. They've won 10 football games -- that's not easy to do, it's nothing to sneeze at, you know? I'm proud of these kids. They better enjoy it.

I WOULD HAVE said exactly the same thing. Exactly the same way.

I even may have added a gratuitous "Are you some kind of @#$&*#! nut???" as an exclamation point. Maybe not. I don't know.

All I do know is that Coach Bo might be the brother I never had. Now, #@!* you, you #@$%!&% #$*&!. No, really.

!@#$&!

Poisonous football

If you watched the Nebraska-Texas football game Saturday, it became clear to you that something was horribly wrong with the Huskers.

Of course, we all chalked it up to nerves. To anxiousness. To the Huskers letting their brains slip into R (Revenge) before ever engaging in D (Drive the @#$%!*% ball down the #$%!@*+&! field, you jerks!).

Face it, we just chalked it up to Husker coaches yet again letting Mack Brown and his Tejas 22 get under their skins and into their heads.

Of course, we are fans. That means we are wrong. Horribly, embarrassingly, ignorantly and knuckle-draggingly wrong. Just ask NU Coach Bo Pelini.

No, really. Coach Bo explains it all in Sunday's Omaha World-Herald.


IT WASN'T emotion, or nerves or anything like that. See?

Bo Pelini says the outside influences did not factor, that emotion played no role Saturday for Nebraska and that the Huskers again lost to Texas only because they failed to make plays.

A mountain of evidence from this 20-13 UT win suggests another conclusion: that NU wanted it too badly.

How else to explain the three dropped touchdown passes? Or the opening seven minutes that included uncharacteristic missed tackles and a key fumble by senior Roy Helu? It led to a 10-point hole from which NU never climbed.

“A terrible start,” said Pelini, who dropped to 1-4 in October home games as the Nebraska coach.

AND HUSKER receivers dropping something like 873 passes during the game -- about four of them sure touchdowns? It couldn't be nerves, or . . . PSYCH!!!

Nuh uh.

In this doomed series of Big 12 heavyweights, frustration climaxed for Nebraska on Saturday as Texas improved to 4-0 in Lincoln since 1998.

The Longhorns (4-2, 2-1) won for the ninth time in 10 games against NU as a conference foe. UT denied the Huskers and their fans of the moment they all so desired: redemption against Texas before the Huskers bolt next year for the Big Ten.

Barring a December rematch in the Big 12 championship game, they'll never meet again as league foes. And if this is how it ends, what a disappointment for Nebraska.

“Losing to anyone is not a good feeling,” NU defensive end Cameron Meredith said. “but especially Texas.”

The all-too-familiar scenarios played out often for Nebraska on Saturday.

Notably, there were the drops by Rex Burkhead, Niles Paul and Brandon Kinnie. All three passes were thrown well — the first a Taylor Martinez pass on the opening play of the second quarter; the others from Zac Lee, who replaced Martinez midway through the third quarter.

“It's pretty obvious,” Pelini said. “We had our opportunities to make plays. We didn't make plays. They did. They won the football game.”

BUT NOT making the plays, in which "not making the plays" means "dropped every thrown football laid perfectly into your outstretched hands?" And knowing for sure -- after all, Coach Bo said -- that it wasn't AT ALL due to . . . PSYCH!!!

Well, then. This could be serious, and it seems to me -- given the unlikely repetition of such specific inaction by skilled professional student athletes -- we need to start looking at environmental and medical causes.

Perhaps so many dropped passes could be traced to identical symptoms spread among a number of Nebraska players. (In this, we can use the Longhorns as our "control group." They spent only 24 hours or so in Lincoln, and they exhibited few of the symptoms associated with affected NU players.)

Several things come to mind as a possible reason for so many dropped passes Saturday -- and, indeed, so many fumbles by Nebraska throughout the present football season. The likeliest place to start would be some kind of numbness and/or paralysis in players' extremities, particularly the hands.

Now we're thinking diabetes, nerve damage, ministrokes, Reynaud's disease, peripheral artery disease (Thanks, pharmaceutical TV ads for the heads up!) . . . or multiple sclerosis. A mass outbreak of one of these maladies, however, is highly unlikely in this case.

What we need is something that would cause these symptoms in significant numbers within a group, and cause these symptoms virtually simultaneously. Something that's not nerves, or excessive emotion, or . . . PSYCH!!!

Searching Internet medical databases up and down, I could find only one explanation, and it is indeed a frightening one. In fact, as soon as this post goes up on the blog, I'm firing off an extremely urgent E-mail to the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services, with a copy forwarded to Nebraska Chancellor Harvey Perlman.

LIVES ARE at stake, and I'm not talking about some unhinged Husker fan doing something stupid to a player or a coach.

No, I'm talking mercury poisoning.

Look, it's all here:

Symptoms of Chronic Mercury Poisoning

CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM

* irritability [Pelini brothers (Bo and Carl) --R21]
* anxiety/nervousness, often with difficulty in breathing [NU fans at Memorial Stadium]
* restlessness [Ditto]
* exaggerated response to stimulation [Pelini brothers]
* fearfulness [NU fans in stadium]
* emotional instability [Pelini brothers]
-lack of self control [Bo Pelini]
-fits of anger, with violent, irrational behavior [Pelini brothers]
* loss of self confidence [Entire state of Nebraska]
* indecision [Offensive Coordinator Shawn Watson]
* shyness or timidity, being easily embarrassed [Entire state of Nebraska]
* loss of memory [What were we talking about?]
* inability to concentrate [Jenn Sterger is HOTT!!!!!]
* lethargy/drowsiness [Entire Nebraska offense]
* insomnia [Who can sleep now?]
* mental depression, despondency [Are you kidding me? If you're not depressed, you must have flown in from Tejas.]
* withdrawal [Leave me alone.]
* suicidal tendencies [Life has not been worth living since 1998.]
* manic depression [Fiddle dee dee! After all, tomorrow is another day!]

* numbness and tingling of hands, feet, fingers, toes, or lips [Taylor Martinez, NU receiving corps]
* muscle weakness progressing to paralysis [NU offense]
* ataxia [?????????]
* tremors/trembling of hands, feet, lips, eyelids or tongue [Husker receiving corps during game; NU coaching staff after game.]
* incoordination [Husker offense]
* myoneural transmission failure resembling Myasthenia Gravis [NU receivers -- couldn't see the football coming.]

SEE WHAT I mean? Mercury poisoning. It clearly affects the entire Nebraska football team, and probably everyone spending any significant time on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus. Possibly it could be a statewide crisis, I am not sure at this point.

We was robbed? Hell, no. We was poisoned!

This is urgent, and it is incumbent upon the state government to act immediately.

Unless, of course, the state's political and bureaucratic establishments are, at this moment, flying into fits of rage and trying to beat up one another, thwarted, however, by lack of coordination, paralysis of the extremities and an inability to see straight.

In other words, an average mercury-poisoned day at the office.

He who laughs last. . . .

. . . laughs loudest.

Bo Pelini, to put it in Facebook speak, likes this.

HERE'S an Omaha World-Herald classic from December:

Bo Pelini had played it cool walking off the field, telling Texas coaches to go win a national title.

But he heard about a conflict at the threshold of the tunnel. Seemed a Texas fan and somebody from NU had exchanged words.

Bo marched toward the scene. Who was it? Bo wanted to engage the Texas fan.

Told nothing happened, he went back toward the locker room, where he saw Marc Boehm, NU assistant athletic director.

“Marc, I want to see (Big 12 head of officiating) Walt Anderson in there right (expletive) now!” Pelini shouted.

“BCS!” Pelini said as he entered the locker room. “That's why they make that call!”

Nebraska lost another heartbreaker to Texas Saturday. You saw it. Felt it. What you didn't feel were the post-game aftershocks reverberating through the concrete tunnels of Cowboys Stadium.

It hit hardest the Pelinis, who nearly orchestrated a monumental upset.

The reason why they didn't, according to Bo's and Carl's immediate reactions, was the officials' decision to add one second to the game clock after Colt McCoy's last throw out of bounds.

Originally, the clock expired, sending a flood of Nebraska players onto the field. But a review changed that call, led to Texas' game-winning kick and sent the Pelinis into madness.

According to Dan Beebe, Big 12 commissioner, officials did the right thing.

According to Walt Anderson, officials did the right thing. Where was the clock when the ball hit something out of bounds?

“There was a second left,” Anderson said.

But nothing or nobody could convince Bo Pelini.

“I want an explanation!” Pelini yelled outside his locker room.

Standing in that tunnel quietly watching him: Harvey Perlman, Paul Meyers, Eric Crouch.

“Get Coach Osborne down here!” Pelini said. “Can you go get Coach Osborne?”

Minutes later, Athletic Director Tom Osborne walked slowly toward the locker room in black trench coat. He entered the double doors to meet Pelini.

From outside the doors, one word could be heard loudest: “Cheaters!”

Then Osborne strode back to the field, where Texas was wrapping up its trophy presentation. En route to midfield, Osborne said to a World-Herald reporter: “Where is Dan Beebe?''

Beebe was standing at the 40-yard line talking to Assistant Commissioner Ed Stewart, a former Nebraska All-America linebacker.

As Osborne reached Beebe, the commissioner extended his hand. But Osborne didn't shake it. Osborne pointed at Beebe and said, “Would you go see Bo? Right now?''

By then, Nebraska Chancellor Harvey Perlman had come on to the field. Perlman and Osborne walked with Beebe off the field and down a stadium tunnel.

The three exchanged no words on the walk. Down the tunnel, Osborne walked three steps in front of Beebe and Perlman walked to Beebe's right.

OF COURSE, you don't make a high-stakes decision like blowing up the Big 12 Conference just because you see Texas getting every benefit of the doubt because the conference's slot in the BCS championship was at stake.

(I'm not saying the call that saved Texas' hide was wrong, but I am questioning whether, if the Huskers had been in Texas' position in that game -- with the Longhorns' shot at the national title still at stake -- whether Big 12 officials don't let the clock run out and call it a night.)

But the fragrant aroma of a dish called revenge being served cold, much as a bowl of gazpacho, sure is a wonderful thing to greet you as you step into the Big Ten café.

Mein Nebraskenkampf

Oh, Lord. I'm gonna have to start buying Depends if I'm gonna keep watchin' this stuff.

Nebraska football: If you've gotta cry, it's better to laugh yourself into it.

IF YOU WANT to know why newspapers are doomed, doomed, doomed . . . it's because they spend millions and deploy scores of journalists to cover stuff and give us their learned opinions, but still can't come up with something as screamingly funny -- and ultimately truthful -- as some guys posting from home in their spare time.

And that's why they call it Götterdämmerung.