Dallas, We Have a Problem.

I don't know about you...but I'm pretty much holidayed out. I hope your Christmas season was spent with your friends or families, exchanging yellow foam cornheads, bib overalls, limited edition oil paintings of Bob Devaney or whatever it is you freaks give each other. No matter what you did, I hope it was a happy and safe time for all involved.

I'm glad you're back though, because we have something that needs to be addressed. It seems the somebody forgot to inform the greatest fans in college football that they were playing in their first January bowl game in years.

Are you people surprised like this? Apparently some of you haven't visited the Devaney Center during a basketball game, and taken a look around at the 10,000 or so invisible fans or so who decided to take in an early season game against Alabama A&M. Hypocritical tendencies not withstanding, leave it to the Omaha Propaganda machine to kick into full gear as soon as it became apparent that the Red Hillbilly nation wasn't going to be swarming to Dallas in waves.

My personal favorite excuse was given by the Omaha World Herald on December 26th, in which it went through the various reasons experts describe the historical Cotton Bowl as a "dump". (Uhhhh...this just in....you don't exactly play in the Taj Majal there Gomer. Just because you throw up a 900 foot tall video board doesn't make you cutting edge.) Other excuses in regards to the Dallas landmark were the tight concourses, poor legroom and my personal favorite..."Fans attending next week's Cotton Bowl will be disappointed to learn that no creature-comfort improvements will begin until spring 2007."

In other words, "They're going to clean up this shithole...but not until after Husker fans are long gone.

But it doesn't stop with the World Herald. Local call-in shows berate the "crappy bowl" and "horrible start time" as reasons not to go. The most common theme is the weather that is described as everything from "bone-numbing cold" to "unpredictable." The remainder of the excuses include spending too much money in KC for the Big 12 title game to lack of respect for "mid level" SEC teams.

Don't think for one second I'm going to let you a-holes slide on this one.

HOW OFTEN do we hear how Husker fan sets the bar on what a college football fan should do? How often do we have to hear how you travel to the moon to watch your favorite team? So you're playing a top flight SEC team in a major metro city less than a day's DRIVE away....and now you're too good to show up? Didn't 280,000 of you hayseeds show up in San Antonio last year when all you had done was beat a Colorado team on the brink of collapse? Didn't we hear about how great you were back then? Aren't you the same people who bring up your locust-like swarming of South Bend in 2000 during every other conversation?

So seriously..what the hell is the deal? Since when has the weather stopped you freaks? Do you REALLY think Dallas is that cold in the winter? (Forcast is sunny and 55 at gametime. downright arctic conditions if I've ever heard them...)Are you really that concerned with a 10:30am start time? Do you honestly want the rest of us to believe that your entire soybean harvest cash for 2006 was spent in Los Angeles for the USC game? What, did you not think you were going to a bowl?

Why don't we just cut through the bullshit and call this whole thing what it is. I know what is it. You know what it is. Let's just get it out there:

You think you're above this game.

Your mediocre 5-0 record vs. the shitty Big 12 North convinced you that it was 1995 all over again. You had visions of National Championships...with Tommie Frazier running down the sidelines. You envisioned Zac Taylor ending his brief Nebraska career on the shoulders of his teammates in Tempe, as a spirited Boise State team stood in awe of his accomplishment. The fact that the excuses are flying faster than the speed of light is indicative of everything I've ever said about you people.

You're no better than anybody else. Hell, Kansas State fans...the same people you mock for having a high school stadium and a 3rd rate program is sending the entire population of Kansas to Houston tonight for the Texas Bowl....a city that is about 6 hours further of a drive than Dallas. (Against RUTGERS....RUTGERS for God's sake) Sure, you ended your season on a down note against Oklahoma...but didn't they just get rolled by a shitty KU team? And you folks have the audacity to mock them and their fans?

You hypocrites.

If you would just go about and say "we're better this", I would have so much more respect for you. Yet, you instead sit back, offer excuse after excuse and still predict victory anyway. To me, I find it hysterical that a team that lost to Oklahoma State by double digits and finished with 4 losses can think they're above any bowl this side of Shreveport. Where the hell do you people get off? Seriously. It's the fucking Cotton Bowl. It's been played every year since 1937...ironically about the same year most of your season ticket holders attended their first Nebraska football game. If anybody should recognize what a good bowl game this is, it should be you people.

So go ahead....bitch about the weather. Complain about Auburn. You're the ones who have to live with yourselves every single time you pat yourself on the back to reconfirm what a great great fan you are.

The rest of us know better.

Enjoy watching the game in your living room. It's supposed to be cold out this weekend.