All Quiet on the Nebraska Front

Seriously.

I know I mention this stuff constantly…I know I kid around about wanting you to fail miserably and to catch a wide variety of sexually transmitted diseases….but holy hell..I didn’t think it would be this bad. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that the Husker hating movement would go so far as to have no enemy. Never in my greatest imagination did I think I would be able to walk the streets of Omaha..wear my Mizzou shirt proudly, and smirk at the 80 year old hags that waltz by me in the mall with their red sweaters. My team is pretty good. Real good in fact.

Regardless of that, it’s like wishing for something for Christmas…praying to God every night that Santa will come and bring it to you. You throw pennies in every well, you wish upon every star. Every day for a solid year you close your eyes tight, and dream of the moment Santa comes through.

And then…he does.

Then what?
What do I do now?
What do you wish for next?

More importantly, how can you kick a man when he’s down, when he’s already been run over by a tank?

I’m not going to lie to you…I hate your guts. I hate every core and fiber of your being. It makes me tingly to see you in pain and agony…I wear a smile a mile wide when you fail. But at this point…I’m at a loss.

The worst part is, so are you. The Channel 6 news at 6 O’Clock tonight ran TWO Husker highlights. (Both Texas A&M touchdowns.) No interviews. No live shots. No commentary. It was just about the same amount of coverage the Omaha Royals get when they drop a day-night doubleheader to Sacramento. At work Friday there was no red. Not a single Husker shirt...pretty much anywhere. Hell, even talk about Texas A&M was hard to come by. Talk is now of a man (Osborne), not a team. I’m almost convinced that you’re so far gone, even a new coach won’t save you from your fate.

It’s pathetic.
It’s sad.
It’s almost too much.

In 1929, a German author named Erich Maria Remarque wrote a book entitled, “All Quiet on the Western Front.” Later, the book was made into a movie staring that JohnBoy guy from the Walton’s. Anyhow, your predicament reminds me of a very memorable scene in the movie. Paul Baumer has suffered intense mental stress under heavy bombardment during World War 1. Paul goes from an innocent young man, to an animal, caught in the hell of war within a matter of days. Following the bombardment, he finds himself pinned down in a trench with a severely wounded enemy soldier.

The enemy soldier is half-dead and wheezing from mustard gas poisoning. Paul spends nearly a chapter discussing his inner helplessness and thankfulness, as he listens to the enemy soldier gasp, wheeze and literally suffocate to death…slowly..over the period of an entire afternoon. After several hours, Paul nearly goes mad. Although the dying soldier is his enemy, he feels the most basic level of compassion. His thoughts are not to save the dying man, but to figure out somehow..someway to make him stop. To put him out of that misery.

I feel like Paul Baumer in a way. I know you are the enemy. I know you should suffer. I know you deserve exactly what you’re getting…but being witness to a slow and agonizing death is painful and somewhat disturbing. Gone is my desire to watch you suffer. In fact, I don’t even want Texas to beat you next weekend. In fact, if I had one wish for next week..it would be for Harvey Pullman to call another press conference on Monday and say, “Fuck it. We’re pulling the plug.”

Please God, make it stop.

I have no idea where I’m going to go from here. You have zero chance of even winning another game. And after the year is over...even when you finally do get a new coach, it will be years before you even sniff a winning season again. I'm in my mid-30's, I can't just sit here and wait for you to get good again. Don’t get me wrong, there is no sadness in my words. But your pain and suffering is really more annoying, sad and pathetic than humorous and joyous.

If anybody has any good jokes or funny photos they’d like me to post, please send them to me. I’ll be happy to do so. If you would like for me to answer questions or perhaps see how many famous names we can find in the Omaha phone book, we can do that too. Anything I can do to pass the time within this blog site.

However, before we do anything like that, somebody needs to grab a gun and put this creature out of it’s misery.

I can’t stand it anymore. The wheezing is driving me crazy.

(Photo thanks: Lincoln Journal-Star and Some WWI website)