Devastated. Shocked. Dumbfounded. Are there enough words in the thesaurus to describe the sunken feeling of disappointment that swept Husker Nation today? I don’t think so.
30-13 Loss to South Carolina. Our 13th game of the season with a total score of 13. Pretty sure luck was NOT on our side this time.
“Failure to execute” was the theme from Pelini, Papuchis, Cassidy, Bell, David and Burkhead in all of the post-game interviews. Pretty tough to execute when you turn over the ball twice on crucial turnovers that would have led to at least 3 a piece, get a major penalty flag called back, give away possessions, yards, and first downs on stupid penalties (how many times can we false start in a row?!?!) and have three sacks in a row on the last major drive of the game.
Bo said it best as I sat about 15 feet from his teary eyes in the post-game. “We were right there in the game,” Pelini said. “They were right there...You have to earn it. It’s a humbling game. You give them credit. They made plays ... But we just didn’t execute in the times we needed to do it and we made enough mistakes that we were our own worst enemy a lot of times.
“You can’t win football games like that.”
Well, after all of the anticipation on this season, our first in the B1G, we lost again in a Bowl that should have been a nice W to finish the season. Sure can’t win games when you play like we did today, though.
My whirlwind of a morning should have been an indication of what might happen on the field, as I was more than prepared for the day yet found myself scrambling at various points up until kickoff. Interesting, as that is how I would describe what happened to the Huskers post-kickoff.
My sisters, Shannon and Amy, and I waited at the Sheraton Downtown Orlando for our brother, Jeremy, who drove in the morning of the game from his home in Gainesville. Tailgating cooler was packed, and we grabbed a bite to eat last minute while waiting for Jeremy and Amy’s cousin and uncle to pick us up.
Our early preparation and excitement for our tailgate started to dwindle as we realized that traffic and parking would prevent us from arriving near the stadium until 12:00 noon for a 1:00 PM EST kickoff. So much for the tailgate!
As we parked in a lot on the NE corner of the Citrus Bowl field, I quickly changed out of my red Huskers shirt and into my neutral black shirt before scrambling across dozens of tailgates in full swing on my way to the Press Will Call to check in and pick up my Press Pass. There, Travis Morgan, Sports Director for KMTV Channel 3 Omaha, was waiting for me. We headed up to the Press Box level inside the stadium to check in with Travis’s coworker, Rich, before “officially” checking me into the Press Room and picking up our photo band stickers for field access. I snapped a few quick pictures on our path to the field, trying to let it soak in even though I knew my time had run out to do any exploring.
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| Husker fans from Alaska! |
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| Press Floor. |
As Travis and I walked up the ramp onto the field, I had to catch my breath. WOW. I was really about to walk onto the Capital One Bowl field with full access for our biggest game of the season. Now, I have been on the field before with Travis, but that was in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and the fanfare and excitement wasn’t near what I witnessed entering the stadium in Orlando. I followed Travis behind the uprights where I dropped my football purse, picked up my notepad, and got ready to work the game alongside Travis as his film logger.
My job was to record the major plays and timestamp where in the game film those plays landed. Luckily for both Travis and I, I perfected this skill on the sidelines of the Minnesota game, and I am pretty good at reading plays and players. Plus, I’ve learned a few behind-the-scenes insights about game footage and what makes for good TV having watched Travis’s Sunday Night Sports Sound-Off this past year and non-stop football game clips for most of my life.
So, the system was set, and I was able to finally look around, breathe in the hot sunny air, and smile at the Sea of Red ready to cheer our Huskers to victory. Even got to watch our band and sing “There is No Place Like Nebraska” in my head while watching the little sister of my good friend, Bob Foehlinger, twirl on the field as the centerpiece to the pre-game show. Bob was killed in 2003 in a car accident, and I could not help but think that he would have been so proud to see Rachel following in his and his two older sisters’ footsteps as the Husker feature twirler. I knew he was there smiling down on her in that moment.
I felt like the luckiest girl in the world. Here I was, in flip flops feeling the turf between my toes and sunshine on my face while reconnecting after a month off with my beloved Nebraska pride. Does life get much better than this? That was before we started playing…when reality started to sink in that luck was not on our side today.
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| Travis's artistic Blimp shot! |
As the Tunnel Walk song started to play and the Huskers tore through the Capital One helmet onto the field, another setback caused Travis and I to scramble: his camera stopped working. We returned to our post behind the uprights where Travis tried every trick to fix the broken camera. Huskers won the toss, and Kickoff was met with a roar as the game was underway. Still no functioning camera, so I started logging plays based on the game clock, knowing that Rich was on the camera deck upstairs and would still need my notes. After about 10 minutes of unsuccessful attempts to fix the camera, we gave up and scrambled upstairs to meet Rich where we stayed for the rest of the first quarter. Pretty cool view, so that was a bonus to see the game from both angles!
The Huskers started off strong, but I quickly realized the South Carolina defense was no joke when they caused the first of two turnovers on Nebraska in our Red Zone. Instantly, my stomach turned to knots. Were we going to shoot ourselves in the foot like this in a game this big? As Travis and I returned to the field with the second camera in the second quarter, my question was answered right in front of my eyes: yes, we were.
Stupid penalties. Missed routes. Nonexistent blocks, and missed tackles against a lackluster Gamecocks offense. A blocked extra point returned the length of the field for a safety on our first TD – really? We were penetrating their Top-10 defense early on, and something fell apart. Soon, Martinez, Burkhead and Bell were scrambling to get even a few yards, just like I had been scrambling all morning to just get to the game.
As I walked behind the players’ bench traversing the field on about my fifth pass, I heard Jeremy call out my name. There he was, in the second row, with killer seats! I snapped a photo of him, Cousin Jason and Uncle Rick on my next pass before jotting down another Gamecocks scoring run. When I returned to the South end zone on the next drive, I looked up just in time to catch Amy and Shannon waving at me from their seats (my original seat) in Section 224 in the SE corner of the field right smack dab in the middle of the Husker section. Pretty cool to have 3 of my 5 siblings at this game with me. Felt just right to have a big family crew there with me in the final game of my journey.
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| My brother, Jeremy, in the Where's Waldo? shirt! |
Sure, there were some great plays, but the number of times Travis and I ran the length of the field following the Gamecocks’ drives started to outnumber that of the Husker drives, and I began to get nervous. Those nerves were wracked on the Cocks’ last drive of the first half when the Hail Mary pass fell perfectly into the hands of their receiver with no time left on the clock and no Blackshirts in range of protecting that ball. That single play was the game changer, as Spurrier took the lead at the half, and the West side of the stadium erupted in cheers. Ouch. The game was starting to look like the loss against Wisconsin when Nebraska held with the Badgers the first quarter but started to lose it toward the half with turnovers and mistakes. Surely, we had to have learned from that loss and would not repeat it here, right? Wrong.
Knowing Bo Pelini, though, I was sure that half time speech in the locker room would whip those boys into shape, and we would come out the second half looking sharper with fewer mistakes. At least that it what I and all of Husker Nation were hoping.
Travis and I retreated to the Press Room at the half to turn my notes and the game film over to Rich for first half editing. The mood among the Nebraska sports staff who I have admired for so many years – Tom Shatel, Ross Jernstrom, Sean Callahan, and the like – was a mix of frustration and disappointment. Like true Nebraskans, though, we all held onto the hope that the Huskers would repeat our comeback kid performance against Ohio State or come out of the locker room looking like the team who showed up against Michigan State the day our D earned their Blackshirts. Nebraskans never stop believing, one of the incredible lessons I have learned over the past 4 months.
We returned to the field to catch the end of the halftime performance and geared up for our comeback. The sun started to come down right as both teams lined up for the second half kickoff, and the anticipation matched the chill in the air. The ball flew through the air into Marlowe’s hands, and we were off.
There are very few things I have to say about the second half of that ball game. Sure, I could talk about the ridiculous penalties against Nebraska and the obvious missed penalties against South Carolina (did anyone else catch that face mask?!?!?). “I thought they were flinching out of some. I thought there were some that should have been called,” said Pelini in the post-game Press Conference. As we all agreed, though, “It should have been a different score when those penalties started coming up,” Pelini pinged. Or, I could echo the coach’s sentiments about “missed opportunities” and “lack of execution”. Or, I could go on and on about the fight that broke out between Dennard and Jeffrey that has already been overplayed in the press. In the end, I am left nearly speechless, much as I was after the 3 losses during the regular season.
The most poignant moment of the game came on a huge South Carolina 4th and 1 with a little over 5 minutes left in the 4th. Spurrier took the time out, as expected, to strategize the play, and Pelini and Papuchis, on display for the first time since taking the Defensive Coordinator promotion, huddled the Blackshirts in anticipation. Just a few plays earlier, I watched Senior leaders David and Cassidy make incredible reads and stops, but the big 3rd down gain just prior seemed to deflate them. After being named Big Ten Linebacker of the Year, I thought this was David’s opportunity to make a huge play. What followed was not what I have come to expect in watching my ‘Skers rally time and time again this season and over the course of my lifetime. Travis and I both noticed it. The Blackshirts returned to the field heads down, slumping, and looking completely defeated.
This was the game! An opportunity to stop this hot and cold offense and show both Spurrier and the world watching JUST what it means to earn the right to wear a Blackshirt. Where was the swagger? The gusto? The hard-working, fight till the finish mentality that has defined Nebraskans on and off the field for ages? It had been zapped. I watched South Carolina pick up that 1st down handily, and I knew that was the game. We never turned it around after that. In fact, we seemed to make more mistakes and lose more strength as the game dwindled down. Poor Martinez getting sacked three times. Hello, Offensive Line, he didn’t even get a full second on one of those before being thrown to the ground. It was the final punctuation on the embarrassing finish to our season, where we started ranked in the Top 10.
I headed to the Press Conference room for my first ever post-game Press Conference feeling all of the pain and frustration that every member of our team must have felt at that moment. What would Bo say? There were no excuses, no explanations. How would he face our fans after another falling apart at the seams, the same outcome that happened in the Holiday Bowl against Washington last year?
I clutched my notepad ready to log the conference as I had the game with a stroke of sympathy for Pelini, closely followed by empathy for the young Burkhead holding his head high after fighting on every play to make a play and being shut down by Spurrier’s Top 10 Defense time and time again. Bo’s eyes were bloodshot, and his face was flushed. I swear I could still see tears in his eyes. The moderator announced their entrance, and a hush fell over the reporters and cameramen. The pause that followed before the first question was a memorable one; these reporters were feeling the same sadness in Bo’s eyes as I was.
Bo and Rex’s responses were as expected, and they honored the hard work of the seniors, paid tribute to the quality football team from South Carolina, and thanked the hospitality of the bowl crew in true Nebraska fashion. The line that struck me the most confirmed the same feeling I have had in not only this game but all season. “Our football team feels we were better, even after the game. Felt we were a better football team than them. But, you gotta go out on the field. You gotta earn it.” We did not realize our potential this year. “We’re a pretty good team, too, but we did not execute in the times we needed to do it.”
I hung out after the official Press Conference to listen to the interviews of the players and coaches as the boarded the bus to leave the stadium. Bo Pelini, Tim Beck, John Papuchis, Barney Cotton, Ron Brown, Alfonzo Dennard, Kenny Bell, Cameron Meredith, Austin Cassidy, Ben Cotton, Brett Maher, and more flooded the East breezeway outside of the Press Room for post-game interviews. Pretty incredible to stand just a foot from these legends I have been following all season and listen to their opinions on the game. Beck summed it up well after the Press Conference. “We learn from those mistakes. At least I hope we do.”
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| Ron Brown |
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| Alfonzo Dennard |
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| Tim Beck |
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| Brett Maher |
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| Barney Cotton |
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| The cops had "N"s on their helmets! |
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| South Carolina exit to their bus. |
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| Nebraska exit to their bus. |
Most of the crowd had dissipated by that time, and I met Shannon and Amy outside the gates to catch a van cab back to our hotel where we met up with Jeremy, his wife, and his two sons.
In the elevator upstairs to grab jackets and longer sleeves for the chilly night ahead, I found myself walking into a group of 8 Gamecocks fans in shock over how poorly Nebraska played. “I have NEVER, in all my years of watching football, been so surprised to see Nebraska play that bad. We thought for sure they would kill us in this game,” said one elderly South Carolina gentleman in his southern drawl. You’re telling me! It seemed that Huskers weren’t the only ones in shock, at least based on that conversation. Both teams expected a close game, but a well-played one. When Nebraska failed to show up and execute, it seems the whole stadium was a bit stunned.
Following the recommendation of our hotel concierge, we decided on dinner at Dexters (www.dexwine.com) and walked the 1.2 miles along the lake and famous water fountain to get there. Nicholas, Jeremy’s biological son and my only nephew, held my hand as we walked and talked the whole way to dinner. At the precious age of 4, he understood all too well what a bummer of a day it had been for our beloved Huskers. Although I refuse to believe it sometimes, he reminded me with his playful spirit that there are some things that are bigger than football. Spending time with my only nephew for the first time helped to pull me out of my funk and focus on the bigger picture…and next season. J
We cabbed it back to the hotel and stayed up watching football all night long. After Wisconsin’s loss to Oregon, Ohio State’s loss to Florida, Penn State’s loss to Houston, Iowa’s loss to Oklahoma, and Northwestern’s loss to Texas A&M, it seems as though we have settled into the B1G Bowl Game fate much like we fell into the regular season shakeup that seems to happen every year. At least Michigan State, Purdue and Illinois pulled out wins although none were by more than 6 points (3, 5 and 6 respectively). Well, I guess this is part of being in the B1G, and we will just have to get used to it. Nebraskans never really get used to losing, though, so perhaps we will just have to break the mold from here on out.
I wore my Husker red shirt, tugged my Huskers logo carry on suitcase and type this blog on my Huskers decaled laptop with tremendous PRIDE as I leave Orlando. Despite the loss, the experience was one of a lifetime, and I will always be proud to be a Husker.
GO BIG RED!!!
