C O M M E N T A R Y
J U S T I N   P R E S T I D G E
September 15, 2009

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This Just-In...

Nebraska puts Cajuns through the 300 workout,
knocks them back to U-La-La Land. Huskers roll 55-0

Player of the Game: NU Defense, 222 total yds allowed, 0 points,

Got $2,000,000? How ‘bout a Sunbelt Title …
You can buy a lot these days with two million dollars. European sports cars, fine wines, Madoff’s beach house, Michael Jackson’s nose. Well maybe not that last item. Seems NU’s athletic department used some of its resources this year to buy a Sunbelt title. So much for a recession. After paying FAU $650k, Ark St $750k and ULL $700k, what have we learned? Nothing really, other than the fact that we could give that 60-3 record Tom Osborne ended his career with a serious run for its money if we became permanent members of the Sunbelt Conference. Just imagine a late season matchup with our hated rival, North Texas, to decide the conference championship. Sigh… I’d rather watch the Rock, Paper, Scissors Championships. These games are good to open the season and get things started off right, as well as giving your team a tune up for the meat of the schedule. The problem is we had three of these games. I would like to see NU line up some middle to upper tier team out of the MAC or even a lower level ACC opponent to go along with our “Va Tech” type game. Nebraska has already started to address this with the 2013 schedule looking more palatable with Wyoming, Southern Miss, UCLA and the dreaded “opponent to be named later”. Better teams will be coming and will provide us with more opportunities to prepare for our National Championship run(s). Right now we just need to find a place to hide this Sunbelt trophy…

Blackskirts are like sooo two years ago…
OMG! Did you see those guys! They were like a lot faster than that other team. I even heard that they almost beat another team that was like pretty good last week. They would look sooo cute in Blackshirts.* Ok, enough of that, I’m starting to have flashbacks to high school-lets not go there. It is amazing to see how much better this defense is from just two years ago. No, we won’t mistake our opposition for the next coming of the Scoring Explosion, but the defense so far has done its job. It was great to see the backups get meaningful time and actually play well-even if it was against their backups. Remember Ball State? I don’t want to either. This defense bears no resemblance to the squad that rolled out there and showed us their mid thighs in 2007. It’s time for Bo to give the cheerleaders back their skirts and give our defense some shirts with a darker hue. Go out and beat Missouri and I’m sure even Bo will agree-Defense looks better in black.

I’M A MAN! I’M TWENTY! (almost)…
It was nice to see a little preview of what our backfield may look like in 2011 with Green and Burkhead taking snaps together. We all know Burkhead will be good, but Green looks like the real deal. That run in the fourth quarter showcased some of what he can do. The playbook has been WAY scaled down for him but right now, it’s all about getting a feel for the game and working on execution. He will need to work on his passing but that will come with time. Watching him have to hunch down to take the snaps from under center looks really cool, almost Vince Young like. Looking the part will not get it done and he really hasn’t played against anyone of substance, however, it is fun to watch and dream of him streaking down the sideline in a National Championship game. Who knows, by then he might be old enough to buy some celebratory champagne. If not, maybe Mike Gundy will help him out-we all know how old he is.

In Conclusion …
All in all, a fitting result on a historic, throwback night. Being able to empty the roster by the end of the third quarter will never get old (as long as we are on the winning end). So here we stand at 3-1 with a showdown against an increasingly hated Missouri team. Forget that we have dominated the overall series; MU has owned us in recent years. It would be fitting for the defense to shut them down and re-assure the younger Gabbert that his commitment is well founded. I think we match up well with them and really think that we can win this one in a blowout if we play up to our potential. Missouri will not lie down, that will be up to our defensive line to help them out with that. Bo will have to have this team firing on all cylinders to get that elusive road win against a ranked team. The Va Tech loss will become a distant memory if we can make a statement on the road against the Tigers next Thursday on national television. Win and we can set our sights on the top ten. Lose and we may very well kiss a North Title goodbye. Something tells me that the Huskers are not in a kissing mood.

*This first part of this paragraph was an actual phone conversation between my step daughter Miranda, and one of her random friends. Teenagers…