After six games, there are just three college football teams (out of 130 D-1 teams) with zero wins to start the 2018 season.
San Jose State, the University of Texas-El Paso (UTEP), and the Nebraska Cornhuskers are all 0-6.
San Jose State went 2-11 in 2017 and hasn’t had a winning season since 2012. This type of season has become all too familiar to Spartans fans.
The UTEP Miners, bless ’em, went 0-12 in the 2017 season, too. The Miners’ last winning season came back in 2014.
By comparison, fans of the Nebraska Cornhuskers have experienced very little pain. Nebraska went to a bowl game in 2016 and finished the year 9-4.
On the other hand, Nebraska’s current 0-6 start is the worst start in the program’s storied history dating back to 1890. That includes the eight years from 1892-1900 when the school’s football team was known as the Nebraska Bugeaters!
A review of Nebraska’s college football team’s wins and losses during my lifetime tells two different stories for Big Red fans.
In the thirty-year span from 1968 through 1998, the Nebraska Cornhuskers did not have a single season in which they lost four games.
In the last 14 years from 2004 through 2018, the Nebraska Cornhuskers have lost at least four football games in each and every season.
Husker Nation’s grain elevator has gone from the fully-loaded top of the silo to the ground floor in hurry.
After going 4-8 in 2017, expectations in 2018 were relatively low for Nebraska’s new football coach, Scott Frost. Frost, a former quarterback for the Huskers, returned home to coach at his alma mater following an undefeated season in 2017 as head coach of the upstart University of Central Florida.
He was a tough and focused college football player. As a coach, he was steely-eyed, determined, and a terrific motivator of players while at UCF.
So, why is Nebraska 0-6 this year and should only be favored in one remaining game this season (against 4-3 small college homecoming opponent, Bethune Cookman)?
Statistically speaking, the Nebraska offense is ranked a relatively respectable #43 of 130 upper division schools, while the Huskers defense is a pitiful 109th. Pitiful as in giving up a ten point lead last weekend with five minutes remaining at Northwestern University before losing the game in overtime.
The Nebraska defense used to be so fierce that they were known as the “Black Shirts.” Given in practice to defenders to signify that they had earned a place on the starting defense, Nebraska’s black practice jerseys became a team motivator and a rallying cry for Husker Nation.
Proud. That is what many fans remember of Nebraska’s fabled football program. Large, loud, faithful, respectful of opponents, and proud.
They need to add one final word for a few years.
Patient.
Scott Frost was a winner as a player (1995 Nebraska national championship team), and he has been a winner as a head coach.
Nebraska fans need to remain patient and give their motivated and talented young coach at least three years to turn the football program around.
Maybe it’s time to break out the Bugeaters jerseys again! While Nebraska’s football team is being swatted down with regularity in 2018, Big Red will rebuild and return to the top of the football silo again soon.