Burnpoetry: A Writer's Attempt to Write

At what point does a cliché become too cliché to even write about?  We still have countless Rom-Coms that feature an emotionally fragile girl who is uncharacteristically drawn to a just-below-the-surface equally damaged bad boy and they both teach each other how to love, to feel human, and to laugh while crying.  We have hundreds upon hundreds of bitingly sarcastic, hacky, sports blogs that attempt to hate on everything in humorous, pop-culture laden ways (*Author’s note: uh-oh).

It’s taken me a long time to drum up the necessary resolve to try to write my yearly “Husker Season in Review” column.  The simple fact is, I could have written the same thing this year as last year.  I could have copied and pasted what I wrote in 2011 for 2013 and no one would be the wiser.  Here’s what I wrote in 2011:

 I still believe that Bo’s the man for the job.  I aways have.  But this season Bo’s “growing pains” as a head coach seemed to be far too much “pain” and not enough “growth.”  Do I expect Nebraska to ever get back to the gilded era of the 1990′s when we treated other teams like railroad stakes and we were John Henry?  Do I expect a coach/politician that can deftly win 3 national titles then seamlessly transition to Capitol Hill?  No and no.

But at some point Bo Pelini is going to have to realize that here at Nebraska, a place where football is law, we need a judge not a bailiff; someone who’s more Osborne than Charlie McBride.  To do so he’ll have to deal with the local media, in spite of their pestering questions about things as inconsequential as his birthday presents.  He’ll have to turn his boiling rage at blown officiating calls down to a simmer.  And, finally, he’ll have to deal with his coaching staff — including canning an ineffectual offensive coordinator and realizing that sometimes loyalty can quickly turn to stubbornness if unchecked.

Here’s what I wrote in 2012, after our season ended in the Capital One Bowl with a loss to an SEC team:

 After a good deal of group therapy, introspection, drinking, and aromatherapy I have finally come to terms with the season that was.  It was a rough year for my fanhood.  Coming in, we didn’t want to see the wheel reinvented.  We just wanted four wheels all rolling in the same direction.

The 2011 season was a 15-year-old learning to drive a stick-shift for the first time.  We got spastic, jumpy leaps in the right direction.  We got a program that was lurching forward, then dying, then lurching, then slamming on the brakes.  What was the most disappointing part of the 2011 season?  The fact that it was more of the same.

More uninspired home losses to lesser opponents.  More blowouts on big stages.  More issues with Bo getting testier and testier to the point of detest.  In a year we were looking to take a big step forward, instead we got on the treadmill.  We ran.  We jogged.  We worked up a pretty good sweat and got in a decent workout.  But when we stepped off?  We were in exactly the same place.

It’s tough to figure out something new to write, when your subject matter just stays the same.  I feel like I’m a much, much sexier version of Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.  I’m sure I’ve written that about 134 times in the last 3 seasons of football.  It’s starting to feel like square one is actually just a prison fence keeping us in and there’s no Morgan Freeman around to help us carve our way out to freedom.

There’s a perpetual glitch in the Matrix that causes us to see the same damn thing over and over again.  The most frustrating thing is that it’s really, really hard for us to keep caring.  And even those of us who care a little too much, we’re starting to lose that iron-fisted, white-knuckled grip on our constantly positive outlook.  This was one of the stranger seasons in Husker football memory for me, and certainly the strangest since 2007 B.C. (*Author’s note: Botched by Callahan).

Husker fans seemed listless.  They seemed ground down and emotionally vulnerable.  Husker fans struggled to support our team, full-bore, and we wore it on our red and white sleeves.  Our glasses were half-empty this season and, right from the very UCLA-tanking start, we were too worn down to even try to signal a bartender to fill it back up.

Nebraska fans are knowledgeable.  We know that 10 wins is good, but that each chapter in the Pelini Novel that features 9-10 wins in bold print comes with 12 pages of footnotes and annotations talking about the 4-5 losses and multitude of missed opportunities.  We know that we’re in the North and the best football being played is in the south.  We know that, on a national stage, we’re no longer contending for Oscars but are actually just extras in many scenes.

Where does the fault lie?  There’re fingers pointing all around.  Many of them, the middle ones.  As we continue walking up the down escalator, there aren’t enough question marks in the world to express our confusion; our exasperation.  Do we need better players?  Coaches?  Schemes?

Whatever happened to the vaunted Pelini defense?  To his masterfully crafted defensive game plans?  And what, in the name of all things holy, happened to our Blackshirt defense?

(*Author’s note: I feel like now is as good a time as any to address our Federal Government to try to get some answers to the last question above.

Dear The Government,

Now that the fiscal cliff thing is over, now that the infighting and political logjam of negotiations has just gone back to its brutally stagnant waters of incremental movement, maybe we can have the Blackshirts back.  

I know what you did, the Government.  I know you’ve been performing mass mind-control experiments on our entire state, messing with us by switching out our entire defensive unit for a Division II school’s squad in a scientific study to better gauge the effect of mass hysteria during psychological warfare.  

Well, trust me, it’s worked.  We’re ready to give up.  I’m waving the white flag for all of us.  Now please, just move the F- on to North Korea and give us back our Blackshirt defense.

Sincerely,

Chris

P.S. I’m sure you already knew that since my computer, phone, and house are all undoubtedly bugged as part of your experiment.  Sorry for swearing so much, the Government.)

So, when breaking down another season of sameness, the question isn’t really “where did we come from”, anymore.  It’s “where are we going?”  Tom Osborne’s gone.  He’s riding towards a prairie sunset on his trusty white stallion and our little town needs a new sheriff.  Who’s it ‘gonna be?  Eichorst?  Pelini?  Somebody needs to step up, strap on, and jam their feet into the enormous shoes that Osborne’s left to fill.  If it’s a two-man, two-feet-per-shoe job, that’s fine, but we need leadership and guidance in the worst way.

Bo needs someone to challenge him.  He needs someone to keep him on his toes and constantly make him adjust his philosophy, scheme, and recruiting ideology.  We need better players and a we need a coach who is committed, willing, and even zealous in his approach to bring them to our great state.  We need a coach who enjoys every part of coaching.

Seasons of similitude are breeding grounds for discontent.  Eventually even the most devout treadmillers are going to want to run in a road race.  Dejectedness, turns to discontent, turns to disinterest.  Earlier this year I wrote that, for a major college football program, apathy is a fate worse than death.  Could we be in a worse situation?  Sure.  But do we deserve to be in a better situation than the one we’re in now?  Yes.

Bo Pelini is heading towards the gallows of predictability — on the field and off it — and he’s slowly, painstakingly, taking our fanhood with him.  I keep desperately hoping we’ll get a last-minute pardon, but at this point?  I feel like we’re dead men walking.

I’ll always bleed die-hard Husker Red, but it would be nice if I didn’t feel like such a hemophiliac.

Someone cue the Adele music.  I’ll be eating a quart of Ben and Jerry’s in my pajamas if you need me.

See you next season.  Same time.  Same place.  Different script.  I hope. . .

FIN