Feel like I owe y’all an update.

As usual this time of year I am plugging away on our Huskerland Prep Report preseason football magazine, all part of our 34th year of covering Nebraska high school football. I teetered on how to approach this year’s magazine, for a number of reasons, but in the end elected to hold true to the format we have in place, the combination of team previews, player feature stories, rankings, schedules and, of course, the world-famous Huskerland Top 225. (famous in my world, anyway)

It is sort of a weird feeling but I am also caught up. By that I mean to tell you that as of this minute (and Columbus High just came across the wire) I have possession of 106 team preview forms, and I am caught up. They are all done, except for the Columbus High preview, which just came across the wire.

That’s the good news. Real good news. The not-as-good news is that leaves 163 team previews unaccounted for. You are correct, that is a huge number. And with that I tell you most of that 163 will find its way to my office, eventually, though a growing number of them either won’t, or will be greatly delayed. Some of that has to do with us having 28 new head coaches for 2023 (a number that is sure to grow), and those transitions always throw the process off schedule, though again, we usually connect.

That will play itself out one way or another. In the meantime I have begun my annual campus tour, a really fun part of this hobby of mine. Our first trip included stops at Wisner, Wayne, Wakefield, Pender, Bancroft, Lyons and, nearly, Oakland. The second took me to Columbus Lakeview, Columbus High, David City High (followed by a in-person meet-and-greet at Aquinas Catholic with newly minted hall of famer Coach Ron Mimick, congrats again Coach), Brainard and Wahoo High. On both trips I had hoped to make additional stops but that darned education keeps getting in the way.

(Down boy, I am kidding about the education part. Of course we respect those schedules...)

You know for years I traveled our great state during the preseason, making stops to and fro, interviewing players for our magazine, chatting it up with Coach, and calling it good. Looking back, that was a dumb, a real waste of opportunities. In recent years I have made those same travels but once there taken time, with the help of Coach, to round up several players at each stop, shooting our photos and recording our world famous (again, my world) videos. Those are especially a blast as each group as its own personality and as a result we get a variety of, um, results from our efforts.

All I know is this, the kids get through it, sometimes gleefully, and when it is done we have quite a little keepsake, some remarkable video history. And some fun, most times a lot of fun.

Today I will be making another trip, beginning in Bruning (gonna stop at the bank, to again be disappointed Jerry Catlett ain’t there) and traveling from there to Geneva, York, Waco, Utica and Seward. Will knock out a couple of preview magazine feature interviews in the process, and will do it all with my eye on the sky, just like the band The Alan Parsons Project used to do. (ahem)

Right now we are track to have 22 player features in our preview magazine, which would bring Huskerland’s all-time total to 3,122. Those are just the ones which will make it into print, which I value very highly as part of Huskerland’s historical record, though I am leaving the door open to doing some additional features with players, coaches and others via Zoom. I like doing those interviews, hope you enjoy them, too.

As usual the magazine is projected to close around the second Friday in July, though after last year’s ridiculous delay caused by a “paper shortage” we might move that up, depends on how fast I can put this whole thing together. I have some pretty strong feelings about our ongoing “supply chain issues” in our country, but since they don’t necessarily have to do with who is going to beat Boone in C-1 this year we will leave that for another time.

(BTW, nobody’s beating Boone in C-1 this year. At least probably. I always leave the door open for probably, Coach Hudson.)

* In the midst of all this I have been battling a pretty severe case of bursitis in my left shoulder. I guess the good news (sorta good news) is that it has affected my left shoulder, since I am right handed. (But left footed, which I always found strange.) It pretty much crippled (pun intended) my typing for a while (typing is terrible on your bursitis riddled shoulder) but I am mostly back on track. Gotta get better so I can get in some golf.

And another thing. Luckily this is only my second bout with physical therapy but I have learned one thing for sure in this process. It's like somebody once told me, they really are out to get me. And another thing, the guy who spouted all that "no pain, no gain" stuff never planned to be in this kind of pain, right? Either way, I'm getting better and thankful for the help of my therapists. (what am I gonna say when they still get at least five more shots at me!)

* So there you have it, a sort of in-house where we stand. As I keep pecking away (thanks to the late, great Don Hansen, for all that hard work teaching me up in Arnold High typing class) I would remind you we’d love to have you order our preview magazine. Best way for now is to either message me on Twitter - come on now, @HuskerlandBob - or you can email me at jensenpub@hamilton.net for details.

Thanks again for reading and like the late, great Casey Kasem used to say, now on with the countdown...