What a great weekend, with a lot of football and no football all at the same time.
By now if you are following along you know I took Week 1 Football Friday off to spend time with family and friends, celebrating Huskerland Penni’s 29th birthday again. And Saturday morning we had my Aunt Senga’s 90th birthday party, making it back-to-back weekends where we helped celebrate 90th birthdays. Last week it was for Jo Keyser, mother of hall of fame Cambridge High head coach Dan Keyser among others, with Jo being one of my late mother’s core from high school.
If nothing else our family and friends is made of hearty stock, no?
The best part of why Aunt Senga’s birthday party started in the morning was pretty simple, and probably obvious to y’all by now. She and my late Uncle Andy Jensen, who was a brother to my late father Bud Jensen, were lifetime Husker season ticket holders, never missing a bowl game, the whole works. And by golly, we were wrapping things up on Saturday in time for her to catch the Huskers pregame...I am smiling real big while writing that last part...
It was great to see a couple of cousins I hadn’t seen in some time, Senga looked great, and it turns out you soak your bratwurst in beer and onion water before putting them on the grill. A tip of the cap for my cousin, Monte Jensen, for that intel.
About the game. Like you I felt like I’d had an anvil taken off my shoulders. That not only looked like a team that was giving great effort - that’s almost never been a problem during this Dark Ages of Huskers Football - but a complete team. And a competent team. Good enough to win the Big Ten? Never rule anything out after one game, but then again one game is enough for me to see this year’s team is good enough to win eight games, maybe more.
And most important, beat Colorado.
I have checked myself and now I believe it’s true. Entering Saturday’s game I was still in the all-I-need-is-a-Colorado-win camp. For real. The whole Iowa thing hasn’t caught my attention, or imagination, at all but Colorado...so many bad memories related to games against Colorado, and most of them didn’t have to do with football. (you know what I mean) Same here, I want our boys to win on Saturday night to set the record straight, get some street justice. Do that and you really might be looking 7-0 going into Ohio State straight in the eye.
Before we move to far away from Big Red’s easier than the score indicates 40-7 win over UTEP I want to examine football life outside of football, or at least Huskers football outside of football.
The other night I was having a conversation with a person of note who actually isn’t all that big a football fan in general, a casual at most Huskers fan, and I was asked why I was so worked up about Colorado, so bitter about all the losses to Colorado over the years, especially in games where we could have/should have won. It’s just a football game they said.
What do you say to that?
It has been in the past seven, maybe 10 years that I have stopped watching college football outside of Husker games. Why? I can’t stand watching other programs that we used to dominate, really dominate, doing the things are program no longer did. It wasn’t for a lack of resources - long before NIL the program had everything you could want, except wins - and it wasn’t for a lack of facilities. Just look around at Memorial Stadium, as I always say it looks like a winner lives hear. And it used to.
All of my football spirit is tied into the Huskers, all I want is for them to win, just be a winner, domination can wait just a little bit. You were the same way Saturday night and into the rest of the weekend, a little more pep in your step, a smile on your face and a song in your heart, ‘cause the Huskers won. It has been a pretty great couple of days, not gonna lie, and that doesn’t even count all the great family partying I did over the weekend.
No, Husker Football is more than just a game to me and most of you. (All of you? That would be a bet I’d take.) Some of it has to do with all the tradition, some of it has to do with all the splendor tied into Game Day, some of it has to do with so many of our native Nebraska boys helping make the good times.
Some of it has to do with Tom Sorley, one of my all-time favorite quarterbacks to wear the Scarlet and Cream. Some of it has to do with figuring out in 1965 that Bob Churchich was the team’s quarterback and middle guard Wayne Meylan and DB Larry Wachholtz were my favorite Huskers. (Larry was even from North Platte, just like me!) Some of it had to do with Terry Connealy sacking Frank Costa one last time in the Orange Bowl. And a Runza never tastes better than when you eat on at Memorial Stadium, am I right?
And then the band plays the school song and the blood gushes, touching my soul in a way little does even after all these years.
Important stuff, lifetime important stuff.
Only a football game? Hardly. And that will never be more so than on Saturday night when I suspect the Old Grey Lady will be rocking as we, our Huskers, try to exorcise more football demons. #GBR.
