Does Nebraska Know How to Spring an Upset?

1 comment so far October 9, 2008 by Brandon Vogel

Nobody really expected Nebraska to beat Missouri last Saturday. Nobody really expects them to even keep it close against Texas Tech this week.

These are opportunity games, a chance for Nebraska not to announce that they’re “back,� but a chance to at least say, “we’re here and we have to be reckoned with.� A true sign of a program on the rise is when big name, highly ranked teams know that they have to perform at a high level or risk losing.

At Nebraska that hasn’t been the case in a long time and if you’re looking for a reason as to why it feels like the Cornhuskers have been rebuilding for ages now, it’s probably this: They haven’t won a single game they weren’t supposed to win in over a decade.

Last month, our own Steve Hanway wrote about the semantic argument of a “signature win,� but I’m going to work from a much simpler definition here: When was the last time Nebraska beat someone they shouldn’t have?

Finding reliable data on historical point spreads is like the Holy Grail of the Internet, so these definitions will certainly be up for debate, in fact, "supposed to" is just about as subjective as it gets. Is beating a 23rd ranked Iowa State team in overtime at home an upset when you're unranked? Not in my book. What about a bowl win against a four-loss Michigan team? Again, that one is out in my mind. No, by my count Nebraska hasn’t beaten anyone as a realistic underdog since Osborne left.

In 1997 Osborne took his 7th ranked Cornhuskers to Seattle to face the 2nd ranked Washington Huskies. Even claiming this is as a win when they shouldn’t have takes some stretching. There was a realistic expectation for Nebraska to win this game. The Huskers had only lost 2 out of their past 30 and, despite their lofty ranking, Washington was the team needing to justify their inclusion as one of the top teams in the country. Still, on the road against the #2 team in the country coming off an unimpressive win against UCF? That could reasonably be considered an underdog.

And since then? Arguably nothing. By my estimation, here are the games from the past 10 full seasons where Nebraska faced a serious uphill climb:

Nebraska has won tough games in adverse conditions. Two wins in College Station come to mind: 1) the 2002 rally from 17-down to beat the Aggies, and 2) the 2006 Taylor-to-Purify game that secured the Big 12 North but neither win would've been considered shocking coming into the game (NU was -1 in 06). Coming back to beat #20 Michigan in the 2005 Alamo Bowl was gutty but with both teams entering the game at 7-4 hardly the stuff of legend. The 2001 win over OU was a great win but that was a clash of the titans (for the new millennium) not David versus Goliath.

Maybe Nebraska's current struggles with these knife in a gun fight games shouldn't be surprising. For much of the Osborne era, the Cornhuskers hardly ever found themselves on the short end of the stick coming into a game, in terms of talent or public perception. In fact, the prevailing sentiment before Osborne's title run of the mid-90's was precisely that: Nebraska beat up on the people they were expected to beat up on and then folded against the premiere teams outside their conference. Simply put, winning games like the one against Missouri this year or USC last year is something that, based on track record, Nebraska might not yet know how to do.

It's a fair question to ask: Does Nebraska know how to upset people?

It's not something they were asked to do a whole lot of during the Osborne era and it's not something they have done since he left. But if the Huskers and Bo Pelini are to turn the fortunes of this program around, they'll have to learn quick. Not beating favorites is no way to become a favorite.

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