Assumptions About Nebraska to Color Every Off-Season Conversation: Momentum Means Something

4 comments so far March 3, 2009 by Brandon Vogel

The notion of momentum as it pertains to Nebraska football is a relatively new concept. For more than three decades, spanning all of the 70s, 80s and 90s, Nebraska was a rock in the college football landscape, an inert piece of any preseason poll. Between 1970 and 2002 you saw Nebraska in every AP preseason poll.

Coming off the Gator Bowl win and Pelini's 9-4 season in 2008 the Huskers look poised to start the season ranked in the AP Top 25 poll for the first time since 2007 and the sixth time this decade. Over the past two weeks I've tried to look at a couple of the assumptions inherent in such a ranking and today we tackle perhaps the biggest assumption of all: Momentum means something.

So does it?

Assumption #3: Momentum means something from year to year.

The easy and immediate answer to the above question is "of course it does." Uncle Mo's fingerprints are all over sports. You see it nightly on the hardwood when a team with a 14-point lead gives up a couple of easy baskets then starts turning the ball over which leads to traveling calls and fouls that seemed unthinkable three minutes earlier which lead to a few more three pointers for the opposition which, of course, all go in. Just like that the team is now down five points and two or three timeouts and the home stadium is electric.

You see it in baseball when a fan reaches over the left field foul line in the 8th inning and prevents an almost certain out which leads to a walk by your heretofore wunderkid pitcher followed by an error from your shortstop and seven runs later you're faced with having to rob Uncle Mo blind, while he sits in the opponent's dugout for game seven, just to go to the World Series. (Yeah, I'm a Cubs fan. Not bitter at all.)

Those are the easy examples but when we're talking about Nebraska football we're talking about program momentum and, while momentum itself is hardly a concrete idea, that is a bit more difficult to quantify. It's not a measurable per se, more a feeling, but it's a feeling almost anyone in the country, fan or foe, would attribute to Nebraska football at this point. More than anything else, in my mind, that's why you'll see the Cornhuskers in the Top 25 to start the year but you'd be forgiven as a Nebraska fan if that wind at your back felt a little unfamiliar.

To help illustrate, below is a chart detailing Nebraska's frequency in the Preseason AP Top 25 poll since 1970:

For the last 30 years of the 20th century Nebraska was essentially momentum immune. Over that span the Huskers were never ranked lower than 15th in the country (1977) to start the season. Nebraska was expected to be good and was.

Perhaps contrary to what we remember of the 90s, the 80s were actually the best years for the Cornhuskers from a preseason rankings perspective, starting all 10 years in the Top 10 and six in the Top 5. In fact, you could say that in the early 90s those lofty preseason expectations coupled with Tom Osborne's seven game bowl losing streak ('87-'93) had resulted in negative momentum for the football program. At that time the Huskers were too good to rank much lower than 14 or so but they had yet to prove anything outside of conference dominance. Until the national titles, Nebraska wasn't a team that was ever really viewed as getting better, just a team that was sure to be very good again. How good? That was the variable.

Things now are quite different. Nebraska's upside is quite a bit higher because the baseline expectations for the program are much lower and, because it feels like this rebuilding project has been going on forever, it still seems like a foreign feeling. As usual, we can blame Bill Callahan for this.

In my estimation, you have to go all the way back to 2006 to find the last time Nebraska had equivalent momentum as the 2009 team has heading into the season. That year's team was fresh off an 8-4 season and a thrilling Alamo Bowl win against Michigan and found themselves ranked in the preseason AP Poll (#20) for the first time since 2002. It's almost the perfect analog for 2009 on paper but as I recall it differed in feeling.

Callahan's hiring and subsequent tenure had been so tumultuous that, while all Nebraska fans certainly hoped for favorable results, it didn't seem like anyone truly felt it. While we all wished for the best for the team it always felt begrudging due to the dull, NFL-like approach to access and emotion prevalent in the program at the time. Lest I be branded a Callahater, just try to remember how you felt about Nebraska in March 2006 to how you feel about Nebraska in March 2009 and you'll see the difference. Do you hope Nebraska will be better in 2009 or "believe" it?

Personally, I'm much closer to the latter than the former and to recapture that feeling I think you have to go all the way back to 1963. In 1962 Bob Devaney took over a Nebraska team that had gone 3-6-1 in the previous season under Bill Jennings and guided the team to a 9-2 season culminating with a Gotham Bowl win over Miami. The next year Nebraska didn't start the season ranked in the AP preseason poll--only ranking 10 teams at the time--but they ended there after beating Auburn in the Orange Bowl to finish at #5 in the nation. I wasn't alive for this period of Nebraska football but the fact that the sellout streak started during that 1962 season tells me all that I need to know about the collective spirit of the Husker nation: Near universal acceptance.

That seems to be what we're looking at with Pelini in year two. His return to no nonsense, hard-nosed football has struck the chord of recognition in Nebraska football fans lying dormant during the Callahan era. The country seems to agree that Nebraska is starting to build towards something--you can vote now on PhilSteele.com as to whether or not Nebraska is the 12th best team heading into 2009--and that's something that's arguably been more than 45 years in the coming.

So what does momentum ultimately mean for future on field production? The track record is good. If you begrudgingly assign "momentum" to that 2006 squad as I do, you can look at their Big 12 North title and (mostly) good showing in the Big 12 Championship game and Cotton Bowl as encouraging signs. That seems like a pretty good description of the expectations facing Pelini heading into year two.

If you're more ambitious, you can look at Devaney's Top 5 finish and Orange Bowl victory in '63 as the high end of the spectrum. Either way, as far as momentum is concerned, we may be entering 2009 with a pretty good base rooted in fate, luck, and/or historical precedent. I'd call it the excitement of early Devaney with the expectations of early Callahan.

Nebraska has it's fair share of questions heading into 2009 but, even though we can't truly define him, Uncle Mo appears to be paying a rare visit to Lincoln right now and while it's always better not to need him (see: Nebraska football 1970-2001, Oklahoma 2000-current) nobody really has a bad time when he's around.

Does momentum mean something? As tricky as it is to pin down, I say "Yes...yes it does."

Did you enjoy this article?

Get Husker news by email
Follow us on Twitter

NextPrevious