Morning Coffee - I Got Nothing

by Jon Johnston on Dec 12, 2007 8:23 AM CST in Corn Flakes

The football team doesn't make a bowl. The volleyball team doesn't make the Final Four.
The new coaching staff is not yet complete. Big 12 basketball season hasn't started yet - to this point the men's basketball team has played the 313th toughest schedule in the nation. At the time of this writing, they were blowing up Savannah State at home, winning 82-37.

Needless to say, there isn't much going on.

You know that more of these stories will come out - what went wrong with the 2007 season, what happened to Bill Callahan and so on.

A word of advice for you guys who'll be talking to newspapers. Try to remember that everything these days gets read everywhere on the planet due to the internets, not just in your hometown. This way you may not sound like so much a fool. Yes, Maurice Purify, I mean you.

"He’s a good coach, and he knows his stuff," Purify said about Callahan, who coached the Oakland Raiders to a Super Bowl in 2002 before being fired in 2003 and signing with Nebraska in 2004. "It’s not really fair. It wasn’t the coach’s fault we were losing. We weren’t doing anything different last year when we went 9-4. It was just the little things — players not making plays when we needed them."

Like tackling. That's be a play that wasn't made much this past season. Maybe not giving up massive amount of points every week. I get it, you're not on the defense. You had nothing to do with the defense, but you really don't think you can say "it was just the little things" when you aren't competitive in multiple games and leave it at that, do you? How 'bout something like "It's too technical for you." That'd work better.

"It’s crazy out there," Purify said. "They expect a lot. Every game there are 90,000 people there to watch you play, and thousands of fans line up after the games to get your autograph. But the only thing they care about is winning. That’s it."

I don't deny Nebraskans expect a lot from our football team but who doesn't? Ultimately coaches and players get measured by wins and losses. Maybe that's a surprise to him. Maybe he got too many participation trophies as a kid. I wish you all the luck in the NFL draft, Maurice. Maybe if life works out for you, you can get drafted some place like Detroit or Arizona, where they don't care about winning and no one shows up at the games because that sounds like it's what you want.

I thought about running a bowl pick 'em game here at Corn Nation. What do you guys think?

There's a gob of them going around other sites I frequent:

Rock M Nation - SB Nation's Missouri blog is tracking their own Pick 'Em game in their diary sections. They're asking you to pick the team and the spread and the over/under. Wow. Instead of just sucking at being wrong, I can be wrong three times as much.

Black Shoe Diaries - Is using ESPN's Pick 'Em system.

Burnt Orange Nation - They're also using ESPN's system.

Given that I finished second to last in In The Bleacher's "Operation Pick 'Em" maybe I should just stay away from these things.

I'm unsure of how much basketball I'm going to cover. Big Red Analysis does a decent job with Husker men's hoops. Both Nebraska's teams face challenges this weekend as the men take on Oregon and the women take on Cal State Bakerfield Thursday and Long Beach State.

Big Sports 590 is holding an online auction for the benefit of the Omaha Westroads Mall victims. There is a load of stuff in there, everything from Van Halen or Celine Dion tickets to autographed Husker prints. Even "Runza for a Year".

I'm thinking that I start focusing on college baseball already. Comments?