Nebraska Baseball: Expectations for the 2012 Team

I love Netflix. I do. You want to know why I love Netflix? Because there's about a gajillion movies on there you've never heard of. You don't know what you're going to get. You can pick anything, start watching it, and if you don't like it, move on to something else without having spent more than the regular streaming subscription.

A few Friday nights ago I happened upon Troll Hunter. It's pretty much how it sounds - cheesy, campy, but it had nearly four stars, so what the heck. Add to that, it's Norwegian, complete with subtitles.

Compare that to the Oscar-winning The Departed. Here's a movie directed by Martin Scorsese with Jack Nicholson, Leonardo Dicaprio, Mark Wahlberg, Matt Damon, and a gob of other famous people; a movie made to win an Oscar. I'll spare you the reasons, but I hated it so much that I didn't bother watching the ending.

Am I saying Troll Hunter deserved an Oscar nomination? Heck, no, nothing of the sort. But it was a better movie watching experience than The Departed.

Why?

Expectations.

I started watching Troll Hunter expecting nothing. What I got was campy fun. The Departed, however, with its cast of great actors and a great director - I expected the greatest movie of all time. What I got was... well, I said I'd spare you that diatribe, didn't I?

The Big Ten will release the 2012 baseball preseason coaches' poll today along with a "players to watch" list. I am guessing that Nebraska will be at or near the top. I'm sure I wouldn't be climbing too far out on a limb saying that most Husker fans will expect us to win the Big Ten in our inaugural season.

Husker baseball fans are hungry for a trip to the NCAA tournament and if you've been paying attention, about the only way to get that is to win the conference.

Is that a good thing, having that high of an expectation for this team?

The Huskers have a new head coach, and I mean - shiny new, as in never-been-a-head-coach-ever. It's a new conference, and they have a group of players that's so badly underachieved the past few seasons it's been depressing. Who knows what's going to happen.

And it's not like high expectations have anything to do with the success of this year's team. As fans, we'd like to think so.... but, not really.

High expectations just set us up for a let down. Maybe it's best to sit back and relax. Come what may, good or bad, but just enjoy it for what it is.

Let's get our butts out to the ballpark. Buy some tickets and support the new head coach, he deserves it.

By the way, did you know that trolls can have more than one head? Apparently only one is real while the others are for show, to attract the ladies. Funny what you can learn when you open yourself up to new opportunities, huh?