Nebraska Football And The “Killer Bees” on Defense

Nebraska has another practice in the books. Yay!

The good news is there are no injures to report from last week’s game!

The bad news... well, you know that already. No last week’s game. Still can’t get over what a letdown that is but time marches on.

The other news?

There are gold jerseys for the second-team defense.

Defensive coordinator Eric Chinander talked about how the yellow jerseys are a throwback to an earlier time.

Chinander was also asked about the appearance of yellow jerseys on the defensive players during the practice.

“When I talked to Coach [Charlie] McBride, he told me about the beginning of the Blackshirts and [how] the first team had the black shirts and the second team had the yellow shirts, eventually known as the ‘killer bees,’” Chinander explained. “We went back to that and I think some of these guys are already saying, ‘I want to get out of these things and I want to get into a Blackshirt.’ So, I think, hopefully, that’s another mental reward for getting out of those things and into the Blackshirts. Everybody is in them right now. After this first game, when we get the Blackshirts out there, then the Blackshirts will be in black and second-team guys will be in yellow.”

I have never heard of this.

I can understand how the second-team guys would rather be known as Blackshirts than “the killer bees”. The killer bees moniker is funny, sarcastic, and could be taken as a little bit demeaning.

The defense will be wearing the Goldshirts until Blackshirts are awarded, and that won’t be until after we play Colorado. Talk about ANTICIPATION.

But if you really want to get them playing harder and into Blackshirts, you call them what they really are as our own Patrick Gerhart came up with... “reverse Iowa Jerseys”.

And who wants to wear that?