The 24 Hour Rule: Fire Up for Your Huskers Pre-Game With Henry the V and Tom Cruise

This won’t be overly long because if you’re not ready to go today, then the last few years have already checked you out and I’m sorry. This will turn around and we fully expect you to leap back on the bandwagon as it steams by.

As for the rest of you, I’ve sensed it. This game MEANS something. Allow me to blatantly steal from what I printed in Mike’s weekly picks column:

• Several weeks back, many in Husker Nation were already writing this off as another 4-8 season or worse, it’ll never work, woe is us. Now, 6-6, especially given the injury bug, looks like a nice move forward
• Doesn’t it just FEEL important to go bowling? Who cares if it’s in the Pinstripe?
• I just keep picturing Al Pacino telling the boys they can fight their way out of hell back into the light. 6-6 isn’t a bright light but it’s not 4-8 or 3-9 which appeared to be on the table for a bit.
  Matt Farniok - “I’m tired of us being the reason we’re losing” - and Garrett Nelson crying after receiving his Blackshirt tell me our fire isn’t out.
• This group is healthy and coming together and NOT untalented. Beat Iowa, get that much needed extra few weeks of practice and there’s a chance we make a statement against some other undermanned 6-6 or 7-5 team. Then everyone picks us to win the division, says Martinez is a Heisman finalist and....shit. Forget this one.
• It’s Iowa Hate Week, I’ve trolled it like crazy and I’m actually a good guy. The universe should grant us a turnover based on that.
• At Tiger Tom’s we have a thing. After every Husker score, Hail Varsity plays. Then Cinnamon Girl plays. And the place goes nuts. Claps, pounds the bar, sings along. Me too. Loudly. I’m an OK singer and the last few years I should have done more of it. I can’t go back in time, but I can unleash now. There’s no logical reason why we do it. We just do. You know my baby loves to dance. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
• It’s just time. With everyone, including many people in their corner, bagging and crying doom, these kids have been quietly cleaning up the mistakes, fighting through adversity and becoming competitive again. They are still learning how to win.

Friday, they learn. Why? Because like Coach Taylor once said? “I need something good to happen.” It’s that simple. We need this. It feels like it’s coming together. And for gawd’s sake, doesn’t it just charge you up more to approach this with a “Let’s do this!” attitude instead of waving the white flag at kickoff??

There’s no white flag today. We’re going to do this. Because we need to get back to a bowl game. Because we need the extra practice that comes with that. Because screw Iowa now and forever. And because getting up off the deck to finish .500 after all seemed lost this season just feels like this scene from The Last Samurai:

I know, it’s not perfect, he basically ends up beat to shit and twitching at the end but you see what I mean.

So for everyone who’s hung in there - through Cally, through Pedey, through Riley, Diaco and Eichorst - through the ass kickings and bad bounces - through back-to-back 4-8’s - this vid’s for you. You probably won’t understand all but if you’ve got a charge left in your blood pumper, this will make it flow a littler harder.

For those of you who don’t understand the King’s English so well, allow me to roughly translate:

We’re outnumbered, outgunned and outmanned - now suck it up, Nancy’s, because we’re about to walk out on the field and kick the ever-loving shit out of Iowa and those poor bastards back home are the unlucky ones because they’re going to write songs and movies about us and as George S. Patton said (yes, that speech was direct borrow from Henry V), you’ll be thanking your lucky stars that when you’re bouncing your grandson on your knee and he asks you what you did during 2019 Iowa-Nebraska, you won’t have to answer, “I was shoveling shit in Louisiana. Or Wahoo.”

So let it all out, today, my merry band of brothers.

Go. Big. Red.

Photo by Michael Hickey/Getty Images