While it hasn’t been an easy week for Huskers fans, my wife and I managed to cheer ourselves up by demonstrating our faith in the Big Red by getting our curb-side house number repainted. The paint had faded over the past few years, perhaps symbolic of the fortunes of the team during that period, but now our street number serves as a gleaming outpost of Husker Pride in a sea of Texas, TCU and Aggie flotsam and jetsam. Even our next door neighbors display the A&M flag near their front door – I keep waiting for them to trade in their white SUV for a maroon model.
In further good news from our household, Lily the mini husker hound did not destroy her “home team“ red Nebraska scarf after watching last week’s game with its tragic loss in the last minute of play. (Of course it may have helped that my wife removed said scarf from around Lily’s neck before bedtime lest she be wracked with late night nightmares of long Wisconsin passes down the field and take out her frustrations on her scarf as she did after the Illinois game).
Speaking of frustration, however, this poor chap from Scottsbluff got lost while driving to last week’s Beatrice High game and found himself in Fort Worth. He was most distraught and kept repeating over and over “I knew I shouldn’t have made that right turn at York”. I gave him directions back to Nebraska and I hope he makes in time for tonight’s game when the Orangemen try for their 7th win of the season.
But we and all Big Red fans are hoping for a rebound this week against Minnesota. Lily will spend the weekend in a boarding kennel where the other dogs will probably fight it out over which Texas team they get to watch play, but my wife and I will be joining the Oklahoma Cornhusker Club to watch the game at the Thunder Alley Pub in Oklahoma City.
I don’t know whether there will be any political activity outside the bar like there was last week outside the stadium in Lincoln. At first glance before the game when I saw these spirited young citizens I thought they were simply trying to raise public awareness of their favorite Presidential candidate, but after the game I realized that they had a much more important goal in mind in relation to the country’s most powerful office.
Many football fans will recall that a couple of years ago President Obama expressed his belief that a playoff system should be implemented to decide the national college football championship, and then suddenly voilà! A playoff system was duly implemented. It is abundantly clear that these inspired young men and women have reached a deal with a certain candidate (why else would anyone be seen holding a sign outside a football game instead of a beer and a hot dog) that his first order of business if elected President will be to enact an Executive Order, applied retroactively from September 5th 2015, that the official length of the 4th quarter of all football games played by Nebraska is exactly 14 minutes. Once that law goes into effect, voilà! The Huskers’ record after the first 6 weeks of the season improves from 2-4 to 4-2 and life looks much more rosy in Huskerland.
Now that you’ve been enlightened on the full story (you’re welcome), don’t be surprised when you see the players wearing an extra sticker on their helmets for the rest of the season. And don’t forget to play your part in November next year. Democracy is such a beautiful thing – especially for Nebraskans!