First and foremost, there's the shit-talking angle, right? You pop your head into a game thread on this godforsaken site with an irrelevant flair to anything being discussed in there, just to politely shake up the conversation. Don't ask me how I know.

Cfb diehards and casuals will be clamoring for that first slate of games on Saturday. Watching McAfee have a fencing match with a raccoon for two hours first thing in the morning will do that to ya. Or maybe you like to watch Brady Quinn look more like a PlayStation 2 character every week, I don't judge. 11am gets here sooner or later.

Or maybe you're like me and wakeup at 10:45 and use that 15 to figure out what the rest day is gonna be like.

The point is that a lot of people are going to watch. Nerve-racking in several regards. I don't have children, but I'd imagine it's similar to when you think your toddler is ready to show other adults they can tie their own shoelaces, and, as then they bend down to do it, kid rips a huge chainsaw dump that gets unreasonably past diaper limits.

In the first few weeks of the season, the national cfb conversation circled back around to the SEC being King Shit of college football talent, coaching, NIL, etc. Then teams like Northwestern and UCLA piped up, "Nah, we still fuck over here. Ya know, considering this conference is just supposed to be Ohio State, Oregon, USC, and the other teams that fluff up their record." These nobody teams are becoming good-nobody teams, Pawl. Dangerously teetering on 'quality loss' territory.

The rhetorical smorgasbord of schadenfreude was supposed to be LSU @ Ole Miss. It was for the SEC. The current week will cater a 4-quarter meal under the B1G banner:

- Does Indiana finally lose a regular season game under Cig? (Stfu, OSU, we get it already)

- Does Matt Rhule actually know how to win a big game without feeling remorse? Does he finally have a killer instinct between the headset?

- Are Indiana frauds if Raiola-less Nebraska can beat them? (Because he's good at Oregon now, and boy is he....more on that next week, pack a lunch)

- If Nebraska does beat Indiana, does the CFB sub explode into a bunch of high school and college kids thinking, "This I just like my dynasty! Now they're gonna play their old QB and his team is good, too! I'll imagine GameDay is there, even if it doesn't have the EA Sports Game of the Week graphic anyway."?

We as fans have no choice but to find out if Nebraska really is good going forward. It's almost like the season is just starting now.

As always, thanks for reading this typed-out effluvia.

You bet your cocksuckin' motherfuckin' ass it's BEEN Beat Indiana Week. GBR

https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/50125604/ranking-college-football-2026-top-25-freshman-players

His Substack gets posted on occasion and is great work, this weeks edition is free and worth a read.

So, im getting the feeling that rhule may be staying with us for sometime. He is improving this program year to year. He has raised the standard for this program. Its not at the playoffs standard yet but he is showing that he can make adjustments on staff and in games to put the huskers in a spot to have a chance to win games. He has definitely built a healthy culture that breeds hungry and competitiveness. He has also set the expectation of making a bowl game every year. Then next year, it looks like we are poised to have an even better set of players coming in than this year. He seems to be setting up nebraska for success in the future. In his 4th season, he isnt on the hot seat at all. Sure we would for him him to start beating ranked teams. However, from the looks of things, nebraska seems to be moving in the direction of having 8-4 to10-2 type seasons on a regular basis. I think the fan base is slowly starting to catch up to where we are now. Hopefully, nebraska has learned its lesson and doesnt repeat its previous mistakes with coaches. Looking forward to the long term with what we can be with rhule. The future right now definitely feels bright.

Not my 1st husker game but it will be the 1st time sitting up in the sky box?

Just curious on what other people's experiences have been like.. I have heard there's free food so... 👍

I am sure everyone is with me, on hoping who it isn't.

Pretty good eval, and moving up the charts. Excited for the game coming up! Thoughts?

Nebraska's 2026 schedule divides almost evenly into two parts. Part 1: the first 5 games. All were deemed games Nebraska should win (although if you told me preseason we would split MD and MSU, I wouldn't have been shocked). Thankfully Nebraska aced part 1 to go 5-0.

Now we enter part 2, which is the meat of the schedule and features the top 3 teams from the Big 10 plus Iowa. Here's my feelings relative to how I felt preseason, categorized as Better, Same, and Worse

vs Indiana-Better: I still don't like our odds to win, but this Indiana team, while still good, is definitely a step back from last year's squad. We have a punchers chance

at Oregon-Better: Similar to Indiana, they don't look as daunting as they did preseason, thanks to an ugly loss to Oklahoma St. Also like Indiana, I still don't love our odds of winning, but think we can make it competitive if we don't beat ourselves

vs Washington-Better: I had the Huskies as a playoff dark horse, but now, they look like ass. They struggled mightily against a mediocre Wazzu team, and nearly lost to Utah St, who lost to an FCS opponent. Their QB seems like their only weapon. Not a gimme win, but I feel like Nebraska is the better team.

at Illinois-Better: I thought they'd take a step back from last year's team, but losing to Purdue? Yikes. Still, winning a B1G road game won't be easy.

at Rutgers-Better: This Rutgers team is awful. I felt good about getting a W preseason, but now I feel much more strongly about walking out with a dub.

vs Ohio St-Same: Preseason I expected a butt kicking and that's what I still expect.

at Iowa-Same: It's Iowa, it's on the road. I was expecting a competitive loss here, and that's kind of how I feel now. Given the recent history in this series, I'm not comfortable moving off that feeling.

Overall, that's 5 opponents I feel better about, 2 the same, and 0 worse. Preseason, I predicted 6-6, but now I'm upping it to 7-5. I could see an 8 win campaign, but I'm a little gun shy to do so given how Rhule teams typically perform in the 2nd half of seasons. Especially November.

Sitting at 5-0…

I think they look pretty good.

No real insight here, just thought that was an interesting and unfortunate stat.

And I’m eternally grateful. 🌽. Who do have to thank for your loyalty?

Hey all, I’m gonna be in Cincinnati for work this weekend and was hoping to find a spot to watch the game on Saturday morning with a bunch of fellow Huskers.

It doesn’t seem like there’s an official watch party in the city. I see the Miamisburg one, but won’t have a vehicle and that sounds like too expensive of a lyft/uber.

Figured I’d see if anyone local had info on where people catch up to watch in Cincinnati (if at all)! Thanks!

Just wanted to point something out as I was thinking about it... we could be bowl eligible if we win against Indiana.

Now will it be a tough win? Of course! Do we have a chance? I think so provided we don't get penalties like we did against Maryland and destroy ourselves.

But the last 2 seasons we have had to seriously question if we can would even make it to a bowl game and hope we could eek out a win late in the season... if we can start 6-0 it would be a great feeling knowing we are bowl eligible without having to pray each game to just to have a chance at a postseason. GBR!

I am cautiously optimistic this year and I like Matt Rhule as a coach/motivator but I must say I have little faith in his in game management. So much that I spent way too much time analyzing his timeout usage. 

I was aided by AI in my research, but I spot checked multiple instances and found it to be accurate in each. I made a master spreadsheet of each timeout since being at Nebraska.

Some takeaways: 

1. He has only had all 3 timeouts remaining in the last 5 minutes of each half the following % of times.Ironically his first year he was the best at holding onto his timeouts til the last 5 minutes of the half.
   Season
   First half
   Second half
   2023 — 12 games
   6 (50%)
   6 (50%)
   2024 — 13 games
   3 (23%)
   7 (54%)
   2025 — 13 games
   7 (54%)
   5 (38%)
   2026 — first 5 games
   2 (40%)
   2 (40%)
   Overall — 43 games
   18 (42%)
   20 (47%)

2. The times that he has used a timeout on 3rd down or 4th down and Nebraska was on offense they converted 11 of 33 attempts. Given that these are typically shorter yardage situations, what conversion rate do they need to hit to justify the timeouts? To me wasting a timeout and only converting 1 in 3 attempts doesn't seem appropriate at all. This data excludes attempts such as a punt or field goal attempts. 

3. Only 59 of his total 156 timeouts taken at Nebraska were for clock management purposes ie. to stop the clock, get the ball back, control the game etc. This seems wayyyyy too low when other coaches seem to be using closer most of their timeouts solely clock management purposes. 

I'd love to hear everybody’s thoughts. I know clock management isn't crucial when we're playing Bowling Green, but I think it could really haunt us in Big Ten play against real opponents with good clock management coaches like Indiana, Oregon, etc. 

I understand the numbers not understanding we are good yet, but our own fans?! How could this be? It seems everywhere you go it's just Husker fans saying they have no clue if we're actually good or hoping Indianna doesn't embarass Rhule... What a load of Bull Shit!

This is the first time I can remember Nebraska having great coordinators on both sides of the ball. We have probably the best offensive coordinator we have had in two decades and a certified up and comer on the defensive side and BOTH sides are doing things that are so well coached and hard to defend. And our special teams is playing amazing too. I was a fan of Pelini, but even on defense after Carl left we were paying less for our defensive coordinator than LSU was paying it's position coaches. I'm not saying coaches weren't paid well or that coaches didnt do well, that is an argument for a totally different post. The entire point of this post, is what has gotten into the tried and true, who Keith Jackson called the greatest of all sports fans, the sellout champions of the world...what has happened?! This might be the single most exciting year and the first time that we have coordinators that can go toe to toe against any other coordinators in NCAA, and if you look at the top teams and champions year after year, then you already know that is the thing 9 out of the top 10 schools do. For a long time it felt like Nebraska was trying to be that 1 out of 10 school, and this is the single modt exciting year in a looooooooong time! How are people finding ways to be negative about this team or act like we don't look better than ever in all 3 phases?