The Weekly Mailbag asks “Who should be Nebraska’s next coach?”

Just in time so you know what to expect for this weekend’s games...

What coach should we root for to get the Nebraska job to ensure that the “LOL NEBRASKA” memes keep on coming? - Glaze72

misdreavus79: Well none of the names that have been rumored so far, that’s for sure…

Buffkomodo: Brian Kelly comes to mind for some reason.

WSR: So we have a few different approaches we could take here. Let’s go with somebody that knows the B1G, has experience coaching on the left side of the country, and has roots in the Midwest. Jerry Kill is going to love Lincoln, and they’re going to love Jerry Kill.

MNW: Feels like the answer to this question is more “which coach shouldn’t we root for?” because, to be honest, that program is so irredeemably fissured between expectations, reality, boosters, fans, administration, etc., that it’s going to take a talented coach and/or program-builder to actually put it back together. So I’m rooting against Jamey Chadwell. And maybe Lance Leipold. Jury’s out on Matt Campbell now that he’s beaten Iowa.

RU in VA: It’s Herm Edwards and it isn’t REALLY close. The administration will play up the fact that he’s a minority and they’re smashing some glass ceiling that’s already been broken, he’ll come in with some shitty military-adjacent practice and recruiting schtick, and he’ll go 15-32 in 4 seasons to fire him. He’ll get Rob Ryan to be his defensive coordinator, they’ll hire the PR firm behind the annual “TEXAS IS BACK” campaign, and the song will stay the same.

RockyMtnBlue: Well as long as we’re wishing, we should aim higher than “jNebby loses a lot and hilariously.” We also want to make sure he leaves the program in shambles and devoid of talent. That leaves out guys like Brady Hoke. I was going to suggest a $100M contract to get Darrell Hazel out of retirement, but I just saw RU in VA’s answer and damned if he isn’t right. There’s no better choice than Herm.

Kind of…: Matt Rhule probably won’t be employed much longer, and it would be hilarious to see a guy who won a conference title at freaking Temple fail to turn around the Husker program.

MNW: Y’know what? I change my answer. It’s Herm.

Jesse: Hate you guys.

In my mind, The Masked Singer is the most brainless, dystopian-esque tv show (think Idiocracy). What tv show of the last five years makes you worried for our future? - Atinat

misdreavus79: Most reality TV makes me cringe, but the problem with “reality” TV is that, even if we all know it’s not real real, the fact that there are people willing to do the ridiculous things we see in some of these shows, well, yeah…

Buffkomodo: Honey boo boo.

WSR: The news.

MNW: As I walked upstairs last night and found The Bachelorette on TV, it struck me what a warped sense of love, relationships, fashion, reality, etc., gets trotted out on mainstream TV and mindlessly gobbled up by people who screamed that Chinsley McJaw was GASLIGHTING HER! and whatever goddamn else I scrolled past on Twitter.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some Very Serious College Football to watch.

RU in VA: Two individuals who combined might break 1000 on an SAT arguing in an AirBnB for 20 minutes of my life? Yeah, I watched it. The Bachelorette sucks.

The first four seasons of Jersey Shore are mint. They are prestige Sopranos-Breaking Bad-Deadwood types of shit. I recently found out that they’re still doing the show. Please stop. I don’t really need to see Pauly’s first colonoscopy or when The Situation finds out what a 401k is.

RockyMtnBlue: Literally anything “unscripted”. Ever.

Jesse: Have… have you watched Below Deck? I mean, I watch it and therefore I’m part of the problem, but also HAVE YOU WATCHED BELOW DECK? The thing about all this is that we watch these types of shows, not as like, a commentary of what entertains us, but rather as a way to look down on people… which is probably back to your ‘worried about the future’ line. Also, I watch the Nebraska Cornhuskers willingly so I probably have no standing here.

Pick one historical figure to coach your favorite team and tell us why. - Free Beer Tomorrow

misdreavus79: I feel like this question is asked every single season.

Buffkomodo: Ghengis Khan is out because of how he’d treat players. George Washington is out because he wasn’t great through the air. I think Alexander the Great with the “burn the boats” schtick is the closest historical gimmick to LEO I can come up with on lunch hour. I’ll take that mostly because he was successful with it.

WSR: I feel like the most accurate fit for the Gophers, historically, would be George Custer. But Omar Bradley with his dedication to attacking through the air and the ground and his strong defense would be perfect. (The perfect historical coach for Iowa is Luigi Cardona. Trust me.)

MNW: Can I have Pat Fitzgerald circa 2009 back?

RU in VA: It’s Teddy Roosevelt. Every kid coming to RU gets a free horse and a 30-06 rifle along with their NIL stipend. Jack Links beef jerky everywhere.

BoilerUp89: Cato the Elder. Ohio State delenda est.

RockyMtnBlue: Winston Churchill. I think he’d be willing to surround himself with the right assistants, but more importantly, think of the halftime speeches!

Kind of…: Bill Walsh. You know why.

Jesse: I’m not convinced Nebraska should really be looking for historical figures at this point.

How much malort would you need to drink to spend Saturday night watching Iowa @ Rutgers? - 06Lion

misdreavus79: Zero. I’m going to do that shit by choice!

Buffkomodo: ^^^^^ same.

WSR: Yeah, there’s a non-zero chance I watch this of my own accord. There’s also a chance that I will ignore this game completely and find something that MNW says to avoid in this week’s DWT;WT.

MNW: Maybe a shot or two? Maybe a shot after every punt.

MAYBE A SHOT OF MALORT AFTER EVERY PUNT!!!!!!!!!!!

Thank you for reminding me that I need to run to the store for Malort.

A SHOT OF MALORT AFTER EVERY PUNT! WHO’S WITH ME?!?!?

RU in VA: I CAN LITERALLY TELL YOU, AS I’LL BE THERE. I’ll have my kids with me, so probably only like 12-15 beers.

RockyMtnBlue: If there’s one thing OTE has taught me, it’s that it can be fun to watch dysfunctional football as long as two things are true: 1) My team isn’t playing in that game, and 2) I have the OTE gamethreads to shitpost about it.

No Malort at all. Just a laptop and a cadre of fellow sickos.

Kind of…: I watched Iowa/So. Dak. St. stone sober, so nothing can hurt me at this point. Your Malort is wasted on my dead soul.

Jesse: There are just so many wonderful outcomes for this game and all of them make me laugh so count me in. Since I don’t drink, no Malort for me! Other vices though… I mean, a gummy might make the laughs that much more fun.

What percentage of your fanbase would be perfectly happy about hiring Urban? How does that make you feel about belonging to that group? - BoilerUp89

misdreauvs79: A lot of people thought Urban was headed to Penn State prior to everything going down –there’s that infamous “our” blip when he was calling a Penn State game. I’m sure some people would still take him today, but I think most fans are happy with what we’re getting in Franklin.

Now, to address the underlying “you should feel bad about yourself for wanting a good coach that is a shitty person,” well, everyone’s a shitty person until they aren’t. Or, everyone’s a good person until they aren’t. I don’t know which one you want me to pick for this one.

Reality here is Nebraska will overlook Urban’s finger actions if it means a couple of Big Ten titles and a national championship. Refer to the “masked singer” question as to why.

Buffkomodo: If you can’t put up with Kevin Wilson, you’re not putting up with Urban Meyer. I think it’d bring some fans great joy at the thought of a winner, but after things go south they’ll turn because he’s an asshole. And then if things go well, they’ll find a reason to fire him and give Ryan Day the job instead.

How do I feel about all this? Conflicted. Very conflicted. I want to win really bad. I’m also willing to put up with character flaws/traits/overall bad person qualities to do so. See Bobby Knight, Tom Crean, Kevin Wilson….

But I get that leaders of programs shouldn’t be just shit people. You can be successful and not be abusive to players. You can be successful and not just be a huge prick to everyone. And to those points I’d understand it when he’d get inevitably canned.

WSR: I think about 30-35% of the fanbase would be in favor of Urban Meyer. Probably the person that wore the Scott Jensen/Matt Birk split jersey that was half purple and half maroon last weekend to the game. And I want that 30-35% of the fanbase to know that I hate them and would relish the opportunity to accidentally run over them in the concourse.

MNW: The readers won’t be able to see that you put this question in Comic Sans font, WSR, but I want you to know I appreciated it.

For Northwestern it’s like 10%, but they’re all engineers and so they’re not real people allowed to have opinions, anyway. GET BACK TO DRIVING THE TRAIN OR BUILDING THE MOON BRIDGE, YOU FUCKING NERDS.

BoilerUp89: To answer my own question it’s about 15% for Purdue. I would like to design a moon bridge…

RU in VA: Well, since there are about 13 actual Rutgers football fans in the world, it’s going to be REALLY low. Like maybe 10%. Rutgers alumni think of themselves as fucking Scarlet Princetonians - until they look at their bank account and get into their 2015 Altima. There would be protests and all sorts of events to convince the admin not hire Urban (because he hired kids that were literal murderers) and they’d back off, Schiano-Tennessee style.

RockyMtnBlue: 15 years ago it would have been 1% at most. Michigan fans are good at holier-than-thou. 8 years ago that would have been up to 50% given how the RichRod experience was proving that 8 wins was, in fact, not actually a birthright for Michigan. Right now we like our guy but Harbaugh is one 2020-like season away from 80% of the fans willing to take the love child of Gengis Khan and Harvey Weinstein if they thought he could beat Ohio State.

Kind of…: Not many. Probably 5%. Not b/c UW fans are virtuous, but because anybody who wants Chryst gone wants that so Jim Leonhard can take over and win 10 consecutive national titles.

Jesse: Lower than the internet would tell you and higher than it should be. So that’s fun.

when was the first time (if ever) your team put an outline of the state on the uniform (could be big, like the Illinois or Indiana alternate helmets, or small like the little outline of NJ that Rutger had in 2017 or so)? Do you/did you like the idea? - HistoryCat

misdreavus79: Penn State has these unity patches on their uniforms, which they did for the 2020 season, and I think they also wore them in 2021, but I did not spot them in the Auburn game last week, so I’m guessing they’re not a thing in 2022.

Buffkomodo: I do. I do like this.

BoilerUp89: We already know we are the best university in the state. No need to hurt IU’s feelings anymore.

WSR: I believe it was during the Brewster era. Since Minnesota has an awesome shape, It doesn’t really matter that was part of one of the darkest eras of Gopher football.

RockyMtnBlue: In principle I can really get behind this idea, but never for my school. We’ve done some fucked up uniform things (bumblebees against Notre Dame, yellow-on-yellow against Florida), but thankfully we’re pretty good about not fucking with those glorious helmets.

MNW: If you are a state school in the Big Ten and you don’t put the outline of the state on your helmets or the field at least once, what are you even doing? Those outlines and their usage (real or potential), ranked:

1. Illinois: Outstanding. The “I” out of stars is inspired.
2. Michigan/Michigan State: EMU beat you to them, and they are GODDAMN SPECTACULAR:

Yahoo

4. Indiana: Have they done a state outline helmet? I’m only thinking of the flag, aren’t I? (But the flag helmet is indisputably the best Indiana helmet.)

5. Maryland: (See: Indiana. But never do the Fort McHenry shit again.)

6. wisconsin: I told myself they’d already done this, but I can find no evidence of them. A helmet version of the Bucky-strut-in-front-of-wisconsin logo would be good (grading on a curve for wisconsin, of course) – the wisconsin logo, overly wide like its citizens, fits a helmet well.

7. Iowa: (See: wisconsin.)

8. Rutgers: They’re fine! It’s just not a visually appealing state outline, in my mind.

9. Penn State: A white helmet, gray outline of Pennsylvania, with the blue lion logo superimposed on it. That would be good, in my mind. But tradition or whatever. I’m already mad at James Franklin for thinking about messing with it.

10. Nebraska: Another tough one in the Penn State style – my proposal here would be the Iron N on the helmet’s right side, the outline in gray or something on the left, and a red number imposed over the state outline.

11. Minnesota: They’d find a way to make it in Anthracite and Neon Gold and ruin it. Don’t bother. (A “L’Etoile Du Nord” helmet would be ACES but Peej needs more time to acronymize that.)

12. Northwestern: I’m not sure what I would hate more: an outline of Evanston or a Chicago flag-themed helmet. (And you know the latter is in the works for a Soldier Field or Wrigley game.)

13. Purdue: It’s Indiana’s state. Stick to trains, you freaks.

14. Ohio State: there’s enough ugly shit on those helmets already; no sense ruining them with that crusty bulge of a state outline

Kind of…: @mnw, yes, I think you’re right that UW has never done this. It’s almost always a “W” of some sort with the occasional strutting Bucky. Now, you may like the motion “W” or dislike it, but Alvarez made that change, so UW is unlikely to deviate from it for a good while still. One thing he learned from Hayden Fry was re-branding.

Jesse: Nothing I can think of off the top of my head as far as actually doing this, but the state on the center court of PBA is pretty fly. I’m not opposed to an alt helmet of this but also with it being such a landscape proportioned state, it ends up looking a little weird. Taller states are much cooler outlines.