Examining expectations

When I hear the term “expectation” these days from Nebraska football fans, I feel like I have to climb through three layers.

First, there’s the “but we’re Nebraska” crowd, anything less than a Top 5 finish every year is a failure. Anything less and you are lowering the bar. This is the group that thinks Nebraska football only existed from 1993-1997 when the Huskers went 60-3 on the way to winning three National Championships.

Second, there is the “well, I hope we can make the next step but I’m tired of getting my hopes up only to be let down later.” This group is the healthiest mentally because they know that as enjoyable as 1993-1997 was, those years are the exception not the norm.

Thirdly, there’s the Negative Nellie crowd that thinks Nebraska is on its way to a 6-6 season and head coach Bo Pelini should be run out of Lincoln on a rail.

I fall into the second category. In 2010, when Nebraska started the season 5-0 and looking dominant, I believed the Huskers were ready to contend for a National Championship. From that point forward, however, Nebraska went 5-4. Last season, the Huskers made their Big Ten debut and while they had a decent season at 9-4, there were times they could not get out of their own way.

The way I see it is that 11 wins or more is a “great” season, 10 wins is a “good” season, nine wins is a “decent” season while eight wins or less qualifies as an underachieving season. Based on that criterion, the last “great” Husker season was 2001 when they went 11-2. Since then Nebraska has had a mixture of decent and good seasons with a few underachieving ones.

Who knows, maybe 2012 is the year Nebraska gets that first elusive conference title since 1999 and BCS bowl appearance since 2001.

For the last few years I feel as though I've been sold a misleading bill of goods in the preseason masked by "coach speak" as to how "insert year here" is going to be better than the last and that we are finally on to something.

I expect to see more of the same until proven otherwise. We will be good enough to beat any team we play, but can play bad enough to lose to anybody. See Northwestern at home. Until the team can eliminate costly mistakes, false starts, penalties, personal fouls, and anything that extends opponents drive or kills our offensive momentum- I expect to see more of the same.