Stranger Than Fiction

The truth is stranger than fiction.

If I told you 15 years ago that Nebraska would lose to Minnesota, you'd have spit out your drink. Yesterday it happened. The weird part was, nobody was surprised. Hell, nobody is even mad any more. Well, except probably Tommy Armstrong Jr and Ron Kellogg III.

Maybe Kenny Bell. But, ever his coach's player, he's aiming his ire at the fans rather than his loafing teammates. Oh yes, good ol' @AFRO_THUNDER80 produced plenty of passive-aggressive tweets for Husker fans yesterday. Rest assured, any grown man who takes to Twitter to rip a player is a douchebag of the highest order. But Bell shouldn't be reading his mentions, and he certainly shouldn't be responding. But he did and he is, and in so doing he has become the hockey mom Taylor Martinez never had.

Mean tweets make me *sad*

Speaking of Taylor Martinez, what the hell does that kid's dad know about Pelini in order to force him to continue starting Taylor? Taylor went full Taylor yesterday in the presser, and demonstrated why he was gag ordered after the UCLA meltdown...he tells the truth. The T-Magic is gone from the field, but he still does some special things with a microphone in front of him.

You know that "turf toe" we heard so much about? Yeah, it was never turf toe at all. Taylor cleared that right up for us, and tacked on the gem that it was a Wyoming game injury. A.K.A. knowing what we know now, he never should have taken the field against UCLA. Asked if the toes were fractured, Martinez replied, "I'm not gonna say." That means yes. When somebody asks if your toes are broken, and you don't have broken toes, you say no.

LOL, here's all the stuff I wasn't supposed to tell you

I've said since Martinez's redshirt freshman year that the cart of Bo Pelini's career will go as far as Taylor Martinez can pull it. On Saturday, Bo hitched the kid up again and Martinez pulled up lame. Why in the blue fuck did Pelini trot out a running quarterback with two broken toes? Add this one to the list of injuries Martinez has "played" through. The high ankle sprain that had as many incarnations as the Rocky films, now this. Martinez plays, God love him, but he's horrible when he's injured. If he can't run, he is largely useless. Just another round of busted Taylor Martinez chucking 30 attempts out of the shotgun. 

Only three things explain why you start a kid that banged up: Either it's blackmail, Bo is so pathologically stubborn that starts the kid to prove he alone is in charge of personnel decisions, or his trust issues are so deep-seated that he'll stay in an abusive relationship with his starter before he'll give the backup a chance to break his heart anew. We'd believe all of them at this point, wouldn't we? The truth has been stranger than fiction with Pelini all along.

It was the Bo Pelini era in microcosm yesterday: Start an injured Taylor Martinez, bumble on offense, get pushed around on defense, lose to a mediocre-to-bad team, have an awkward post-game, then blame the fans for being ungrateful. It sounds so familiar that fans and columnists could only lament how familiar it sounds. We're not even angry any more. For three and a half quarters, the players obviously weren't, either. They looked resigned to it, too. 

You hear it over and over, "Oh, Pelini's players love him. He's a players' coach. They would run through a brick wall for him!" No they wouldn't. His own defense won't run through a Golden Gophers offensive guard. Watch the 1984 UCLA - Nebraska game. The first thing that will jump out at you is the hitting. It's miles from the way this team plays today. When those Blackshirt linebackers took on a lead blocker, they made sure it wasn't just a run fit, it was a test of his very manhood. In 2013, the defenders are trying to jog around blocks. These kids, demonstrably, will not run through even a blocker for their coach. I think the local brick walls can rest easy.

Pelini's team is a mirror image of him: Too slow to react, clueless how to adapt in the face of failure, and too ready to adopt an external locus of control when things get sour. Plenty of noise with a mic in their face or a phone in hand, but no real, calm leaders when things get tough. They play the way Pelini recruited for the first 3-4 years, the way he makes tweaks to his defensive system; it's like the Adam Sandler song (NSFW) at a medium pace. Saturday, the fans got the shampoo bottle. With Urban Meyer coaching and recruiting at warp speed, NU is already too far behind.


You think you can play in MY title game? Why do you want to be brutalized and humiliated?

Saturday was the beginning of the end for Pelini. As ugly as it has looked, Nebraska was only a one loss team heading to Minneapolis, and it turns out UCLA is pretty good. Win some tougher games in November, get to the championship game, and maybe there's a reason to keep Pelini another year. None of that matters now. You don't lose to Minnesota. And you really don't do it by just being outworked. It's done now, Mark "Bo" Pelini is in his final season as head coach of the Nebraska Cornhuskers.

Don't tell me about how long it took Osborne, don't tell me about kids going to class, and don't tell me how the players think of any of the coaches as a father figure. If that mattered, we'd just let the players' fathers coach the team for a fraction of the salary and they'd still suck (cough cough BARNEY COTTON cough cough).

Am I being too rough on the guy? Ask any member of the media that covers NU football. Ask around about whether Bo has called those guys and sworn them out over the phone if they have ever dared to paint him in an unflattering light. This isn't one incident, it's not just Chatelain, it's pretty much all of them. I'm sure he'd give me a ring if only anyone knew or cared who I am. He freaks out on sports writers and talk show hosts like Commodus learning his sister plotted against him.


Tell me what you've been doing, busy little bee...


Ask about rumors that swirled of Pelini and friends cornering a message board poster with ties to the program in a hotel basement for leaking inside information about the team. The morning of a game. Not just any game, a BIG game. Ask why Carl and Marvin really had to leave. The answers are as believable as a soap opera plot and yet...the truth is stranger than fiction.

Pelini has acted just like his players looked yesterday. Dancing around the real obstacles, and expecting somebody else to shoulder the responsibility for why it's not working out. The players didn't execute. The fans are not being supportive enough. The media is dogging Martinez. Zac Lee got that second opinion about his throwing arm. Lincoln doesn't have a major airport. It's all water under the bridge now.

As of this moment, people who know say he's already fired, he just doesn't know it yet. Sound like too secretive and diabolical a process to believe? Well, I tried to tell you. When it comes to the Bo Pelini regime, the truth is stranger than fiction.