I have been rather conspicuous by my absence from this blog recently, and I’d love to say that I was out changing lives and developing cures but, alas, I was not. What have I been doing? Well…school, work, school, influenza, school, work and attempting to come up with insults for the Iowa Hawkeyes. I have come back for this post and to show how out of the loop I have been with college football it appears as if the Nebraska Spring Game is only one week away! Unfortunately, much like recruiting, I don’t have a real vested interest in things like this unless something major happens. What do you really take from a game like this? What if the offense plays extremely well and makes your defense look terrible? What if the opposite occurs and your defense makes the offense look awful? What happens if the second team’s Offensive play is better than the first team defense and vice versa? These things always block my enjoyment of the game when it should be something to help tide you over until the season begins and allows you to get a closer look at the team going into the summer practice season.
This season, however, is a different story since it is a brand new conference, a brand new offense and (maybe) a brand new quarterback if things go completely awry. The biggest move of the Nebraska offseason this far was the firing of offensive coordinator Shawn Watson to the happiness of Nebraska fans and the chagrin of opposing teams for the upcoming season. The strange thing was the hiring of Tim Beck for the position of offensive coordinator. While I do agree you did need to keep SOME familiarity for the players coming back to run the offense; it seems very strange that you would hire someone who coached the position of running backs and now make him QB coach, and not hiring a separate coach for the job. I know I spoke once before that Joe Ganz jumping from Graduate Assistant to QB Coach would be a bit much, but why not think outside the box in a scenario like that? You should have someone on the sidelines with the Quarterback to go over things, and not just having him calling down from the booth, and unless Tim Beck plans on coaching from the sidelines I see a few growing pains with a new offense in a new conference.
The other storyline I am looking at going into the Spring Game and the upcoming season is the fallout following the resignation of former Secondary Coach Marvin Sanders. I have not been hearing this get enough play by people on the internet. The secondary has been the best part of the team the past two years and losing a coach like that has to make some sort of impact on a team. The other reason that I can see it being an issue (if it hasn’t been addressed already) was the idea that Corey Raymond announced he was taking the job even before Marvin Sanders was formally removed as a coach from the Cornhusker staff. If I were a player that wouldn’t sit very well with me knowing that someone who helped recruit me and coach me could have possibly been told he is leaving via the media before he actually left the job. The other issue with this is that they replaced him with a secondary coach from Indiana. Why? Was no one else available? Did they wait so long to replace Marvin Sanders because they wanted to ensure that Alfonso Dennard came back for his senior year? These things all bother me because he hasn’t dealt with a player as good as Dennard, nor has he coached at a program as prestigious as Nebraska. While I think it is in his benefit he knows the Big 10 offenses it doesn’t do much for me since Indiana isn’t exactly Ohio State, Penn State or Wisconsin.
So these are a few of the things I am looking for in the upcoming weeks and months. I will be getting more and more into the goings on of Nebraska football as we get further into Spring and Summer and will have a lot more thoughts about things then. ESPECIALLY after I realize that the NFL and NBA won’t be around anytime soon to help ease the transition into the season. Also, I am not making any guarantees with a timetable for this, but I am constructing (in my head) a post about what it means to me as someone who lives outside of Nebraska to actually be able to see (potentially) every game which airs this upcoming season.
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