The Nebraska Cornhuskers will be a neighbor of USC in the Big Ten next year. As we try to learn more about the programs USC will be joining, we have to ask some big-picture questions. Our foremost big-picture question about Nebraska was this:
Do Nebraska fans think their program can regain its glory days again, or have NU fans accepted the view from a lot of national pundits that Nebraska can never recapture what it once had?
We asked Cornhuskers Wire editor Evan Bredeson about this general tension between the past and the present at Nebraska:
“Getting back to where it was in the 1990s is going to be particularly difficult,” Bredeson said. “Trying to recapture that is something fans realize is not — at this time — a realistic possibility. All Nebraska fans want is to be relevant again.”
One can clearly see that Nebraska fans aren’t expecting a quick fix in terms of building the program back to the Tom Osborne standard, when the Huskers were a national juggernaut. What they do expect to happen relatively quickly is for Nebraska to regain relevance, starting with a bowl game and continuing with real and substantial improvements within the program. Substantive and significant progress — that’s the short-term goal Nebraska fans have for new coach Matt Rhule.
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