Husker Nation has turned the corner

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Was it really just three years ago that half of adult Nebraskans were acting as though the other half were crazy as bedbugeaters?

Husker Nation was under threat from insurgency, if not civil war, that ripped families and friendships asunder, after University of Nebraska athletic director Steve Pederson fired one football coach and hired another.

Red sky at morning, children of the corn take warning.

It was a wrenching, disorienting experience for a lot of people and caused no small amount of soul searching far beyond football fields, about values, about what was important and what wasn’t at the University of Nebraska and its athletic programs.

At the time, and even from this distance, it was not pretty, and we suspect if it were to be done over, it would be done differently — if not with different results.

But over those three years, the red sky has cleared.

Now look what’s happened.

The Cornhuskers are playing tonight in Kansas City for the undisputed football championship of the Big 12 Conference.

Against our old pals, the University of Oklahoma Sooners.

Head coach Bill Callahan and crew have taken Husker orphans, new recruits, junior college kids and what many Nebraskans considered heretical ideas about football to field a formidable, dangerous, sophisticated college team.

We got a real sense of the sea change as this ship turned last year in San Antonio, in the Alamo Bowl, where the Huskers put the Michigan Wolverines in their place.

Somehow, it seems we’ve come a long way in three years.

So has Frank Solich, the deposed Husker coach, whose resurgent Ohio University Bobcats will be playing in their first bowl game since 1968, just a couple of years after Solich himself starred for the Cornhuskers.

So maybe it’s time to make sure we’ve made peace among ourselves. Recognize the glory of these deeds to replace the hard feelings that accompanied this transition, for our own good, for those gone away, for the team, and for our state.

Some of us Nebraskans, like good sideline coaches, have taken these three years of opportunity to teach ourselves and our young about the bitter consequences of complacency, about playing with the pain of change, about how much harder it is to be gracious and wise in defeat than in victory.

It’s been an education, especially for Cornhusker fans who never knew the hard years before Bob Devaney changed everything.

The thing we remember best about Devaney: He made it fun to be a Cornhusker.

There’s a big W out on the field at Arrowhead Stadium, guys.

Have fun.

It’s yours if you want it.