Steven M. Sipple: Boosters' words reverberate loudly
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Dan Cook was a nervous wreck in 1971 during the Game of the Century.
He remembers the dirt floor beneath the stands. He retreated there momentarily because the pressure was tearing him to pieces. Top-ranked Nebraska and No. 2 Oklahoma were trading punches in Norman, Okla., and it was clear this brawl would endure to the final bell.
“I was so nervous, I felt a gagging sensation at one point,” said Cook, now 72, a longtime and prominent Husker booster. “I thought to myself, ‘This is absolute idiocy. It’s just a damned game.’”
Yeah, right, just a game. Try telling Steve Pederson that it’s “just a game,” especially if Nebraska happens to lose to Oklahoma State today. Try telling anyone with any interest at all in the future of Husker football that the rest of this season does not represent a critical period in the program’s distinguished history.
Cook’s concern about Nebraska’s program, and fellow Husker booster Dale Jensen’s outright anger, remind us that today is more than just a game. But you don’t need that sermon right now. If you’re a Big Red fan, you want answers.
To be sure, the majority of Husker fans disdain the answers they’ve received so far in year four of the Bill Callahan era. Two horrific losses on national television. Repeated embarrassments on defense. A feeling of general malaise in the program after unmistakable signs of progress last season.
Lose to Oklahoma State today, and the doom that befell Huskerville this week will feel like a church picnic. Defeat Oklahoma State, and Nebraska basically gets a one-week reprieve from pervasive negativity that gnaws away at a program seemingly on a slippery slope to second-rate status.
Intense scrutiny, of course, will continue.
“I’m very disappointed in the progress of the program,” said Jensen, a bank computer software mogul from Lincoln and part of a four-man partnership that owns the Arizona Diamondbacks. He’s been a strong Pederson supporter.
However, “I expected a lot more this year, and I’m not the only one,” Jensen said. “There’s a general undercurrent of severe discontent. The chemistry of the program is out of whack. Something is seriously wrong. There are too many people incredibly upset.”
Of course, it is those words that will reverberate loudest inside the Nebraska athletic complex. When big-money folks become restless, and when they tell the world they’re restless, well, that’s a red flag you don’t want hanging on your porch, folks.
For fans that enjoyed almost robotic success for decades, the recent past has been disturbing. The last coach, Frank Solich, was fired after a 9-3 regular season in his sixth year following the legendary Tom Osborne. Callahan was touted by Pederson as a savior of the program, but the Huskers have a record of 14-12 in Big 12 games since Solich’s firing.
Jensen is restless. He’s given millions to the university, and not just for athletics. Nobody at dear old NU is asking him for money right now, but if they do?
“Right now, the sale’s a lot harder,” he said. “All I can do is be a voice and vote with my pocketbook.”
Never have the wolves at Pederson’s door growled more ferociously. And they could get louder around mid-afternoon today if the Huskers (4-2, 1-1 Big 12) happen to turn in yet another clunker.
Cook, a wealthy Dallas businessman whose name adorns an indoor practice facility on the NU campus, will watch today’s game from his Memorial Stadium skybox with T. Boone Pickens, the billionaire Texas oilman for whom Oklahoma State’s football stadium is named. Cook, by the way, is much more patient with the Huskers than Jensen.
But Cook is realistic.
“If Callahan isn’t that good, they’ll find a way to get rid of him,” he said. “And they’ll find a way to get rid of Steve.”
Actually, Pederson and defensive coordinator Kevin Cosgrove seem to draw the majority of fans’ ire. Pederson’s bold proclamations four years ago are heaved in his face at every turn, and rightfully so. Cosgrove’s defense has been, in a word, awful. Callahan shouldn’t be cut too much slack, for obvious reasons.
“I thought we’d be further along,” Callahan said after Thursday’s practice. “That’s just an honest assessment of where we’re at.”
Maybe nobody gets the pink slip this year. Maybe Nebraska surprises us all with a strong second half of the season. Maybe Callahan turns out to be the right man after all.
“I’ve seen it before, where somebody just catches fire for seemingly no reason,” Cook said.
Cook spoke to Pederson this week. Told the AD he loves him and supports him. Yet Cook surely recognizes what everybody else does, that Nebraska’s record is grossly misleading, that something’s gone awry.
“There are parts of our game that obviously need attention,” Cook said. “But one is not the head coach.”
How about the defensive coordinator? Cook declined to comment on Cosgrove, in part because Cook would rather not contribute to the negativity that has engulfed the program and Husker Nation in general. Make no mistake, Cook’s silence tells us all we need to know about his feelings regarding Coz.
Cook tries to retain a sense of humor through it all.
“If you don’t, you’re lunch meat,” he said. “You’re dead in the water.”
Jensen is a good-natured sort. But he’s not amused about seeing a proud program lapse into crisis mode.
“It’s really simple,” Jensen said. “Too many people no longer are proud of the program.”
At what point would Cook’s patience cease?
“I don’t know,” he said, pausing for a few moments.
“I don’t want to know.”
Reach Steven M. Sipple at 473-7440 or ssipple@journalstar.com.
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