Husker junior right tackle Matt Slauson feels it within the team, and from the fans. There's a resurgence of high expectations, the kind of which he hasn't seen since he's been here.
BRIAN CHRISTOPHERSON / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Friday, August 31, 2007 7:00 pm
If you take U.S. 77 south out of Lincoln, past the seemingly misplaced Buckeye Road, past the billboard that reads “Resourceful: That’s the Nebraska way,” and finally, past Possum Creek, you will come to a little town called Pickrell.
There’s a bar there called Shooter’s Bar & Grill, owned by 46-year-old Judi Otto.
She became a fan of Nebraska football when she was 9, mostly because her dad rooted for Oklahoma. When asked what she wants out of this Husker season that begins today against Nevada, she says with no sarcasm, “That we win a national championship, win every one of our games, you know.”
Keep driving south and soon you’ll hit Beatrice. On your right is a First National Bank. That’s the work place of Judy Weakland, a Husker fan since “forever.”
“If we lose four games,” she says, “I think that’s an unsuccessful season for Nebraska.”
Let that highway take you back to the Capital City and you’ll go near Sprague. Scott West lives around there. He owns the Sprague Bar & Grill and, about the upcoming season, he says, “To see them win a championship would be nice.”
And so it went and went and went. The season of optimism is upon us.
Maybe it’s because of new quarterback Sam Keller. Maybe it’s because it’s Husker coach Bill Callahan’s fourth year and, as Weakland put it, “now it’s time to produce.”
Whatever it is, Husker junior right tackle Matt Slauson feels it within the team, and from the fans. There’s a resurgence of high expectations, the kind of which he hasn’t seen since he’s been here.
A truthful Husker fan would tell you that doubt has crept through the door in recent years. Expectations dwindled. Winning the Big 12 North became something to celebrate.
That won’t do this year. Slauson hears it all the time. People want a Big 12 championship. They want a BCS game. They want a … gulp … national championship?
“The bar has definitely been raised a lot. It has been raised so much more and it’s completely doable for us,” Slauson says. “There is no excuse for us to not get our goals done.”
How’s this for high expectations? Early in fall camp, Nebraska players were breaking huddle saying the words “national championship.”
This from the team that went 9-5 last year and hasn’t won a conference championship since 1999? Skeptics are rolling their eyes.
“You don’t ever want to start a year saying you’re going to be 11-2 or whatever,” senior linebacker Lance Brandenburgh said. “You always want to say you want to be the undefeated national champions. We have the championship mind-set now and I think we’re ready to go.”
Much of the confidence stems from last year’s near-misses — a three-point loss to an Auburn team that beat national champion Florida, a two-point loss to Texas that goes Nebraska’s way if not for a late fumble.
However much those defeats hurt, they also made Slauson believe this bunch of Nebraska football players could be on the same stage as the elite. He wasn’t always so sure.
In the days leading up to last year’s trip to Southern California, Slauson sat in the film room having an honest moment of doubt: Could he and his teammates really play with those guys?
USC was what Nebraska once was, what it wants to be again. USC was just so unafraid.
“We came out kind of scared because that team is so fast. We were kind of measuring them just to see how fast they were,” Slauson says. “They were blowing right past us.”
USC never slowed down and Nebraska lost 28-10, a disappointing showing to many Husker fans, but also strangely a confidence-builder for Slauson. He had seen the best up close. Sixty minutes of football had taken away the fear.
The Trojans were fast, but not so fast that he isn’t looking forward to seeing how that game comes out this year.
“That’s all over now,” Slauson says. “We know we can play with them.”
Of course, beating ranked teams will be required for the Huskers to emerge as the contenders they think they can be. In Callahan’s first three seasons here, the highest-ranked foe NU has defeated is No. 23 Iowa State in 2005.
It’s the little things, Keller said, that will differentiate success from failure in this campaign.
“There’s a difference in teams that go 9-5 or 11-2, and it is the teams that are talented but just don’t break through because they don’t have the mental edge, the mental focus we’re striving to have,” he said.
So here it goes, another season, another run for the Huskers to claim what they believe to be their rightful place among the best.
The puzzle pieces are finally in place, senior cornerback Cortney Grixby says.
“Everyone’s meshed together and we feel like we’ve got a team this year that could put us in position to win the big one.”
Big one or Alamo Bowl, they’ll be watching in Pickrell.
Reach Brian Christopherson at 473-7439 or bchristopherson@journalstar.com.