“It's important to communicate with the big, big donors, but also with the average fan who doesn't have the ability to donate heavily. They're going to be e-mailing that athletic director, too, and probably the head coach. There are a lot of expectations, but that's the name of the game.”

-Former Nebraska head coach Frank Solich

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“Nebraska is back and we’re here to stay.”

-Bo Pelini, after NU’s 33-0 win in the Holiday Bowl

Just in case you presume he hasn’t been listening to the media during the last two years. Just in case you think his offhand, almost dismissive air regarding questions of the Cornhuskers’ place in college football was an accurate inventory of his actual thoughts.

Bo Pelini was paying attention all along. He didn’t have an ear to the ground. He didn’t have a finger in the air. But he was listening. And waiting.

He just didn’t want to address it until his team had earned it. The Holiday Bowl, with NU’s muscular, thorough thumping of a lean, brittle and careless Arizona team, merely confirmed what Pelini sensed weeks before: The Huskers, at least on defense - where it counts most - had figured it out. Like a chess shark in Central Park - or Robert Downey’s character in “Sherlock Holmes” - Bo, Carl and crew had predicted the moves in advance, swamping the Wildcats with an unusual approach - max pressure coverage with a occasionally (just slightly) delayed four-man rush - until Arizona tipped over its king onto the board.

Really, Nebraska was “back,” in terms of notoriety, somewhere in the first quarter of Big 12 Championship, when the Blackshirts slugged Texas quarterback Colt McCoy for a couple picks and a couple sacks.

When the burnt orange blushed red, and UT’s haughty fans assembled in the gaudy palace of Cowboys Stadium squirmed in their seats and delayed that trip to the concession stands.

When America - its sportswriters, punditocracy and casual fans on a Saturday night - settled into their couches and decided they had to see this, a team with one arm tied behind its back, whaling away at an armored truck of talent - and winning!

Cincy WKRP, that close to a trip to Pasadena!

Until a combination of bonehead errors and controversial calls - so reminiscent of the 1994 Orange Bowl that I half expected Bobby Bowden had taken Mack Brown’s place as UT coach - sunk NU’s chance at victory.

But not its confidence. Clearly not.

Pelini spent the last two weeks chuffed and fired up like one of Flannery O’Connor’s characters set for the inevitable fall - it seems ill-timed at best, doomed to punchline at worst - only Nebraska fulfilled his words and more. It’s fun to be wrong when 33-0 is the result.

When a coach has that kind of read on his team, when they’re that positively in sync - that’s a scary thing. I recalled Florida’s unusual certitude before the 2007 BCS title game, USC’s certitude before just about any bowl game, and Nebraska’s certitude after the 1994 Orange Bowl for, oh, the next six years or so. Like Alexander’s army before they hit India.

Is there an India out there for NU in 2010? I suppose, after 33-0, we chew on a modified version of that question for eight months now:

Can Nebraska, with all the variables happily lining up next year, pull off a natty champ in Bo’s third year? Damn straight.

One cannot help but look forward. In the Big 12, Texas takes a step back. Has to, right? Oklahoma State does, too. Oklahoma must replenish a big chunk of that defense. Texas Tech looked like a foil until Mike Leach let his ego get him fired. Missouri visits Lincoln with a spread offense that can’t score inside the 20-yard line. The biggest road games - Washington, Texas A&M, Kansas State - seem eminently manageable.

Nationally, Alabama will be there. Florida won’t. USC has an offensive line to rebuild. Oregon is a myth. Ohio State is probably the truth, with Terrelle Pryor finally beginning to tap the deepest veins of his remarkable talent. Boise could be preseason top 5. TCU will put in its two cents. Virginia Tech again. Watch for Clemson, even without C.J. Spiller.

But all of it lines up right, you know? That 2010 will not be 2008 or 2004, when there were four or five teams worthy of the national title. Winning the Big 12 crown, of course, remains at the top of the list. But, as new Kansas coach Turner Gill so sagely pointed out a few weeks ago: You win the Big 12, and you’re usually right there for the national title hunt. In 2003, 2004, 2005, 2008 and 2009 that was true. Had Missouri beaten Oklahoma in the 2007 Big 12 Championship, it would have been true there, as well. In 2006, OU was a ripoff loss to Oregon away from supplanting Florida in the 2007 BCS title game.

Even if NU loses in Seattle, the real game is afoot in October and November. Shoot the moon there, and every significant goal is intact for Dallas 2010.

What we’ll examine over the next couple days: How the Huskers get there, and what questions need to be answered - first in the offseason, then in spring ball - to achieve it.

Because there’s the pressure of expectation now. That’s what 33-0 does. The problem with playing your best football - or close to it - is that fans, pundits, coaches and players have now seen what it looks like to execute at an elite standard. Anything below it elicits tougher questions, more fingers, harder decisions, and even more pressure.

Bo knows so much - and he must also know that, now, in declaring “Nebraska’s back” on the podium in San Diego, he’s marked his words, not unlike Steve Pederson did when he fired Frank Solich.

But Husker fans know what “back” looks like. They lived the 1990s.

“Back” is dominating the Big 12 and playing in the BCS. It’s been 10 years since NU won a league crown. Eight since it played in the BCS.

“Back” is winning big non-conference games on the road. How long has it been? Pittsburgh in 2004? Notre Dame in 2000?

“Back” is maintaining the defensive excellence Pelini developed over two years.

“Back” is having an enviable offense that punishes and challenges most defenses.

“Back” is having top-flight kicker and punter (Consider that done.)

“Back” is recruiting the six states surrounding Nebraska like a fiend, with a supplement of big-timne talent from Texas, California and elsewhere, as needed.

“Back” is signing the quarterback you want - not the quarterback you’re left with.

NU’s commander-in-chief has completed most of the major combat operations in restructuring the Huskers to his brand of attitude, work ethic and athleticism.

Now it’s time to stomp out the fires in Fallujah. Beat Texas. Win the Big 12. Storm the doors in Scottsdale.

The 2009 Holiday Bowl wasn’t the end of anything. It’s only the beginning of one dramatic season - for good or ill - to come.

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This decade of Nebraska football came closer than you think to traveling full circle.

It began with a Fiesta Bowl win over Tennessee that seemed to validate the Frank Solich era, and position the Cornhuskers as a prime national title contender in 2000.

It ended with Nebraska coming within one second of earning another trip to Arizona and setting up a run at the national title in 2010.

In between those bookends, the seams of the program came apart not once – but twice.

You know the story. It's plenty juicy, painful and unforgettable.

When mediocrity, struggle and frustration finally knocked on NU's door – as it has with every college football program in the last 30 years – it rocked most fans, who'd grown to love the bucolic, never-changing nature of the Cornhuskers - nine wins, option football, red balloons, stoic head coaches – without understanding the brilliance, timing, effort and sheer good fortune that went into that incredible run from Bob Devaney's hiring, really until the end of 2001, when Colorado smashed the Huskers in the Day-After-Thanksgiving Massacre, triggering whispers that only continued in a blowout Rose Bowl loss, and a subsequently disappointing 2002 campaign.

We learned what most major programs already knew: Money, influence and image overshadows the mission of educating and coaching 18-to-22-year-old men. We learned that TV dollars and coverage matter more than it should. We learned that winning is put at such a premium that most programs are willing to lard up their non-conference schedules with fattened lambs so as to ensure that bowl game that's apparently so precious to student-athletes.

We learned that a great running backs coach doesn't necessarily translate into an inspiring head coach. That the best-laid plans of the Ozfather when awry, to some extent, because he handed over leadership to Frank Solich, but not complete ownership. We'll never know how Solich might have fared if he'd courted a staff solely of his choosing. If Tom Osborne hadn't offered the seemingly wise, but ultimately imperfect advice of retaining the entire staff. Solich might have soared higher. Or he might have flamed out sooner.

But Solich never got his man at quarterback – and no, I don't think Joe Dailey was that guy, either – and the program slowly lost momentum. In 2002, it was a team still flush with athletes, but not much levity. Solich looked beleaguered for much of that season – a confused on-field visage was one of Solich's unintended, but real nonetheless, weaknesses – the offense hinging, primarily, on whether Jammal Lord could whittle and plow his way through the defense. The innovation, inspiration and pluck were on empty.

Leaks on the just-then-burgeoning Internet message boards abounded. Practice scuffles. Coach squabbles. Pointless debates over Solich and his recruiting coordinator, Dave Gillespie. Boosters took these boards like street walkers to crack, and, to some extent, the man was a casualty of that technology. Recruiting discussions, fueled by the emerging market of exclusive (and intrusive) recruiting coverage, became the belle du jour. Solich was a casualty of the media in general. The Husker nightly radio program, far from the weak, perfunctory broth it is today, did, as well. The papers tread gently at first, but started asking harder questions, in louder word choices, after the Day-After-Thanksgiving Massacre.

By the end of 2002, after a loss to thoroughly average Mississippi in the thoroughly average Independence Bowl, Nebraska was, let's face it, a fading light.

And then Solich hired Bo Pelini.

There was no way to measure Bo's impact before he marshaled Nebraska's defense into a lethal force. If then-Athletic Director Steve Pederson made a mistake of hubris, it wasn't necessarily firing Solich – we could debate that all day - but believing Solich was incapable of making a top-shelf decision.

Except Frank did: He got Bo. And that was damn smart for Nebraska.

And inconvenient for Pederson.

Had Solich stuck with Craig Bohl, or hired 90 percent of the perfectly-functional defensive coordinators in the football world, NU finishes 5-7 in 2003 and Pederson gets his pick of the coaching litter. We never know Bill Callahan. Pederson probably never considers Houston Nutt, for that matter.

But Pelini was a wild card. The game-changer. A tactician and motivator. His defensive success, as we've seen, wasn't lightning in a bottle. It wasn't apocryphal. It was the real thing. And his players loved him for it. In the eyes of many fans, he even saved Solich's job.

I wonder if fans appreciated that when they clamored for Solich to get one more year, who they were really applauding was - Pelini. The offense in 2003 was sluggish and one-dimensional. Even more than 2002. Almost as bad as 2009. And there was no real guarantee it was getting any better. Aside from making one brilliant hire, Solich's attachment to the defense was negligible. And yet Pelini produced the bulk of a 10-3 season, and made an incredible splash, the kind that earned him, frankly, a shot at the head coaching job.

Much like Ndamukong Suh earned the Heisman - but fell short because of sheer, ingrained politics and shoddy thinking – Pederson, a modern-businessman-acting-as-AD, rejected Pelini for a lack of flash, and experience. While Pelini flourished elsewhere, Pederson embarked on what turned out to be an intensely personal odyssey over the next four years – an era that turned out to be as much about him as it was Bill Callahan.

The events, controversies, triumphs and tumbles of that time you already know well. I think Pederson's imprint – especially in the way Husker fans view recruiting – is deeper than some think. Pederson's strange methodology was criticized; his brazen greed for winning, for putting his stamp of restraint on the school (which he has with that blockish, monolithic font that's used for everything Husker) is not unlike most in the business world. Indeed, Pederson, and the boosters that supported him, introduced Husker fans to the uncomfortable “efficiency model” of college athletics. It's groupthink, multiplied. A place where individualism was reserved, primarily, for the coaches – not the department employees.

I won't lie – the corporate business model does little for me. Never has. It's put college sports, and America, in a reasonably phony place that eyes the “popular” and “marketable” more than it does the “sustainable.” I recall reading Callahan's comments before his first season, about how “geeked up” he was to coach NU. Huh? This, the son of a Chicago cop.

Pederson, who I think liked being hip. So many of visual, stylistic choices around campus – especially the donor wall recalling (somewhat inappropriately) the Vietnam Memorial - suggested the spare, modern look of suburban office buildings, which architects fancy as commercial art in a landscape of interstate and topiary mazes. He never could appreciate the decided uncool of a guy like Pelini, who pairs a sweatshirt with khakis, tucking a play card into his pants. The man is subtle like an Italian hoagie.

Tom Osborne could, though, and when he returned to NU – after his stint in Congress, defeat in the gubernatorial race and a bewildering, self-imposed semi-exile from the Huskers – he immediately filled all that spare wall space Pederson adored with trophies, plaques, pictures and various memorabilia. He commissioned a giant, gaudy (and, it must be said, striking in a colorful, pretty way) mural to be placed in the front hall of the North Stadium building named after him. And he hired Pelini, who, in turn, thanked Frank Solich in the opening statement after his hiring.

Some of the old critics have walked back through the door. It stands to reason they would. But to peer inside Nebraska 2009 is not to see NU 2002, or even NU 2003. Although Shawn Watson weathers some significant shots across his bow, and the offensive staff is, to some extent, in the middle of locating an identity, there is a sense of purpose, fused with high energy, that permeates North Stadium. Pelini, whatever his faults, combines an old-school will with new-school schemes, a dynamic coupling that will eventually reshape the offense, for better or worse, into a similar mold.

See also: NU's All-Decade Team, 10 Best Moments, 10 Worst Moments and A Decade of Upheaval - And Healing

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Tampa Bay Rays leftfielder Carl Crawford (the guy on the left) went 5-for-5 Tuesday night as the Rays crushed the Boston Red Sox 13-4 to take a 3-1 lead in the American League Championship Series. Crawford batting .500 for the series.




In related news, Frank Solich continues to look for a quarterback to replace the now-graduated Eric Crouch.




(No, I don't care about the Red Sox. Deepest apologies to those of you who in the Red Sox Nation shed a small tear tonight. Your team? Yeah, it's going down)


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