Bo Pelini had just taken the job at Nebraska, and one of his first messages to the team, NU linebacker Cody Glenn, remains one of his most important.

“First meeting, he said, ‘I’ve always got your back,’” Glenn said.

Most coaches say it, some mean it, and fewer take the time to show it. It was an issue on which former head coach Bill Callahan would often waffle until he rained on quarterback Joe Ganz’s seven-touchdown game and Zac Taylor’s Big 12 Player of the Year award with some “it’s the system” soliloquy on the Big 12 Coaches teleconference.

So maybe some Cornhusker players didn’t get the full measure of Pelini’s words until after a 52-17 loss to the Missouri. After the game had ended, Pelini took the blame in the locker room and did the same in front of the cameras.

“I just said what I believed,” Pelini said. “When it’s good, it’s them, it’s theirs. But when they don’t perform well, it should fall on me.”

Any players who hadn’t been converted to The Pelini Way – and Glenn said there were a few – were believers after that public display of self-responsibility. His angry demeanor that night seemed to be the mark of fury, but time has revealed it to mean a lot more to the players.

“I think we had 90, 95 percent buy in before that,” Glenn said, “but there were still people lingering that hadn’t quite bought in yet. We got those guys now. As a whole, as a team, everybody’s bought in. Everybody’s clicking. Everybody’s on the same page.”

So much so that Glenn couldn’t pick out one practice over the course of the last two weeks that was better than the others.

“All of them were really good,” Glenn said. “Usually your team take the identity of your head coach, and a lot of people are starting to take that.”

In recent weeks, Pelini had described it as a “us against the world” mentality, at least when it came to road games. Glenn used another analogy.

“It could be war now, tomorrow, anytime, he’s going to war with us, anytime.”


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