The problem with Nebraska starts with the name, the mascot, the essence of the place.
They’re called the Cornhuskers.
As the legend goes, the term actually came from a sportswriter in 1900 named Cy Sherman, who started calling using “Cornhuskers” to refer to the football team that was referred to at the time as the Nebraska Bugeaters. A few years later, it stuck.
These days, we have lots of mascots in sports that represent relics of the old world: Knights, Pirates, Raptors, Trojans, Cavaliers. We could go on and on.
For people in Nebraska, the name Cornhuskers represents a similar tradition, but with a more personal and meaningful touch. It signifies the hard, noble work of farmers who settled on the Great Plains and fed America, a lifestyle that went hand-in-hand with the sport of football as they saw it at the turn of the 20th century.
But in the modern world, corn crops are processed by machines that can handled multiple tons per hour. The industry has evolved. There are no more actual corn huskers.
The state’s other big cash crop, however, has not evolved. Nebraska football still does the same thing every year.
After starting 5-1 and looking like a lock to reach the postseason for the first time since 2016 – yes, you read that right – Nebraska’s season is once again on the ropes after a 27-20 loss to UCLA.
The level of catastrophe in this result is hard to fully and accurately convey. It’s not just that UCLA was 2-5 or that Nebraska was playing at home or that the Bruins pretty much dominated the game and took a 27-7 lead midway through the third quarter.
It’s the pattern.
Last year, Nebraska was 5-3 with winnable games remaining. It finished 5-7. In 2022, Nebraska was 3-3 and lost its next five games. In 2021, Nebraska was 3-3 and couldn’t find even one more stinkin’ win. In 2019, the Huskers were 4-2 and missed out on bowl eligibility because they lost five of their last six and couldn’t beat 4-8 Purdue.
So the November collapse is not only real, it’s as predictable as the fall harvest. And much to the horror of Nebraska fans, it’s happening again.
At 5-4, Nebraska needs to either win at Southern California, beat Wisconsin or go to Iowa the day after Thanksgiving and win in Kinnick Stadium to become bowl eligible and prevent another horrific late-season slide.
It won’t be easy, especially given how difficult things have been offensively for freshman quarterback Dylan Raiola the last few weeks. Nebraska has scored a total of 58 points in its last four games.
At this point, nobody expects coach Matt Rhule to launch the Huskers from nowhere to national title contention. He won at Temple, he won at Baylor and it would be one of the more stunning developments in recent college football history if he doesn’t eventually win at Nebraska.
But still, there’s no good excuse or explanation for losing at home to a very bad UCLA team. After paying Rhule a bunch of money (he’s owed $56 million after this season) to break this intolerable bowl streak, a mascot in blue jeans and a red cowboy hat representing a 1900s-era farmer who no longer husks his own corn is enough false advertising.
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That’s why Nebraska is No. 1 in the Misery Index, a weekly measurement of which programs are feeling the most angst.
Four more in misery
Penn State: A lot of people can watch the same movie time and again but still find it enthralling, even though they know every line down to the letter. Boston Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla, for example, has claimed to watch “The Town” multiple times per week. Here at the Misery Index, “Casino” is that movie you just have to click on if you see it come up on the TV guide. Doesn’t matter how many times you’ve seen it, it’s still awesome.
Penn State football is the opposite of that. It’s the movie nobody in their fan base wants to watch on repeat.
Anyone who has invested their time and emotion into this program for the last decade under James Franklin felt it deep in their loins when the Nittany Lions were on the 3-yard line with a chance to tie or take the lead against Ohio State less than seven minutes to go: There’s no way Penn State was scoring. They didn’t, getting stuffed three times before Drew Allar threw an incompletion in the end zone. Penn State never touched the ball again in a 20-13 loss, dropping Franklin to 1-14 against top-five teams and 3-18 against the top 10.
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Clemson: What makes a 33-21 home loss to Louisville so infuriating is that Clemson fans were convinced a lot of the issues of the last few years had been fixed. And why shouldn’t they have been? After an embarrassing 34-3 loss to open the season against Georgia, the Tigers played really well over the next six games, particularly on offense. At minimum, Clemson looked like a team ready to challenge for the ACC title and a College Football Playoff spot. But it turned out to be an orange mirage, and Clemson won’t make the CFP unless it can win the ACC title. They simply don’t have any good wins. Beating Appalachian State, North Carolina State, Stanford, Florida State, Wake Forest and Virginia is not impressive when you’ve gotten smacked around by the two best teams on the schedule.
That’s the reality for Dabo Swinney right now. Clemson is not the best program in the ACC. That would be Miami. It’s not even the second-best because that would be SMU. The national championships are now long in the rear-view mirror, and the Tigers pretty mediocre.
Arizona: It’s almost impossible to believe now, but the Wildcats were indeed ranked 21st in the preseason US LBM Coaches Poll. Even though the architect of Arizona’s turnaround, Jedd Fisch, left for Washington, the return of quarterback Noah Fifita and receiver Tetairoa McMillan gave the Wildcats a 1-2 punch on offense that should have been the foundation for lots of point scoring. Instead, Arizona’s offense has dropped off a cliff under head coach Brent Brennan and offensive coordinator Dino Babers.
Coming into this week, the Wildcats ranked 71st nationally in total offense and 98th in scoring. It was more of the same Saturday in a 56-12 loss to UCF, dropping the Wildcats to 3-6 as Fifita struggled again in this new system. Arizona is without question one of the nation’s most disappointing teams.
Auburn: There will be an Iron Bowl played the Saturday after Thanksgiving, just as it always is. But this year, the state championship of Alabama has already been won – by Vanderbilt of all teams. The Commodores completed an Auburn-Alabama sweep, and became bowl eligible, with a 17-7 win in Jordan-Hare Stadium. It shouldn’t have been a huge surprise. Vanderbilt is a pretty decent team that has been competitive against everyone in the SEC. Auburn is a 3-6 team that needs a miracle to avoid its fourth consecutive losing season.
At this point, Auburn fans have to be wondering, “How did it come to this?” Well, Diego Pavia has played a crazy huge role. The Vanderbilt quarterback beat Auburn last year when he was at New Mexico State. And even before that, in 2022, he beat then-Liberty coach Hugh Freeze 49-14. If you’re one of those people who paid Freeze $6.5 million a year to come to Auburn, it’s fair to wonder whether Pavia would have been a better investment.
Miserable but not miserable enough
Georgia: At this point in the season, you’d find broad agreement across college football that Georgia is the most likely team to win the national championship. The depth of talent is unmatched. The coaching track record is pristine. In wins over Texas and Clemson, they’ve already proven they can beat some of the best teams in the country. But is Carson Beck good enough to lead the Bulldogs to the promised land? It’s a legitimate question for Georgia fans to ask. Because even in a 34-20 win over Florida, a game that was tied deep into the fourth quarter, Beck threw three interceptions. That gives him 11 for the season and eight in the last three weeks. He just makes too many mistakes, and Georgia fans are going to have heartburn every time he drops back to throw.
Virginia Tech: A year ago, Syracuse decided that the 6-6 trajectory of the program wasn’t good enough and hired Fran Brown, who was the defensive backs coach at Georgia, to replace Dino Babers. It’s a decision that has paid off handsomely. Syracuse is now 6-2 and full of excitement after beating Virginia Tech 38-31 in overtime.
Meanwhile, Virginia Tech fans watched their team blow a 21-3 lead and give up a 14-play touchdown drive at the end of regulation to tie things up with 29 seconds to go with a team that hasn’t progressed from last year’s 7-6 record under Brent Pry. If you’re jealous of the excitement from Syracuse football fans, there might be a problem with your program.
Oklahoma State: For the second week in a row, we are asking where the fire is with Mike Gundy as a team that was projected to be a College Football Playoff contender sinks to 3-6 (0-6 in the Big 12) after a 42-21 loss at home to Arizona State. Obviously, this season is gone and it’s not coming back. So we can move on to the bigger picture here, which begins with the following statement Gundy made in his postgame press conference.
“I’m not sure sure I agreed with our schemes,” said Gundy, who mostly appears bored as he comes into the home stretch of his 20th season. “There are some things I don’t really agree with.”
Though he declined to elaborate, that’s a pretty strange thing to say. And it begs more than a few questions – questions like, Aren’t you the…head coach? Do you talk to your coordinators? Are you attending meetings? Are you going to practice? And if there are things in the scheme and gameplan that you don’t agree with, aren’t you the person with the power to change them?
Wisconsin: The great thing about the Badgers’ rivalry with Iowa is how similar the two programs are. They are quintessential Big Ten overachievers, playing a particular brand of Midwestern football that evokes images of frostbite, beer and heavy bruising. Among their 98 meetings, only two wins separate them. In many ways, they are each others’ greatest measuring stick – and right now the reading is clear. Wisconsin has lost touch with its rival after a 42-10 Iowa victory. Two years into the Luke Fickell era, why aren’t the Badgers better than this? Why are they on a three-game losing streak against the Hawkeyes without any of them being particularly close? Why do the Badgers feel like they’ve been bumped down into the third or fourth tier of Big Ten programs? Between 1998 and 2019, Wisconsin was basically a Top 25 staple. Now, the Badgers are just jumping around the middle of the Big Ten standings.
(This story was updated to change a video).
