Off Season College Football News from other places

[Jim14510]

I think the reads at OLB were a little too complicated. I’m pretty sure I read that he’s got a legit learning disability. Hope it works out for him on the line.

I was thinking he was skinny for OLB. Had a good frame though.

 

[Ext. 55]

Nebraska projected depth chart: Amended offense looks to reverse negative trends​

LINCOLN, Neb. — Nebraska on offense after three years in the Scott Frost system has discovered the fountain of youth.
And it’s not necessarily a welcomed find.

As 2021 begins, the Huskers’ offensive roster includes just six scholarship players who’ve spent more than two seasons in the program. Since the end of Frost’s second season, 16 of the 25 scholarship players to enter the transfer portal played on the offensive side — including six of seven since the 2020 season ended.
This week brought news on the departures of quarterback Luke McCaffrey, who started two games last season, veteran wide receiver Kade Warner and backup offensive lineman Will Farniok.
It’s an ominous sign for an offensive unit that’s bidding to reverse two-year declines in scoring and yards per play.
The Huskers are young and getting younger, in particular at running back and receiver, where the only five players not listed as freshmen — after the 2020 NCAA eligibility freeze — transferred into the program over the past eight months.

Nebraska didn’t publish a depth chart in 2020. It’s not likely to produce an official document during the offseason to come.
Nevertheless, here’s an early forecast for the projected 2021 starting lineup and top backups on offense.

​

Quarterback​

Starter: Adrian Martinez
Backup: Logan Smothers
Others on scholarship: Heinrich Haarberg
With a shot to become the first three-time yearlong captain in Nebraska’s storied history, Martinez heads toward next season as the clear leader to retain the starting position he’s held for 27 of Frost’s 32 games in charge of the Huskers. Martinez joins Desmond Ridder of Cincinnati, Miami’s D’Eriq King and Malik Cunningham of Louisville as returning FBS quarterbacks with 5,000 career passing and 1,500 rushing yards.
Martinez ranked second to Alabama’s Mac Jones among Power 5 QBs in 2020 with a 71.5 percent completion rate, a single-season Nebraska record. But his yards per passing attempt dropped to a career-low 7.0, as did his 9.8 yards per completion.
Martinez’s touchdown passes dipped from 17 as a freshman to 10 in 2019 and four last season. And he was benched after two games last fall, regaining the job when McCaffrey committed four turnovers in an embarrassing loss against Illinois.
Most troubling for Martinez? When he threw a pass that traveled more than 10 yards in the air last season, he was 18-of-38 for 404 yards with one touchdown and three interceptions.
Smothers will get a look in the spring. He was a dynamic dual-threat QB at Muscle Shoals (Ala.) High School in 2019 and enrolled in January 2020, spending his first year on campus stuck inside to stay healthy and to study up.
Can he push Martinez, whose struggles with turnovers continued late into his third season? Maybe. Regardless, the Huskers need Smothers to get ready. Martinez has dealt with injuries since his junior year of high school. And Haarberg, coming from Class C-2 Kearney (Neb.) Catholic, requires time to adjust to the college level.
Their progress in the spring and the health of all three quarterbacks will factor in Nebraska’s decision to stand pat or pursue another QB through the transfer portal.

​

Running back​

Starter: Markese Stepp
Backups: Rahmir Johnson, Sevion Morrison, Marvin Scott III, Ronald Thompkins
Others on scholarship: Gabe Ervin Jr.
Nebraska’s four returning backs on scholarship combined to rush for 116 yards and one score on 37 carries. Dedrick Mills is gone to pursue the NFL, and Wan’Dale Robinson, a receiver who played extensively at running back over the past two seasons, transferred this month to Kentucky.
Enter Stepp, a four-star back in the 2018 recruiting cycle out of Indianapolis with offers from Notre Dame, Tennessee, Michigan, Wisconsin and Miami. He went to USC and rushed in 2019 for 307 yards on 48 carries. But an ankle injury cut short his season, and he lost playing time to two other backs in 2020. Stepp finished with 165 yards on 45 carries in five games and transferred to Nebraska in January.
At 6-foot and 235 pounds, he looks like a candidate to carry a big load for the Huskers, a scenario that’s worked favorably when used under Frost with Mills and Devine Ozigbo.
Of the second- and third-year backs, Johnson and Scott have put the most on film. But they were underused last year. Scott brings a hard-nosed style in the mold of Mills; Johnson is best with space to operate. Morrison and Thompkins, well-rounded backs when healthy, both missed most of last season with health issues. Thompkins’ injuries appear chronic.
With Ervin, a 6-1, 190-pound freshman in Lincoln for spring practice, running backs coach Ryan Held must develop a playing order and rotation. Even then, it’s unlikely that six backs on scholarship will remain at the end of 2021. But to build a ground game, important for this team to preserve its quarterbacks and benefit from the best defense of the Frost era, the Huskers need to identify roles in the backfield.

​

Wide receiver​

Starters: Oliver Martin, Samori Toure, Zavier Betts
Backups: Chris Hickman, Alante Brown, Levi Falck
Others on scholarship: Omar Manning, Latrell Neville, Will Nixon, Shawn Hardy, Kamonte Grimes, Demariyon Houston, Jamie Nance
Nebraska has never had a receiving corps with more size or less FBS experience. Just 37 receptions return. Gone prematurely are Robinson, after he led Nebraska with 51 catches for 461 yards, and the co-captain Warner.
Toure brings four years of work at the FCS level, recording 155 catches for 2,488 yards and 20 touchdowns. He was an All-American in 2019 and stands 6-3. Toure joins the sixth-year senior Falck at 6-2, 6-2 Betts, 6-6 Hickman and 6-1 Martin to form a top tier of pass catchers who can rise to catch balls over defensive backs unlike any group with which Martinez has worked in Lincoln.
Martin, formerly at Cockeyes and Michigan, played well in starting the final four games in 2020 and combined with Betts as a true freshman and the grad transfer Falck to catch 30 balls. Brown was slow to get comfortable in his first year, but the Huskers remain high on the former high school QB.
Until Manning shows his talent on the Big Ten stage, no predictions about the 6-4 specimen, picked last year at this time to transform the passing game as a top signee out of junior college. He played four snaps in his first year.
Nixon will be back after a knee injury derailed his first season. And there’s more size among the backups, notably with a group of freshmen that includes the 6-4 Neville, 6-3 Hardy and 6-3 Grimes. Walk-on Wyatt Liewer, who played a big role in 2020, is also 6-3. And look for 6-2 Ty Hahn to begin his push for playing time.


Tight end
Starter: Austin Allen
Backup: Travis Vokolek, Thomas Fidone
Others on scholarship: Kurt Rafdal, James Carnie, AJ Rollins
The reality is that Allen, with 18 catches for 236 yards and one touchdown in 2020, is Nebraska’s returning leader in all three categories. Despite the modest numbers, his fourth season in Lincoln marked something of a breakout. He served as the Huskers’ top downfield threat and developed good chemistry with Martinez. Expect the role of the 6-8 former basketball star to increase and take on mentoring responsibilities, alongside Vokolek, for the three true freshmen at tight end.
Vokolek caught nine passes for 91 yards. He’s a strong blocker and has spent four years in the Big Ten. Of all the first-year freshmen on offense, Fidone appears most likely to receive ample opportunities to play. He’s on campus this winter and already taking action to maximize his long-term potential.
Fidone is Nebraska’s third-highest-rated signee under Frost. He’ll likely grow into his job at tight end, working first as a hybrid receiver with the ability and athleticism to test defenses as a matchup problem from the slot or a wideout spot. He’s a big-play threat that the Huskers need.

​

Offensive line​

Starters: Turner Corcoran, Ethan Piper, Cameron Jurgens, Broc Bando, Bryce Benhart
Backups: Brant Banks, Nouredin Nouili, Trent Hixson, Matt Sichterman, Ezra Miller
Others on scholarship: Jimmy Fritzsche, Michael Lynn, Alex Conn, Henry Lutovsky, Teddy Prochazka, Branson Yager
Four spots look set up front, led by the veteran Jurgens, positioned to start for a third year at center in his fourth season at Nebraska. Is this the time for him to stay healthy and move past the snapping issues that have plagued him over the past two seasons?
If so, Jurgens is a solid anchor. Corcoran and Benhart, former four-star signees in their second and third seasons in the program, give the Huskers a strong pair of tackles. Nebraska’s top-rated 2020 signee, Corcoran filled in nicely for the departed Brenden Jaimes against Rutgers last month to help produce a 620-yard offensive night in the season finale. He looks like an emerging leader.
Piper is back as a good fit at guard. He started the final seven of eight games on the left side in 2020. At right guard, the choice here is Bando, entering his fifth year in the program. Offensive line coach Greg Austin could as easily go with Hixson, the starter at left guard in 2019. But Hixson, after the transfers of Will Farniok and Boe Wilson and the graduation of Matt Farniok, is perhaps more valuable as a backup at all three interior positions. Somebody needs to be ready to step in at center if needed.
Nouili, the Colorado State transfer via Norris High School and Frankfurt, Germany, is another candidate for interior time. He started seven games at guard for CSU in 2019. Sichterman has trained at guard and tackle in his four seasons. And Miller, an intriguing 2020 addition, came to Nebraska last summer as a walk-on from Cockeyes, where he landed as a four-star prospect in the 2019 class.

Good stuff from the Athletic here. Thanks for posting.

 

[Black5hirt]

I dunno, I just C&P the story

Cuckeye’s in the story, nice!

 

[LoudHogRider]

Cuckeye’s in the story, nice!

I think that's one of my favorite site features. @HuskerGarrett has an auto-correct feature that changes the spelling of the State to the East to Cockeyes every time. I've seen the words transformed in posts I've made. Also, fuck those guys.

 

[HuskerGarrett]

I think that's one of my favorite site features. @HuskerGarrett has an auto-correct feature that changes the spelling of the State to the East to Cockeyes every time. I've seen the words transformed in posts I've made. Also, fuck those guys.

It is a very important feature. The only time it doesn’t make sense is when the Cockeye State Cyclones are mentioned but that’s ok

 

[SoCal_Corn]

Cockeye
Cockeye
Cockeye

 

[Jim14510]

It is a very important feature. The only time it doesn’t make sense is when the Cockeyes State Cyclones are mentioned but that’s ok

Its ok there too.

 

[SoCal_Corn]

Cuckeye’s in the story, nice!

It is a very important feature. The only time it doesn’t make sense is when the Cockeyes State Cyclones are mentioned but that’s ok

And Northern I-o-w-a too:

Nebraska added Kolarevic this month as a transfer from Northern Cockeyes, where he made 144 tackles in 2018 and ‘19.

 

[Jim14510]

And Northern I-o-w-a too:

Nebraska added Kolarevic this month as a transfer from Northern Cockeyes, where he made 144 tackles in 2018 and ‘19.

 

[SoCal_Corn]

Nope

Northern Cockeye
Eastern Cockeye
Southern Cockeye
Western Cockeye
Central Cockeye

All the same Cockeye to me

 

[Faux Sean Callahan]

College football recruiting rankings: Grading the Class of 2017

Our annual regrading of the recruiting class rankings from four years ago has some familiar teams at the top, followed by several surprises.

theathletic.com

I think this is an article 1620 broke down where they reranked the 2017 class. Giving teams points for all americans, conference, starter, key back up, miss....... Nebraska's rank..............

 

[SoCal_Corn]

‘So frickin’ loaded’: Lavonte David, Miami Northwestern and the greatest high school team ever​

When Quavon Taylor watches Buccaneers linebacker Lavonte David play in the Super Bowl on Sunday, he’ll think of all those suffocating afternoons sweating alongside David and fellow linebacker Sean Spence on Miami Northwestern High’s practice field. He’ll think about the Bulls winning the 2007 Class 6A state title and being crowned mythical national champs by USA Today. He’ll recall what some have said is the best high school football team ever assembled. Taylor will remember how David never pouted when everyone else got named first-team All-Dade County or when David had to go to junior college while his teammates headed off to FBS schools.
Taylor also will remember the times he didn’t want to see David, and he’ll love his former teammate even more.
There were days in 2009 and 2010 when David or Spence would try to visit Taylor, but every time they came, Taylor told the guards to send them away. He didn’t want David or Spence to see him in jail, to remember him that way.

Taylor was the middle linebacker, the bulldozer who appeared suddenly and crushed ballcarriers when they reached the line of scrimmage. Spence was the weakside linebacker, the do-it-all star who took the signals from the coaching staff and translated them to the entire defense. David was the strongside linebacker, the dirty work guy who played from sideline to sideline and didn’t care whether he had to make the tackle or haul ass to cover a receiver down the field. Together, they were the beating heart of that Northwestern defense. After high school, Spence went on to immediate success at Miami. David had to start his college career at Fort Scott (Kan.) Community College. He transferred to Nebraska in 2010 while Taylor sat in jail, held without bond while awaiting trial on charges that included armed robbery and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon stemming from a March 2009 incident while Taylor was home on spring break from South Florida, where he had gone to play football.

“I didn’t want them to see me down like that,” Taylor said. “I didn’t want it to bring them down. I just wanted them to keep doing what they were doing and being successful.”
Taylor was fighting the most serious of the charges, which could have put him away for life. He knew he didn’t match the description witnesses had given, but he still feared the worst. He’d watched hardened men return to their cells and bawl after being sentenced to decades. Taylor knew he should get out, but a jury would decide his fate. On Oct. 7, 2010, that jury delivered the words Taylor prayed he’d hear: Not guilty.
I’ve got to be a better person, Taylor remembered thinking as the foreman read the verdict. I’ve got to make better choices. I’ve got to make better decisions.
“I really saw my life flash before my eyes,” he said. “Next to having my son, next to marrying my wife, that was one of the best days of my life.”
Taylor knew he had plenty of examples to follow, starting with his two fellow Northwestern linebackers. By then, it was clear David and Spence were bound for the NFL. When all three got together for breakfast during one of David’s visits home shortly after Taylor’s release, David and Spence offered to help Taylor try and resume his football career. “Those guys are like my brothers,” David said. “We built a relationship that’s going to last forever.”
Taylor could have sulked over all the time he’d lost and just languished in Miami, but he didn’t want the teammates who felt more like brothers to see that, either. So he enrolled at Tuskegee University in Alabama. He played two seasons, racking up 209 tackles before heading home to Miami to take care of his ill grandmother.
While David starred with the Bucs and Spence played six seasons in the NFL, Taylor kept trying to make good on the promise he made in that courtroom. He finished his political science degree at the University of Houston while his high school sweetheart-turned-wife Crystal worked as an OB/GYN resident at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston. Taylor has created an organization called Men Against Dying Early (MADE) and launched a podcast called The Process that features the stories of people who have overcome adversity to succeed. He is the father to 3-year-old Quavon Jr. — whose godfather is none other than Lavonte David — that he always wished he’d had. When Crystal’s residency ends and she chooses the best of numerous job offers, Taylor plans to apply to a law school nearby.

---

David didn’t get much of the spotlight on that star-studded Northwestern team but wound up being the most successful player of the group. He has made at least 100 tackles in seven of his nine NFL seasons. He holds Tampa Bay franchise records for most career tackles for loss (118) and most fumble recoveries in a career (16). And he’s still pretty much the same guy Taylor knew at Northwestern. “Lavonte David is one of the most selfless people I know,” Taylor said. “He deserves this.”
The collection of talent on the 2007 team — when David was a senior — was staggering. In an era before the days of IMG Academy pulling in top prospects from across the nation, the Bulls’ 2007 squad was loaded with locally grown players. Most came from the Liberty City neighborhood near the school, but a few came from Carol City or Overtown or Miami Gardens. Twenty-six players from that team ended up playing in Division I, and seven made it onto NFL rosters. Eight seniors from the 2007 team (Spence, quarterback Jacory Harris, defensive tackle Marcus Forston, offensive linemen Brandon Washington and Ben Jones and receivers Tommy Streeter, Aldarius Johnson and Kendall Thompkins) signed with Miami the following February. That team also included a freshman receiver/third-team quarterback who took over for Harris as the Bulls’ starting QB the following season. His name? Teddy Bridgewater.
“Our practices were bigger than the games,” said Wayne Times, a junior on that team who went on to play receiver for Mario Cristobal at Florida International and who two years ago started Marlo’s Roasted Corn, a now-beloved South Florida food truck. (Brandon Drayton, a former Northwestern receiver who played collegiately at Howard, works with Times now.)
The Miami Herald’s All-Dade first team in 2007 included five linebackers. Spence and Taylor made the list. So did Ohio State-bound Etienne Sabino from Krop. Who didn’t make it? David. You can find him with the second-teamers, where he’s misidentified as a defensive back and his first name is misspelled “Levonte.” This drove Spence and Taylor wild. While they surmised the paper’s editors probably felt they couldn’t populate the entire first team with Bulls, it vexed them because they understood how much David meant to Northwestern. It didn’t bother David, though. When Taylor would complain about that or similar slights, David would provide a version of the same answer: As long as we’re winning, I’m good.
And the Bulls were winning.

The Bulls went 30-0 from 2006 to 2007, beating some of the most talented teams in Florida, but their dominance wasn’t confined to the Sunshine State. Early in the 2007 season, the Bulls went to Texas to play Southlake Carroll, an opponent thought to be their equal. Terell Killings, a Miami real estate agent who played offensive guard for the Bulls and went on to play at Howard, remembers arriving in his hotel room and seeing a copy of a magazine featuring Dragons quarterback Riley Dodge and the headline “Bigger, Faster, Smarter.” The other Bulls got the same magazine in their rooms, and they took that personally.
The next night, Northwestern snapped Southlake Carroll’s 49-game winning streak before a national TV audience on ESPNU. The only team that threatened Northwestern that season was Deerfield Beach. Led by future Michigan QB Denard Robinson, the Bucks led by two and were about to put the state semifinal away when the Bulls stoned Robinson at the goal line and then embarked on a 99-yard drive for the winning touchdown. Northwestern capped its championship season by blowing out Orlando’s Boone High 41-0 at the Citrus Bowl. Asked if the Bulls were the best high school team in history, Killings just laughed. “We were,” he said. “No doubt.”
As loaded as Northwestern’s roster was, it was a rocky path to a repeat in 2007.
Two days prior to the Florida 6A state title game in 2006, Antwain Easterling, who had run for almost 3,000 yards that season, was arrested and later charged with lewd and lascivious battery on a minor. Coverup allegations followed. The school principal and the entire coaching staff were fired. A year later, the staff was exonerated. Easterling’s charges were later dropped after he completed a pretrial program.
For about a month stretch leading up to the 2007 season, quarterback Harris and fellow seniors Forston and Spence coached the team as it prepared for fall camp while wondering who their new coaches would be.

“It really was crazy,” Forston said. “We were heading into our senior years. We’d just won state and lost all of our coaches. We were like, ‘Man, we got leaders on this team with Jacory, me and Sean – nothing says that we can’t practice by ourselves.’ So that’s what we did. We had 7-on-7s and did individual drills. Sean talked to the guys about scheme. We had them understand the fronts, where guys were supposed to line up. We’d been on the varsity since ninth grade. We knew that defense from top to bottom. We knew what we were looking for. I felt like we became closer from all of that. We’d realized that all this was bigger than football. Guys understood that leadership was important.”
Harris, the son of a former Bulls coach, called all his plays as a senior at Northwestern. “We didn’t have to worry about holding guys accountable,” Harris said. In late July, the Bulls got a new head coach when Billy Rolle was hired.

Harris served as a de facto offensive coordinator, incorporating some new plays he got from picking the brains of college recruiters. One wrinkle he added to the Bulls’ offense that year was something he got from the Oregon coach who had been trying to land him and wideout Streeter. “Chip Kelly told me on the zone read, we should read the one-technique instead of the defensive end,” Harris said. “We ran it and it worked exactly like he told me it would. Our receivers would be like, ‘Come on, man, we need the ball and you’re running these trick plays.’”
“I loved talking to Jacory,” said Kelly, now the head coach at UCLA. “He was a really mature kid. He always wanted to talk football. It was like talking to a coach on the phone. I went out to one of their practices and there were probably 15 or 20 other colleges out there watching. That team was so frickin’ loaded.”
“He was a student of the game from such a young age,” said FAU assistant coach Chris Perkins, a member of the 2006 Bulls staff who had coached Harris for years. “Same with Sean and Marcus, those guys were so intelligent and they came from good families. Jacory never lost a game as a starter. That program was on auto-pilot. The standard had already been set.
“I later coached under Billy Rolle, and we laughed about it. He said that he didn’t touch anything with that team. He said he was just there to manage it. ”

---

The eight seniors who signed with Miami were part of the nation’s top-ranked recruiting class in 2008. That group was expected to bring the Canes back to the top of the college football world. In 2009, the Canes finished No. 19 in the AP Top 25, but the program backslid from there. Many of those old Bulls won starting jobs at UM and had some success, but they didn’t have the impact they figured they would in Coral Gables. Spence was named ACC Defensive Rookie of the Year and later made first-team All-ACC. Harris was one of the most prolific passers in Canes history. Brandon Washington, a 6-4, 330-pound offensive guard, also made first-team All-ACC before he turned pro and spent seven seasons between the NFL and CFL. Forston earned freshman all-America honors in 2008 before seeing his career sidetracked by an array of injuries.
“We definitely thought we were gonna bring a title back to Miami,” Spence said. “That was our mindset going in. We had the talent. We worked hard. We battled, but for whatever reason, it didn’t happen. I wish I could tell you why.”

Taylor has a theory. He thinks eight wasn’t enough; Miami should have signed more Bulls that year. “UM would have been in a better position if they’d gotten the other guys,” Taylor said. “It was something special. It shouldn’t have been broken up, but things happen.”
Harris, who played QB at Miami, felt the same way. At Northwestern, David excelled in coverage. Taylor was the run-stopper, the hardest hitter. Spence had the best of both worlds. “All three of those guys were so good,” Harris said. “We tried so hard to get all three of them at UM. I told one of our coaches. He goes, ‘We already got eight of you guys. You want us to take all of ‘em?’ ‘Yes, I do. You need to.’”
The star of that Bulls team has turned out to be the guy Miami didn’t want, a player who was rated as only a two-star prospect. One reason for the lack of interest in David? His grades. He wasn’t going to be eligible to play as a freshman. David initially signed with Middle Tennessee State but chose instead to attend junior college so he could play right away. The coach who recruited David to Fort Scott — and the coach who convinced David to stay when he was ready to quit and go home — was former Arena Football League star Eddie Brown. As fate would have it, David will play in the Super Bowl on Sunday alongside Brown’s son, Antonio.
David starred immediately at Fort Scott — his teammate and occasional barber was current Bucs teammate Jason Pierre-Paul — and after two seasons the two-star high school prospect had become a four-star JUCO transfer. He chose to continue his career at Nebraska.
“We were begging on the coaches at UM. ‘Please, please get this guy. This guy needs to be at UM. He’s gonna really help us win!’” Forston said of David, who also grew up in the same Pork ‘n’ Beans neighborhood and went to Holmes Elementary School with Forston.
As a youngster, David played for the Liberty City Warriors, the youth football organization founded by 2 Live Crew rapper and Liberty City native Luther Campbell. Campbell was an early fan of David, whom he ranks alongside Chad Johnson and Devonta Freeman as some of the best players to come out of the program. Campbell also loved David’s parents, who were always willing to volunteer their time to help all the players.

“He’s one of the baddest linebackers to come out of Florida since Derrick Thomas,” Campbell said.
Campbell, a Miami superfan, uses his own experience as a recruiter of sorts in the music business to explain how his Canes missed on David. After 2 Live Crew blew up, Campbell founded Luke Records. One of the company’s biggest finds was a Miami rapper named Armando Perez, better known today as Pitbull. But years earlier, Campbell got a package from a Seattle rapper named Anthony Ray. He wasn’t interested. “I didn’t sign Sir Mix-a-Lot,” Campbell said, laughing. “He sent me his mixtape. A guy from Seattle doing Miami bass. It happens.”
So when he watched a guy from Miami wrecking ball carriers at Nebraska, Campbell understood. He also wasn’t surprised. He thought the grades issue that hindered David in high school would be an anomaly for a person who in all other circumstances did exactly what he was supposed to do. “I always knew his work ethic was going to get him to wherever he needed to go,” Campbell said.
David, with all of his old teammates now passionate Tampa Bay Bucs fans, will try to become the second member of the 2007 Northwestern Bulls team to win a Super Bowl ring, following Streeter, who won one with the Baltimore Ravens in 2013.

(Kim Klement / USA Today)

---

Forston, the highest-rated recruit on the Northwestern team after piling up 20 sacks and seven forced fumbles his senior season, had a strong debut season at Miami before injuries derailed his career. There was a torn Labia, ankle surgery and then three major knee operations. “I just wasn’t the same,” he said. “I’d lost that quick-twitch that I used to have.” He went undrafted in 2012 but stuck for a couple of seasons with the Patriots and then had a brief stint with the Rams. He earned a degree in criminology from UM. He got married. He and his wife were expecting their first child.
“I had two choices: I could chase this football career, not knowing if I was gonna make another team or not – and I’d watched guys before me struggle with that, going for two or three years hoping they get another shot,” he said. “I was going to continue to work out and eat right and stay prepared, but I put in job applications for careers in law enforcement.”
The first department to reply was the Atlanta police. A little over a year later, after attending the police academy and doing field training, Forston was in uniform on the Atlanta streets as a police officer.

“Football was always important to me, but it doesn’t define me,” Forston said. “I grew up wanting to play football and I wanted to be around some type of team environment, and I knew, ‘Hey, these things are real.’ I grew up in the inner city and in the projects. I wanted to be a voice and for people there to know that just because you see someone in (a police) uniform that they’re not against you.”
Harris, who threw for almost 9,000 yards in his career at Miami, spent five seasons playing in the CFL before becoming a Miami-Dade firefighter last year.
“Growing up the way we did, they were looked up to as heroes to the kids for what they did on the field and in the classroom. Now, they are real-life heroes for trying to keep us safe,” said Spence, who used some of the money he made in the NFL to invest in real estate and also in a Flashfire Pizza in Boca Raton.
The story of that 2007 team also took one heartbreaking turn: the 2014 death of former Bulls cornerback Bradley Holt. Holt, the step-brother of USF star quarterback Quinton Flowers, was shot and killed at age 24 by a driver angry that Holt had yelled a warning at him after the driver had been reckless while near some young children in Holt’s neighborhood.
In all, the greatest high school team in Florida — and possibly U.S. — history has produced several police officers, firefighters, teachers, coaches, lawyers, personal trainers and business owners, as well as a former backup QB (Times) who entered the mobile restaurant industry. “Whenever he brings his food truck,” Harris said, “everybody comes out.” Coming from where they grew up, they weren’t supposed to succeed in such a high percentage. But they have, and to a man, they say the experience of playing together inspired their post-high school lives. “It definitely helped us out in life in the long run,” David said.

“All of these guys ended up doing really well,” said Perkins. “They’re being productive, model citizens. I’m so proud of all of these dudes.”

 

[Jim14510]

‘So frickin’ loaded’: Lavonte David, Miami Northwestern and the greatest high school team ever​

When Quavon Taylor watches Buccaneers linebacker Lavonte David play in the Super Bowl on Sunday, he’ll think of all those suffocating afternoons sweating alongside David and fellow linebacker Sean Spence on Miami Northwestern High’s practice field. He’ll think about the Bulls winning the 2007 Class 6A state title and being crowned mythical national champs by USA Today. He’ll recall what some have said is the best high school football team ever assembled. Taylor will remember how David never pouted when everyone else got named first-team All-Dade County or when David had to go to junior college while his teammates headed off to FBS schools.
Taylor also will remember the times he didn’t want to see David, and he’ll love his former teammate even more.
There were days in 2009 and 2010 when David or Spence would try to visit Taylor, but every time they came, Taylor told the guards to send them away. He didn’t want David or Spence to see him in jail, to remember him that way.

Taylor was the middle linebacker, the bulldozer who appeared suddenly and crushed ballcarriers when they reached the line of scrimmage. Spence was the weakside linebacker, the do-it-all star who took the signals from the coaching staff and translated them to the entire defense. David was the strongside linebacker, the dirty work guy who played from sideline to sideline and didn’t care whether he had to make the tackle or haul ass to cover a receiver down the field. Together, they were the beating heart of that Northwestern defense. After high school, Spence went on to immediate success at Miami. David had to start his college career at Fort Scott (Kan.) Community College. He transferred to Nebraska in 2010 while Taylor sat in jail, held without bond while awaiting trial on charges that included armed robbery and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon stemming from a March 2009 incident while Taylor was home on spring break from South Florida, where he had gone to play football.

“I didn’t want them to see me down like that,” Taylor said. “I didn’t want it to bring them down. I just wanted them to keep doing what they were doing and being successful.”
Taylor was fighting the most serious of the charges, which could have put him away for life. He knew he didn’t match the description witnesses had given, but he still feared the worst. He’d watched hardened men return to their cells and bawl after being sentenced to decades. Taylor knew he should get out, but a jury would decide his fate. On Oct. 7, 2010, that jury delivered the words Taylor prayed he’d hear: Not guilty.
I’ve got to be a better person, Taylor remembered thinking as the foreman read the verdict. I’ve got to make better choices. I’ve got to make better decisions.
“I really saw my life flash before my eyes,” he said. “Next to having my son, next to marrying my wife, that was one of the best days of my life.”
Taylor knew he had plenty of examples to follow, starting with his two fellow Northwestern linebackers. By then, it was clear David and Spence were bound for the NFL. When all three got together for breakfast during one of David’s visits home shortly after Taylor’s release, David and Spence offered to help Taylor try and resume his football career. “Those guys are like my brothers,” David said. “We built a relationship that’s going to last forever.”
Taylor could have sulked over all the time he’d lost and just languished in Miami, but he didn’t want the teammates who felt more like brothers to see that, either. So he enrolled at Tuskegee University in Alabama. He played two seasons, racking up 209 tackles before heading home to Miami to take care of his ill grandmother.
While David starred with the Bucs and Spence played six seasons in the NFL, Taylor kept trying to make good on the promise he made in that courtroom. He finished his political science degree at the University of Houston while his high school sweetheart-turned-wife Crystal worked as an OB/GYN resident at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston. Taylor has created an organization called Men Against Dying Early (MADE) and launched a podcast called The Process that features the stories of people who have overcome adversity to succeed. He is the father to 3-year-old Quavon Jr. — whose godfather is none other than Lavonte David — that he always wished he’d had. When Crystal’s residency ends and she chooses the best of numerous job offers, Taylor plans to apply to a law school nearby.

---

David didn’t get much of the spotlight on that star-studded Northwestern team but wound up being the most successful player of the group. He has made at least 100 tackles in seven of his nine NFL seasons. He holds Tampa Bay franchise records for most career tackles for loss (118) and most fumble recoveries in a career (16). And he’s still pretty much the same guy Taylor knew at Northwestern. “Lavonte David is one of the most selfless people I know,” Taylor said. “He deserves this.”
The collection of talent on the 2007 team — when David was a senior — was staggering. In an era before the days of IMG Academy pulling in top prospects from across the nation, the Bulls’ 2007 squad was loaded with locally grown players. Most came from the Liberty City neighborhood near the school, but a few came from Carol City or Overtown or Miami Gardens. Twenty-six players from that team ended up playing in Division I, and seven made it onto NFL rosters. Eight seniors from the 2007 team (Spence, quarterback Jacory Harris, defensive tackle Marcus Forston, offensive linemen Brandon Washington and Ben Jones and receivers Tommy Streeter, Aldarius Johnson and Kendall Thompkins) signed with Miami the following February. That team also included a freshman receiver/third-team quarterback who took over for Harris as the Bulls’ starting QB the following season. His name? Teddy Bridgewater.
“Our practices were bigger than the games,” said Wayne Times, a junior on that team who went on to play receiver for Mario Cristobal at Florida International and who two years ago started Marlo’s Roasted Corn, a now-beloved South Florida food truck. (Brandon Drayton, a former Northwestern receiver who played collegiately at Howard, works with Times now.)
The Miami Herald’s All-Dade first team in 2007 included five linebackers. Spence and Taylor made the list. So did Ohio State-bound Etienne Sabino from Krop. Who didn’t make it? David. You can find him with the second-teamers, where he’s misidentified as a defensive back and his first name is misspelled “Levonte.” This drove Spence and Taylor wild. While they surmised the paper’s editors probably felt they couldn’t populate the entire first team with Bulls, it vexed them because they understood how much David meant to Northwestern. It didn’t bother David, though. When Taylor would complain about that or similar slights, David would provide a version of the same answer: As long as we’re winning, I’m good.
And the Bulls were winning.

The Bulls went 30-0 from 2006 to 2007, beating some of the most talented teams in Florida, but their dominance wasn’t confined to the Sunshine State. Early in the 2007 season, the Bulls went to Texas to play Southlake Carroll, an opponent thought to be their equal. Terell Killings, a Miami real estate agent who played offensive guard for the Bulls and went on to play at Howard, remembers arriving in his hotel room and seeing a copy of a magazine featuring Dragons quarterback Riley Dodge and the headline “Bigger, Faster, Smarter.” The other Bulls got the same magazine in their rooms, and they took that personally.
The next night, Northwestern snapped Southlake Carroll’s 49-game winning streak before a national TV audience on ESPNU. The only team that threatened Northwestern that season was Deerfield Beach. Led by future Michigan QB Denard Robinson, the Bucks led by two and were about to put the state semifinal away when the Bulls stoned Robinson at the goal line and then embarked on a 99-yard drive for the winning touchdown. Northwestern capped its championship season by blowing out Orlando’s Boone High 41-0 at the Citrus Bowl. Asked if the Bulls were the best high school team in history, Killings just laughed. “We were,” he said. “No doubt.”
As loaded as Northwestern’s roster was, it was a rocky path to a repeat in 2007.
Two days prior to the Florida 6A state title game in 2006, Antwain Easterling, who had run for almost 3,000 yards that season, was arrested and later charged with lewd and lascivious battery on a minor. Coverup allegations followed. The school principal and the entire coaching staff were fired. A year later, the staff was exonerated. Easterling’s charges were later dropped after he completed a pretrial program.
For about a month stretch leading up to the 2007 season, quarterback Harris and fellow seniors Forston and Spence coached the team as it prepared for fall camp while wondering who their new coaches would be.

“It really was crazy,” Forston said. “We were heading into our senior years. We’d just won state and lost all of our coaches. We were like, ‘Man, we got leaders on this team with Jacory, me and Sean – nothing says that we can’t practice by ourselves.’ So that’s what we did. We had 7-on-7s and did individual drills. Sean talked to the guys about scheme. We had them understand the fronts, where guys were supposed to line up. We’d been on the varsity since ninth grade. We knew that defense from top to bottom. We knew what we were looking for. I felt like we became closer from all of that. We’d realized that all this was bigger than football. Guys understood that leadership was important.”
Harris, the son of a former Bulls coach, called all his plays as a senior at Northwestern. “We didn’t have to worry about holding guys accountable,” Harris said. In late July, the Bulls got a new head coach when Billy Rolle was hired.

Harris served as a de facto offensive coordinator, incorporating some new plays he got from picking the brains of college recruiters. One wrinkle he added to the Bulls’ offense that year was something he got from the Oregon coach who had been trying to land him and wideout Streeter. “Chip Kelly told me on the zone read, we should read the one-technique instead of the defensive end,” Harris said. “We ran it and it worked exactly like he told me it would. Our receivers would be like, ‘Come on, man, we need the ball and you’re running these trick plays.’”
“I loved talking to Jacory,” said Kelly, now the head coach at UCLA. “He was a really mature kid. He always wanted to talk football. It was like talking to a coach on the phone. I went out to one of their practices and there were probably 15 or 20 other colleges out there watching. That team was so frickin’ loaded.”
“He was a student of the game from such a young age,” said FAU assistant coach Chris Perkins, a member of the 2006 Bulls staff who had coached Harris for years. “Same with Sean and Marcus, those guys were so intelligent and they came from good families. Jacory never lost a game as a starter. That program was on auto-pilot. The standard had already been set.
“I later coached under Billy Rolle, and we laughed about it. He said that he didn’t touch anything with that team. He said he was just there to manage it. ”

---

The eight seniors who signed with Miami were part of the nation’s top-ranked recruiting class in 2008. That group was expected to bring the Canes back to the top of the college football world. In 2009, the Canes finished No. 19 in the AP Top 25, but the program backslid from there. Many of those old Bulls won starting jobs at UM and had some success, but they didn’t have the impact they figured they would in Coral Gables. Spence was named ACC Defensive Rookie of the Year and later made first-team All-ACC. Harris was one of the most prolific passers in Canes history. Brandon Washington, a 6-4, 330-pound offensive guard, also made first-team All-ACC before he turned pro and spent seven seasons between the NFL and CFL. Forston earned freshman all-America honors in 2008 before seeing his career sidetracked by an array of injuries.
“We definitely thought we were gonna bring a title back to Miami,” Spence said. “That was our mindset going in. We had the talent. We worked hard. We battled, but for whatever reason, it didn’t happen. I wish I could tell you why.”

Taylor has a theory. He thinks eight wasn’t enough; Miami should have signed more Bulls that year. “UM would have been in a better position if they’d gotten the other guys,” Taylor said. “It was something special. It shouldn’t have been broken up, but things happen.”
Harris, who played QB at Miami, felt the same way. At Northwestern, David excelled in coverage. Taylor was the run-stopper, the hardest hitter. Spence had the best of both worlds. “All three of those guys were so good,” Harris said. “We tried so hard to get all three of them at UM. I told one of our coaches. He goes, ‘We already got eight of you guys. You want us to take all of ‘em?’ ‘Yes, I do. You need to.’”
The star of that Bulls team has turned out to be the guy Miami didn’t want, a player who was rated as only a two-star prospect. One reason for the lack of interest in David? His grades. He wasn’t going to be eligible to play as a freshman. David initially signed with Middle Tennessee State but chose instead to attend junior college so he could play right away. The coach who recruited David to Fort Scott — and the coach who convinced David to stay when he was ready to quit and go home — was former Arena Football League star Eddie Brown. As fate would have it, David will play in the Super Bowl on Sunday alongside Brown’s son, Antonio.
David starred immediately at Fort Scott — his teammate and occasional barber was current Bucs teammate Jason Pierre-Paul — and after two seasons the two-star high school prospect had become a four-star JUCO transfer. He chose to continue his career at Nebraska.
“We were begging on the coaches at UM. ‘Please, please get this guy. This guy needs to be at UM. He’s gonna really help us win!’” Forston said of David, who also grew up in the same Pork ‘n’ Beans neighborhood and went to Holmes Elementary School with Forston.
As a youngster, David played for the Liberty City Warriors, the youth football organization founded by 2 Live Crew rapper and Liberty City native Luther Campbell. Campbell was an early fan of David, whom he ranks alongside Chad Johnson and Devonta Freeman as some of the best players to come out of the program. Campbell also loved David’s parents, who were always willing to volunteer their time to help all the players.

“He’s one of the baddest linebackers to come out of Florida since Derrick Thomas,” Campbell said.
Campbell, a Miami superfan, uses his own experience as a recruiter of sorts in the music business to explain how his Canes missed on David. After 2 Live Crew blew up, Campbell founded Luke Records. One of the company’s biggest finds was a Miami rapper named Armando Perez, better known today as Pitbull. But years earlier, Campbell got a package from a Seattle rapper named Anthony Ray. He wasn’t interested. “I didn’t sign Sir Mix-a-Lot,” Campbell said, laughing. “He sent me his mixtape. A guy from Seattle doing Miami bass. It happens.”
So when he watched a guy from Miami wrecking ball carriers at Nebraska, Campbell understood. He also wasn’t surprised. He thought the grades issue that hindered David in high school would be an anomaly for a person who in all other circumstances did exactly what he was supposed to do. “I always knew his work ethic was going to get him to wherever he needed to go,” Campbell said.
David, with all of his old teammates now passionate Tampa Bay Bucs fans, will try to become the second member of the 2007 Northwestern Bulls team to win a Super Bowl ring, following Streeter, who won one with the Baltimore Ravens in 2013.

(Kim Klement / USA Today)

---

Forston, the highest-rated recruit on the Northwestern team after piling up 20 sacks and seven forced fumbles his senior season, had a strong debut season at Miami before injuries derailed his career. There was a torn Labia, ankle surgery and then three major knee operations. “I just wasn’t the same,” he said. “I’d lost that quick-twitch that I used to have.” He went undrafted in 2012 but stuck for a couple of seasons with the Patriots and then had a brief stint with the Rams. He earned a degree in criminology from UM. He got married. He and his wife were expecting their first child.
“I had two choices: I could chase this football career, not knowing if I was gonna make another team or not – and I’d watched guys before me struggle with that, going for two or three years hoping they get another shot,” he said. “I was going to continue to work out and eat right and stay prepared, but I put in job applications for careers in law enforcement.”
The first department to reply was the Atlanta police. A little over a year later, after attending the police academy and doing field training, Forston was in uniform on the Atlanta streets as a police officer.

“Football was always important to me, but it doesn’t define me,” Forston said. “I grew up wanting to play football and I wanted to be around some type of team environment, and I knew, ‘Hey, these things are real.’ I grew up in the inner city and in the projects. I wanted to be a voice and for people there to know that just because you see someone in (a police) uniform that they’re not against you.”
Harris, who threw for almost 9,000 yards in his career at Miami, spent five seasons playing in the CFL before becoming a Miami-Dade firefighter last year.
“Growing up the way we did, they were looked up to as heroes to the kids for what they did on the field and in the classroom. Now, they are real-life heroes for trying to keep us safe,” said Spence, who used some of the money he made in the NFL to invest in real estate and also in a Flashfire Pizza in Boca Raton.
The story of that 2007 team also took one heartbreaking turn: the 2014 death of former Bulls cornerback Bradley Holt. Holt, the step-brother of USF star quarterback Quinton Flowers, was shot and killed at age 24 by a driver angry that Holt had yelled a warning at him after the driver had been reckless while near some young children in Holt’s neighborhood.
In all, the greatest high school team in Florida — and possibly U.S. — history has produced several police officers, firefighters, teachers, coaches, lawyers, personal trainers and business owners, as well as a former backup QB (Times) who entered the mobile restaurant industry. “Whenever he brings his food truck,” Harris said, “everybody comes out.” Coming from where they grew up, they weren’t supposed to succeed in such a high percentage. But they have, and to a man, they say the experience of playing together inspired their post-high school lives. “It definitely helped us out in life in the long run,” David said.

“All of these guys ended up doing really well,” said Perkins. “They’re being productive, model citizens. I’m so proud of all of these dudes.”

Good article. This super bowl is getting David the pub he deserves.

 

[SoCal_Corn]

AVANTE from the ATHLETIC

Avante Dickerson lands on Oregon after laboring over choice​

OMAHA, Neb. — When Nicole Graham had to skip a few manicures or cut back recently on eating out, she said, it was a price well worth paying to help her son get a chance to feel comfortable about his college decision.

“You have to do what you have to do for your kids,” Graham said. “It’s just a sacrifice to make sure he gets to where he needs to be.”
Graham celebrated the moment Wednesday morning at Omaha Westside as Avante Dickerson, the four-star cornerback with offers from the likes of Oregon, LSU, Nebraska, Ohio State and USC, signed with the Ducks in a ceremony streamed live as part of 247Sports’ signing day coverage.

The speedy Dickerson, at 6-foot and 170 pounds, ranks 122nd in the 247Sports Composite and as the No. 8 cornerback. He’s the top-rated prospect from Nebraska and a key addition for Oregon, which entered Wednesday with a class ranked sixth nationally. Dickerson fits as its seventh-highest ranked member.
He labored over the decision but chose the Ducks after last month visiting Minneapolis and Eugene with his mother, then backing out of a commitment made last April to Minnesota. The extended recruiting dead period, imposed by the NCAA since March because of the coronavirus pandemic, robbed Dickerson of the chance to experience recruiting like a typical prospect.
“COVID kind of messed up everything,” Dickerson said.

In the end, though, he felt good about the Ducks after the January trip — with no official involvement from the school or Oregon coaches — allowed him to see the city, the campus and the residence hall in which he’ll live next fall. Safety Verone McKinley III showed him around, and Dickerson got to meet several other players. He did not set foot inside any of Oregon’s renowned athletic facilities.
“He got to hang out with the guys,” Westside coach Brett Froendt said. “I think it comes down to the coach relationship. He had great relationships with Minnesota as well.
“No one did anything wrong. He just felt more comfortable up on that campus for the short time he was there.”
Oregon cornerbacks coach Rod Chance, who left Minnesota for the Ducks after the 2019 season, aided in easing Dickerson’s discomfort with the situation amid the pandemic.
A year ago, Dickerson planned to camp at LSU and take his official visits, paid by the schools. His experience with homestate Nebraska was lukewarm. Dickerson said Wednesday that the Huskers, who’ve signed 13 of 17 in-state players offered by coach Scott Frost since his arrival in December 2017, continued to recruit him in recent weeks. Frost worked as an Oregon assistant under Chip Kelly and Mark Helfrich from 2009-2015.

Dickerson’s best friend, Westside safety Koby Bretz, signed with the Huskers in December. They teamed, with future North Dakota State quarterback Cole Payton, Northern Illinois linebacker signee Cade Haberman and a talented supporting cast, to bring Westside its first state championship in November since 1982.
“They were pushing for me,” Dickerson said of Nebraska. “But at the end of the day, I had to do what’s best for me. I love Scott Frost. I love the coaching staff. I think they’re going to do wonderful things there.

“(But) I just wanted something different. Being out on the West Coast is something different.”
In fact, Dickerson had never visited anywhere out West until last month. By nature, he’s not someone who enters into decisions without conducting research. Before the pandemic, in planning his path through recruiting, Dickerson sat down with his high school coach to pore over roster depth in the secondary at various schools and discuss his chances.
“Avante is one of those young men who’s just not sure,” Froendt said. “He spent as much time as he could. He’s still nervous, but I talked to him about how every college kid has to take a leap of faith at some point.”

Dickerson named a top three in 2019 of Ohio State, LSU and Nebraska. He considered Florida his favorite as a kid. Oregon, which offered early, fell off when Donte Williams, a Nebraska assistant in 2017, left the Ducks to coach corners at USC.
But Dickerson appeared at ease Wednesday morning. He unzipped a black sweatshirt while speaking at the podium, in front of a crowd of Westside teammates and friends, to reveal a T-shirt with the Oregon logo.
The auditorium erupted in applause at his choice.
After the announcement, he posed for photos with his baby nephew, two sisters and Graham.
“It’s been fun but also crazy, kind of mind-blowing, a great experience,” Graham said. “I wouldn’t take it back. It’s just been kind of tough, because you get pulled this way, you get pulled that way. But at the end of the day, Avante’s happy, I’m happy.”
Because of the odd circumstances, Dickerson and his mother got to together experience “a lot of firsts,” she said.
“She’s my world,” Dickerson said. “No matter where I go, she would have supported me. No matter what.”
Graham said she “loved” what she saw of Eugene. She looks forward to a post-pandemic environment at Oregon and stepping foot for the first time inside of Autzen Stadium.
“I’m looking forward to making a lot of noise,” she said.

For Dickerson, who clocked a 4.37-second 40-yard dash in 2018 to ignite recruiting interest, the path ahead is steep. The Ducks return Mykael Wright as an All-Pac 12 cornerback, with DJ James and former five-star prospect Dontae Manning, a 2020 signee out of Kansas City, Mo., to compete at the position ahead of Dickerson.
Froendt said he and Dickerson looked favorably on the opportunity and liked what they heard from Chance.

“He has to put on some weight,” Froendt said, “put on some muscle. But he certainly will have the opportunity to compete quite early, based on who they’ve recruited, who they have coming in and who’s there. That was a big piece, a big part of it.
“He’s got a skill set to fit the corner spot that is pretty special.”

 

[SoCal_Corn]

NEB 2017 RECRUUITING from The Athletic

Nebraska’s 2017 recruiting class re-ranked: Early exits took a toll​

LINCOLN, Neb. — No college football program that signed a top-25 recruiting class four years ago has experienced worse results with it than Nebraska, according to an analysis by The Athletic.
The Huskers placed 70th out of 70 schools in a re-rank of 2017 recruits conducted by Max Olson and published Monday. The project graded the classes of all teams that finished in the top 40 of the final 247Sports Composite rankings in addition to programs that have experienced success over the past four years.
The 2017 Nebraska class, the last group signed by former coach Mike Riley, ranked 23rd nationally at the time it was announced.
Nebraska’s player average of 1.73, adjusted to also factor wins since 2017, placed it last in a bottom five that included Arkansas, Kansas State, Ole Miss and Maryland. It marked a sizable drop-off from the Huskers’ finishes in class re-ranks from 2014 (2.24 player average), 2015 (2.32) and 2016 (2.13).

Points in the re-ranking system were awarded as follows to all 2017 signees and walk-ons who earned scholarships:
5: All-American, award winner, top-50 NFL Draft pick
4: Multiyear starter, all-conference honors
3: One-year starter or key reserve
2: Career backup
0: Left the program, minor or no contribution

Alabama’s class, ranked No. 1 four years ago, finished atop the re-rank with a 3.48 player average and a 79 percent hit rate, which is the percentage of signees who did not leave the program via transfer, dismissal, ineligibility or injuries. The Crimson Tide won 51 games over the past four years and national championships in 2017 and 2020. Their class included four players selected in the first round of last year’s NFL Draft, 2020 Heisman Trophy winner DeVonta Smith, plus star quarterback Mac Jones, running back Najee Harris and offensive tackle Alex Leatherwood from Alabama’s title team last month.

Nebraska has won 16 games since 2017. Its hit rate of 43 percent also ranked last among the 70 programs surveyed.
Offensive tackle Brenden Jaimes was the only Nebraska player to earn four points from the 2017 class. Tight end Austin Allen, nose tackle Damion Daniels and offensive guard Trent Hixson, a former walk-on, earned three. Two points went to Broc Bando, Damian Jackson, Kurt Rafdal, Matt Sichterman, Deontre Thomas and Chris Walker.
Everyone else left the program with remaining eligibility. That includes the five highest-rated signees in the class — wide receiver Tyjon Lindsey, linebacker Avery Roberts, quarterback Tristan Gebbia, receiver Jaevon McQuitty and receiver Keyshawn Johnson Jr.

The Calibraska recruiting campaign helped define the class for Nebraska as it was constructed. It featured four-star prospects Johnson, whose father played for Riley at USC in the 1990s, and Gebbia, the No. 9-rated pro-style QB in the 2017 class.
Johnson committed early in 2016 before his junior season at Calabasas High School. Gebbia, his prep teammate, soon followed after the duo, to much fanfare, visited Lincoln multiple times.
The whole thing fell flat. Johnson left the program in June 2017. Gebbia transferred in August 2018 after losing a QB competition with Adrian Martinez ahead of Scott Frost’s Nebraska head-coaching debut.

Lindsey, a Californian who attended high school in Las Vegas and was once a five-star prospect committed to Ohio State, left Nebraska four games into the Frost era.
Gebbia, Lindsey and Roberts remain at Oregon State as projected starters in 2021.

The rest of the departures from the 2017 class were a mix of misevaluations by Riley’s staff and poor fits under Frost. For instance, fullback Ben Miles, the son of Kansas coach Les Miles, had no spot in a Frost offense that did not use the position.
Jaylin Bradley, who ran for nearly 3,000 yards at Bellevue (Neb.) West in 2016 and showed promise in 2017 as a true freshman, appeared in one game in two years for Frost and left the program in January 2020.

McQuitty, the top player in the 2017 class out of Missouri, battled injuries and caught two passes in three years. He transferred to South Dakota last year.
Meanwhile, the 2017 class at UCF, signed by Frost, who is now in his fourth year at Nebraska, finished 25th with a final player average of 2.59. It ranked 55th four years ago. The Knights have won 41 games, the eighth-most nationally over the past four years — including 13 games under Frost in 2017.
Wisconsin and Northwestern, which have combined to win the past five Big Ten West crowns, finished eighth and 11th in the class re-rank. The Badgers’ recruiting class ranked 39th in 2017; the Wildcats ranked 50th. Their hit rates, both at 86 percent, matched Ohio State and trailed only Stanford among teams analyzed.
It illustrates the importance of retention in building programs to win consistently.

Of the 24 scholarship players at Nebraska to enter the transfer portal since the end of the 2019 season, four came from the 2016 class of newcomers, three from 2017, seven from 2018, five from 2019 and five from 2020.
Notably, one class with a low hit rate or player average does not doom a program. Cockeye finished 46th in the 2017 re-rank and has won 33 games over the past four years. Cockeye State finished 48th and has won 32 games.

Nor does a coaching change torpedo a team’s ranking. Colorado, for instance, came in at 36th, with a player ranking of 2.48 and hit rate of 77 percent, despite two coaching changes in the past 26 months.

 

[SoCal_Corn]

Cont CF news....but from FORTUNE

Hawkeye Elegy: A collision of pandemic, disaster, and polarization in the heartland​

Last summer a monster storm tore across Cockeye, leaving billions of dollars damage in its wake. It was a brutal blow to an economy already reeling from a deadly pandemic and a state divided by politics like never before.​

By
Erika Fry
February 4, 2021 2:30 AM PST

A drone’s-eye view of the damage to bins at the Heartland Co-Op grain elevator in Luther, Cockeye, on Aug. 11, the day after the derecho.Daniel Acker—Getty Images

• 
  

A grant from the NIHCM Foundation generously helped fund reporting for this story.

The weather report showed a slight risk of thunderstorms, and in the early hours of Aug. 10, Justin Glisan, Cockeye’s state climatologist, was feeling hopeful about that. The land was dry and crying out for a good soak. On a call with field agronomists that morning, he’d exchanged wishes that the storm line making its way across Nebraska would hold together over Cockeye.

Despite coming off two of the state’s wettest years on record and ideal planting conditions in the spring, the summer months had been warm and windy, and by August, severe drought had taken hold in West Central Cockeye. Glisan is attached to Cockeye’s Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, and on field visits, he had observed the telltale signs that crops were experiencing physiological stress: The corn had started to “fire,” its lower leaves turning a brittle yellow as the plant shut down to conserve water; the leaves of soybeans, meanwhile, were flipping during the day to keep in what moisture they could.

All summer long, Glisan had watched storms approach the region, and just fizzle out as they hit dry air. The state’s farmland desperately needed rain.

Before he became state climatologist in 2018, Glisan worked as a research atmospheric scientist at Cockeye State University, building regional climate models and studying the fluid dynamics of the atmosphere. Every day, he thought about the acts of Mother Nature in terms of systems and parameters.

But nothing—not that work, not his Ph.D. and two meteorology degrees, nor his storm-chasing experience in the Midwest—prepared him for what so suddenly materialized over Cockeye that day. He saw it coming from the deck of his Des Moines home, a wall of dark-as-night clouds that sent him scuttling to his basement. He was only halfway there when a tree limb hit his house and ripped out a gas main. The security alarm went off the moment he lost power—precisely four seconds past 11 a.m.
The backyard of a home in Cedar Rapids damaged by the derecho. Designated as a “Tree City USA,” Cedar Rapids lost an estimated 65% of its canopy in the storm.
Joseph Cress—Cockeye City Press- Citizen/USA Today Network/Reuters

Over the course of the next two hours, the “monster” storm Glisan witnessed ripped across the state of Cockeye with increasing intensity and devastation, leaving in its wake felled trees, downed power lines, overturned semis, crumpled grain bins, flattened crops, and mangled homes and businesses. By the time the storm petered out in Ohio, at the end of its 14-hour, 770-mile run, it had caused some $11 billion in damage, making it the most costly thunderstorm in American history, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). At its peak, the wind gusts that day are thought to have exceeded 140 miles per hour in Cockeye, such an anomaly in the middle of the country that NASA and Glisan are studying photos of damage to make sense of the storm.

Even in a state full of weather-conscious farmers, the event—which many Iowans still describe as an “inland hurricane”—seemed completely alien and unworldly, like nothing they’d seen before. In fact, it was a derecho (pronounced deh-REY-cho), a term coined in the 1880s by Cockeye’s first official weather observer, Gustavus Detlef Hinrichs. A cantankerous, polymathic professor who had a hand in developing the periodic table, Hinrichs believed there should be a term to distinguish Cockeye’s straight-line wind events from rotational ones (a.k.a., tornadoes). He settled on the Spanish term “derecho” (meaning “straight”), which is defined today as a windstorm that travels at least 240 miles with sustained winds over 58 mph. Though such storms occur about every two years in Cockeye, the term was not widely known in the state. Even DuWayne Tewes, the veteran disaster coordinator based in FEMA’s Kansas City office who led the agency’s response in Cockeye, conceded he’d never heard the term before.


Tornadoes are of course the common disaster of the plains—terrifying and devastating, but short-lived and limited in their path of destruction. Derechos tend to be longer and more sweeping affairs, and this one was especially so. The storm essentially traveled due east along Highway 30—the old Lincoln Highway—and Interstate 80, cutting a swath of the state 90 miles wide that includes valuable farmland, a handful of meatpacking towns, Cockeye’s two largest university campuses (Ames and Cockeye City), and Cockeye’s two largest cities (Des Moines and Cedar Rapids).

They were all caught, like Glisan, more or less unprepared. Derechos are especially complex, impromptu storm systems, making them hard to forecast with much lead time. Most impacted Iowans started their day with a standard August weather report and went about their activities, with no inkling that they’d have to shelter from 100 mph winds in a few hours, let alone live a week or more without power.

Ben Olson, a fourth-generation farmer in Benton County, was out hauling manure; Willie Fairley, a Cedar Rapids restaurateur was picking up supplies for his rib shack; Steve Shriver, a Cedar Rapids business owner, was grabbing lunch with his mom; Maria Gonzalez, a social worker in Marshalltown had just gone out with her dog, and her husband had run to the bank.

Father Craig Steimel, the pastor at five Catholic parishes in rural Benton Country, returned from running errands in the Cedar Rapids area just as the sky turned dark. His home in Norway is adjacent to St. Michael’s Church, and the next thing he knew a garbage can flew by his window and then St. Michael’s 110-foot, 140-year-old steeple landed in his yard. As the storm raged for another 30 minutes, he wondered if his house would collapse. Would the church blow over? “It was just ungodly,” he says.

$11 billion
Estimated total damage across the Midwest caused by the derecho—the most costly thunderstorm in U.S. history

The storm was a trauma. But it was also more than that. It was a collision of disasters—this extreme weather event hit America’s heartland in the middle of an economy-bruising pandemic and a summer of bitter polarization. For many, the derecho layered on more hardship and stress when they could least afford it. For local health officials, the storm complicated the already challenging task of managing a raging virus. For leaders, it piled another few Jenga pieces on the COVID-19 socioeconomic balancing act.

It’s not fair to reduce Cockeye’s very real disasters to symbol, but on Aug. 10, with its flattened fields and exploded barns, Cockeye looked like America felt.

When the rest of the country thinks of Cockeye, they almost certainly conjure up long, flat stretches of cornfields and farms; flyover country populated almost exclusively by white people. But the state today is far more complex and diverse than the old stereotype suggests—like anywhere in America, it’s a place in flux, full of tensions and contradictions.


One of the nation’s top producers of corn, hogs, and soybeans, Cockeye’s economy remains driven by agriculture and related manufacturing. But as those industries have shed labor, Cockeye’s growth has shifted to more populated urban areas, powered by sectors like banking, insurance, business services, and health care.

Cockeye has one of the nation’s highest labor participation rates—it’s a quirk of the Plains states that many middle-aged and older women work—but there aren’t enough job opportunities to match the number of highly skilled workers the state supplies. Indeed, Cockeye exports a lot of the talent it develops. “We educate the hell out of Iowans,” says Dave Swenson, an economist with Cockeye State University. “But the way our economy is configured with its heavy loading, production, manufacturing, and agriculture—all of that talent we educate, we can’t use it.”

Over the past decade, 70 of Cockeye’s 99 counties lost population. That includes many rural counties but also—and more troubling, says Swenson—the semi-urban ones that are home to “micropolitans,” the manufacturing-dependent cities of 10,000 to 50,000 that have been shedding jobs and now have physical footprints larger than their economies. It’s a dynamic that plays into the state’s deepening urban and rural divide, which has been increasingly visible in the traditionally purple state’s politics. In 2016 and 2020, Cockeye supported Trump, but in 2020, more of that vote was in rural parts of the state. As is the case across the country, Cockeye’s red communities have gotten redder, and its blue communities bluer. At a high level, red is winning: Today, Cockeye’s governor, both of its senators, and three of its four representatives in Congress are Republican.

Going into 2020, Cockeye’s overall economy was flat. “It wasn’t growing at all,” says Swenson. Unemployment spiked like it did everywhere at the start of the pandemic but has since fallen to 3.6%. Swenson says that’s less good news than it appears: Cockeye didn’t gain jobs during the year, it lost workforce. Swenson suspects the dropouts are largely women shouldering childcare responsibilities or people who retired early for pandemic-related safety concerns.

Not surprisingly, how Iowans weathered the past year and all of its unanticipated catastrophes depends on where you look and whom you ask. And so this accounting is a mosaic of many different individual stories, told as the derecho blew, from west to east.

The picture it reveals, while distinctly Iowan in some ways, is one that, from a distance, looks fundamentally American in 2021. It reveals a society struggling to grapple with a series of complex, interlocking issues at once—a novel coronavirus and climate change; an economy and demography in flux; a public bitterly polarized by politics. Sitting as it does in the geographic middle of the U.S., Cockeye functions naturally as a microcosm of the broader nation. And the questions it’s wrestling with echo those at the heart of our current circumstances: How do you balance public health and the economy? Personal freedom and the greater good? Fear and science with blind certainty and belief?

In short, what can Cockeye show us about our way forward?

Like many people, I spent a lot of 2020 worrying. Catastrophizing is something I’ve always been good at, and so early last year, when the esteemed infectious disease expert Michael Osterholm told me that he expected a novel coronavirus in China to spread like the wind, my mind instantly went to my parents, both of whom are in their seventies and one a lifelong smoker, in Cedar Rapids.


When I told my colleagues I was worried about my parents getting the virus, they chuckled. In Cockeye? That’s the safest place you could be. This was the frenzied month of February when we lacked such imagination that the U.S. government was spending millions to evacuate American citizens from foreign countries, as if one could outrun the virus and that U.S. borders would protect them.

The coronavirus did of course reach Cockeye. The first known cases were in early March—an adventurous group of senior travelers had contracted it in Egypt while on a Nile cruise—though it was probably spreading in the Hawkeye State already.

In the beginning, Cockeye reacted to the coronavirus like much of the country, with the abrupt closure of schools, theaters, churches, bars, indoor dining, barbers, and tanning salons. Cockeye Gov. Kim Reynolds, a conservative Republican in her fourth year on the job, issued a state public health emergency because of the virus on March 17. But she did not issue a shelter-in-place order, one of the few governors to not do so, leaving Cockeye more open for business than most states.

I sent my parents N95 masks as well as a pulse oximeter, which I asked them to use regularly with the strong, and surely annoying, suggestion that they report their readings back to me. (They didn’t.) We did weekly Zooms, which lifted spirits and provided some peace of mind.

Cockeye, with a population of 3.2 million, is not a particularly dense state—it ranks 35th in the U.S. in density. But in the early weeks of the pandemic, the state had an alarming number of cases, most of them linked to meatpacking plants and nursing homes. The virus was hitting the essential and the infirm. “The tradeoff in Cockeye was we were more than willing to maintain our economy, at the expense of the health and well-being of our workforce,” says Swenson, the Cockeye State economist.

That Faustian deal led to community spread and punished other businesses too. Ben Olson, the farmer in Benton County, had 200 beef cattle lined up, ready for delivery at a nearby Tyson plant on March 31. Together they represented hundreds of thousands of dollars and the seven-month investment in raising them from 800 pounds to their precisely desired sale weight—1,500 pounds. He got a call 12 hours before go time: There was an outbreak at the plant; he’d have to wait. The same thing happened two weeks later. He sold his oversize cattle a month late, for a bad price. Pig farmers across the state faced similar dilemmas; some, with no market for their hogs, had to euthanize them.

The state’s curve hadn’t flattened much before Cockeye reopened in mid-May, and since then the picture has gotten much, much worse. There were plenty of things, brought to light by local media and the public health community, that did not inspire great confidence in the state’s response—like, for instance, the fact that the state’s main testing infrastructure was provided by an inexperienced Utah startup that won a no-bid contract seemingly due to its connections to Ashton Kutcher, Cockeye’s favorite celebrity son.

Most of all, Reynolds was absolutely insistent, press conference after press conference, that the best approach to the pandemic was to put it in Iowans’ responsible hands. The state didn’t need to order its citizens about what to do because she trusted them to do the right thing. She wouldn’t issue a mask mandate, nor would she give mayors in her state the power to do so.


At the time, my father was still holding out hope that there would be Cockeye football games to attend in the fall, and the prospect of him in a stadium with the mask-less masses was among my worst COVID fears at the time.

Then, in the middle of the afternoon on Aug. 10, my mom sent a group text that began, “We are safe [prayer hands emoji] …” There was a series of photos that were barely recognizable as their backyard. “Tornado!?” My sister texted. My brother, who lives a block away from my parents, wrote “land hurricane.” They didn’t have the power or cell reception to communicate much beyond that, and for the next 48 hours it was as if Cedar Rapids had been blown off the face of the earth.

There were a few video clips of the intense storm circulating on social media, but it was hard to find much news on what had happened beyond mention of a wind event in Chicago. Cedar Rapids hadn’t been blown off the map exactly, but it, along with hundreds of other communities, had blown off the grid.

All of the Cedar Rapids metropolitan area, some 132,000 people, lost power in the storm. (Across the state, 680,000 customers did.) With cell towers toppled, some lost communications too. For a 51-hour period, St. Luke’s Hospital, one of two medical centers in downtown Cedar Rapids, was a complete island—losing Internet, electronic medical records, the landline, and service from all three of Cedar Rapids’ cell carriers. At the same time, Eastern Iowans who had been injured in the storm or debris-cleaning efforts were pouring into the emergency room. The hospital saw twice its normal volume in the 24 hours after the derecho. “It was probably the scariest time I’ve had as a hospital administrator,” the hospital’s President and CEO, Michelle Niermann of UnityPoint Cedar Rapids, tells me.
The Quaker Oats plant in Cedar Rapids, Cockeye. When the derecho hit on Aug. 10, 2020, the entire Cedar Rapids metropolitan area lost power and many lost all communications, too.
Danny Wilcox-Frazier—VII/Redux

Assessing the scope of the damage was especially challenging in Cedar Rapids, which—beyond the loss of power and communications—was initially almost untraversable because of all the debris and fallen trees. (As a “Tree City USA,” Cedar Rapids a lost an estimated 65% of its canopy in the storm.)

It’s hard not to think of the derecho as a blatant spectacle of climate change, particularly when the city it hit hardest, Cedar Rapids, is not long recovered from the freak 500-year flood that destroyed much of its downtown and a good chunk of its affordable housing in 2008.

As climatologist Glisan told me, it’s difficult to link a single extreme weather event to climate change. But there’s plenty of subtle evidence that Cockeye’s weather is changing and increasing the odds of damaging storms like the derecho. Much of Glisan’s job is helping farmers adapt to that reality—like preparing for more frequent heavy rainfall. (The probability of receiving more than three inches of rain in a 24-hour period in Cockeye has tripled over the historical rate in the past 30 years.)

In the 2020 Cockeye Farm and Rural Life poll, 81% of farmers said they believe climate change is occurring, up from 68% in 2011. That’s a much greater percentage than across Cockeye’s general public, of whom 67% believe global warming is happening. (The rate is 72% nationally.)


I didn’t get to speak much to my parents during the 10 days they were in the dark, dealing with the derecho. Most attempts to call were met with understandable frustration about draining their phone battery. I know it was tough on them. My mom is still sometimes moved to tears when she talks about the volunteers—friends, family, and total strangers—who came with their chain saws to help them out. My family was lucky in that the trees that fell on their houses did not cause significant damage. My parents got a new roof, which was covered by insurance; my brother will get one in the spring.

I got the sense from them and others in Cedar Rapids, and I felt it myself when I visited in December, that one of the hardest things post-derecho was inhabiting a world of such obvious and inescapable physical loss, as if the landscape were reflecting their whole year’s experience back at them.

The derecho wreaked havoc everywhere it hit. In Madrid (pronounced MAD-rid), 30 miles north of Des Moines, the storm peeled the roof off the four-floor Madrid Home, a senior living center, where six coronavirus patients were in isolation and receiving treatment on the facility’s top floor. Kris Hansen, CEO of Western Home Communities, which runs the site, was in a virtual meeting when he got the panicked call from his executive director in Madrid.

For Hansen, who was an hour to the northeast, in a part of the state where skies were still clear, it was an unthinkable twist. With 10 senior-living communities in the state of Cockeye, the pandemic had been a real test for Western Home—for all the reasons familiar to long-term-care facilities across the country (a lack of PPE, a shortage of workers), and for reasons more specific to Cockeye.

“I got frustrated with the governor a few times for not coming out stronger with a mask mandate,” he says, adding that it felt like the state had chosen the economy over protecting seniors. “Why would we put anybody at risk if we don’t have to? Our employees are still out in the community. They don’t have a choice.”

Western Home effectively guarded its sites against a COVID-19 outbreak until late July, when it experienced its first one in Madrid. The virus had slipped in during a visit from one of the facility’s contracted therapists. Over the course of a few days, six patients and three staff on the home’s first floor tested positive for COVID. It was tough on morale. “They were beating themselves up because they felt like they had failed,” says Hansen, who, like other health and long-term-care providers across the country, has been contending with a serious shortage of workers.

The fall brought scary and unspeakable tragedy to some of Western Home’s properties. The company had some managed-care facilities where nearly 100% of residents tested positive, and where workers, also positive, took care of them. “It just scares the crap out of you,” he tells me. “[My employees] have got families too.” The biggest challenge has been controlling the virus in dementia units. At one small facility in Cresco, Cockeye, eight of 24 residents were lost to COVID. “We see what the results of this are,” he says of the state’s lax approach to the virus.

When I spoke with Hansen in mid-January, his staff and residents were still awaiting vaccines. Says Hansen: “It’s not rolling out nearly as fast as we had hoped.” He didn’t blame the state but the federal government, which is running the rollout in long-term-care facilities with the private sector. “It’s just not well-coordinated enough. We’ve got folks, quite honestly, that are going to die because of this, because of exposure that continues on.”

Anti-mask protesters inside the rotunda of the Cockeye Capitol in Des Moines on Jan. 11, 2021.
Kelsey Kremer—The Register/USA Today Network/Reuters

Hansen remains frustrated by the dynamics around the virus in Cockeye. He noted that the day before we talked there had been an “Informed Choice Cockeye” rally involving hundreds of unmasked Iowans in the rotunda of the Cockeye state house (where state legislators are not required to wear masks, and many don’t). The group was calling for an end to COVID mandates. “I don’t know what happened to common sense in the middle of this whole pandemic,” says Hansen. “It’s just crap that this thing turned out to be as political as it did.”

Naturally, I didn’t stop worrying about COVID when the derecho hit. I worried more. As Iowans will tell you, they come together in disasters. I imagined the virus spreading with all the goodwill.


Cedar Rapids did see cases peak slightly after the derecho and the immediate recovery, says St. Luke’s Hospital’s Niermann, but the situation wasn’t as bad as she feared it would be. “Masking went way down,” she told me. “Honestly, people had to work on a different level of hierarchy of needs.”

Far worse was yet to come. For much of the fall, Cockeye was one of the nation’s COVID chart-toppers. The virus was everywhere, hitting rural counties especially hard. Despite growing cries from the public health community to do more, Gov. Reynolds again just asked Iowans to be responsible. As the curve climbed, the governor herself appeared on stage with President Trump and without a mask at an outdoor rally attended by thousands of his supporters in Des Moines.

In November, health facilities around the state began announcing that they were at or near capacity—they lacked either the staff or beds to handle more COVID patients. The governor responded with a set of complicated rules aimed at controlling the spread: no more than two spectators per child at an athletic event; face coverings should be worn at indoor gatherings of 25 or more, or outdoor gatherings of over 100. Finally, the week before Thanksgiving, Reynolds, in a tone that begged forgiveness—“No one wants to do this … I don’t want to do this”—issued a statewide mask mandate, albeit one with some exceptions.

The mask rule couldn’t have come soon enough for Marshalltown Mayor Joel Greer. A lawyer by day, Greer had watched COVID stress his community since early spring. Marshalltown, a city of 28,000 smack dab in the middle of Cockeye, is a meatpacking town, and like other Cockeye cities it had had an early outbreak at its pork processing facility and largest employer, JBS. Dozens tested positive for the virus in April, and one local employee died a week before retirement in May.

It had just gone on from there. For Greer, it was a source of frustration and heartbreak that his county had at times been one of the most hard-hit in Cockeye, while Cockeye was one of the most hard-hit states in the country.

Greer Zoomed periodically with a group of mayors in central Cockeye. Many wanted to issue mask mandates, something they technically didn’t have power to do. Some went ahead with it anyway. Unwilling to exceed his legal authority, Greer issued a mayoral proclamation requiring face coverings, with the caveat it couldn’t be enforced. It didn’t really catch on.

In October, Greer walked into a local bar to pick up a takeout order. The place was crowded, and while the staff were wearing masks, he was the only customer wearing one. The other patrons began making derogatory comments about him and questioning his manhood. “These people, they must have flunked science,” Greer tells me. “They just don’t get it.”

Service workers in Marshalltown were among those who paid the price for the divide over mask-wearing. Alfonso Medina, the 31-year-old proprietor of La Carreta Mexican Grill, a popular Tex-Mex restaurant in the city, came down with COVID during the last week of November. He lost his sense of taste and smell, a symptom that, by that point in the year, he estimates 80% to 90% of his 17-person staff had already experienced. Since March, his team had tried to distance in the restaurant and take precautions. They had worn masks, but few customers did.


“It was very frustrating that customers didn’t have to wear them because it was almost causing this, to a point,” Medina told me in early January. “We could all be wearing masks, but we knew it’s just a matter of time before someone gets sick.” =
Restaurateur Alfonso Medina’s slogan, “No love, no tacos,” went viral in October.
Danny Wilcox-Frazier—VII/Redux

While a couple of big-box stores in Marshalltown—Menards and Walmart—started requiring face coverings early in the pandemic, without a state mandate and as a minority-owned business, Medina thought it would be difficult to enforce a mask policy at La Carreta. His employees, particularly those in high school who worked part-time, weren’t comfortable confronting customers. He wished his patrons would just be responsible. “If you’re coming here to eat because this is your favorite restaurant, why wouldn’t you just wear one?” (Since the governor issued the statewide mandate, he says, almost everyone wears them.)

Medina prayed his staff wouldn’t all get sick at once and require him to shut down. The restaurant has actually done very well during the pandemic—he credits takeout alcohol sales for the fact that La Carreta had its best-ever Cinco de Mayo in 2020. And Medina says he was lucky to have gotten the virus himself during the quiet Thanksgiving week, at a time when his business could handle his 10-day absence.

Most of his employees had mild cases like his, and all eventually recovered, but nearly everyone on his team has lost someone to COVID: Medina’s 52-year-old uncle in Ohio; his parents’ 30-year-old physician in Mexico; his chef’s father; the grandfather of two servers; loyal customers. “Death has been all around us,” he says.

1.34 million cubic yards
Amount of storm debris hauled away by debris management companies in Cockeye since the derecho

Medina was born in Roanoke, Va., and he spent his early childhood traveling around the country with his parents, immigrants from Mexico, as they built a growing business of Tex-Mex restaurants. They arrived in Cockeye when he was 5 years old and later moved to Marshalltown, which he loved for its diversity, the good education he got, and the kindness of people generally. “It was a good place to grow up. You know, ‘Cockeye nice,’ you really do see that,” he says.

When the pandemic began, Medina noticed many high-demand items—sanitizer, rice and beans, toilet paper—were available from his bulk suppliers. He made large orders and started reselling things locally; at one point, he was providing local nursing homes with gloves. Throughout the pandemic, he’s donated staples for local food-drive efforts and organized fundraisers for families who have lost members to COVID.

But Medina is probably best known for a slogan—“No love, no tacos”—that he promoted on a billboard in front of his restaurant, and on merchandise this fall. After the killings of George Floyd and other unarmed Black citizens by police last summer, Medina felt a responsibility to use his platform as a local business owner to be vocal about his values. He experimented on social media and got good feedback, so he placed a yard sign in front of La Carreta. It had, what seemed to him, nuggets of unimpeachable common sense: “Black lives matter”; “Human rights are women’s rights”; “Science is real.” But the sign prompted an angry, handwritten note on a receipt one day; the customer called the sign un-Christian. Medina posted a photo of the receipt on his personal Facebook page with his own note: “No love, no tacos.” He also set up a website and online clothing store under that banner, advocating for fairness and equality and that Election Day be made a federal holiday to ensure all can vote. Profits from the site went to a local scholarship fund Medina had previously established.

These people, they must have flunked science. They just don't get it.
Marshalltown Mayor Joel Greer discussing citizens who won't wear face masks

As things do, his message went viral, especially after he was featured by CNN in October in the run-up to the election. Orders for “No love, no tacos” hats and shirts poured in from around the world, and as people posted photos of themselves voting in November, many hashtagged them, #NoLoveNoTacos. The effort funded 14 scholarships to Marshalltown’s community college.

Medina says he received at least one letter that was far nastier than the note that had kicked off everything. I asked him if COVID and the current political climate had made Cockeye less nice. He said he and his employees don’t talk politics in the restaurant for a reason.

“There’s people in Marshalltown with way different points of view, and I respect everybody’s point of view,” he says. “I have clientele here that have different party affiliations than mine. They walk in with whatever gear or whatever their shirt says, and I tell my employees, ‘We give them the same five-star service as anybody else.’”

Mayor Greer has found that type of neutral ground increasingly hard to preserve. He laments how politicized the pandemic has become in his city. He’s taken heat over COVID—in emails, texts, and a whole lot of comments lobbed at his mayoral Facebook page—from both sides. “Half the people are mad as hell that school’s in session, the other half are mad that it’s not. It’s been pretty ugly,” he says.

Three years in, Greer’s tenure has involved dealing with one catastrophe after another in Marshalltown. One July day in 2018 a tornado literally traveled down Main Street, felling the courthouse’s clock tower and ransacking the historic district and downtown businesses, before damaging a number of homes in one of Marshalltown’s low-income neighborhoods. That made the derecho a surreal and especially cruel sequel of sorts.

Much of the burden of responding to these disasters has fallen on the shoulders of Kimberly Elder, emergency management coordinator for Marshall County. She’s been in her role since 2003, and every year, it seems, there are more disasters and fewer resources to deal with them. For much of 2020, she worked out of an office full of boxes. Some of them are filled with PPE, the county’s stockpile that she herself distributes to nursing homes and emergency responders. Others are file boxes, brimming with paperwork—the long tail of administrative business that follows a disaster. Elder hasn’t had a vacation in more than two years, and, as a one-woman shop, her biggest fear is getting sick with COVID. Says Elder: “If I’m in the hospital, like some of these people are, what are they going to do?”
Kimberly Elder, the emergency management coordinator for Marshall County, is a one-woman disaster relief department.
Danny Wilcox-Frazier—VII/Redux

Elder isn’t the only one mired in the process of recovery.


Some in the community have struggled more than others to get timely relief from insurers and state agencies. As Cockeye cities go, Marshalltown is uniquely diverse, with a population that is 30% Hispanic, according to recent census data. Students in the Marshalltown school district are native speakers of more than 40 different languages; kindergartners in the district are 70% nonwhite. The meatpacking plant helped give rise to this multiculturalism because its jobs have drawn different populations to the city over time, including most recently Burmese and Congolese refugees.

In navigating the recovery process, language barriers are one issue; the other is time. The city’s immigrant population makes up a large part of Marshalltown’s essential workforce, employed in jobs that often don’t offer flexibility to deal with things like lining up an insurance adjuster.

For some on the Meskwaki Settlement, the 8,000 acres of Tama County that is home to the Sac & Fox Tribe of the Mississippi in Cockeye—east of Marshalltown—displacement because of the derecho came with another brutal cost: COVID.

Cockeye’s only federally recognized tribe, the Meskwaki purchased the land in 1857 after resisting banishment by the federal government to a reservation in Kansas. Over the years the tribe expanded its holdings, and the settlement, where 1,200 or so tribal members currently reside, has its own health clinic, court, and school. In 1992 the Meskwaki opened a hotel and casino on the property—advertised as having “the loosest slots in Cockeye”—which today provides about 70% of funding for tribal operations.

The derecho damaged 271 of the settlement’s 350 homes, and in the storm’s aftermath, the generator-powered hotel was the obvious place for those affected to go. Seven hundred tribal members “jam-packed” into the hotel, some five or six to a room, says Lawrence SpottedBird, the settlement’s executive director. People found themselves in proximity to people from whom they’d been socially distanced for months.

“We were interacting more closely and working more closely,” says SpottedBird. “We had to drop our guard to do that. The result was our cases spiked.”

The settlement, in some ways, had taken an opposite approach to the state’s in handling the pandemic. Rudy Papakee, health director at Meskwaki Tribal Health Clinic, learned of the community’s first COVID case in March. A tribal member had sought care at a hospital for breathing problems and tested positive for the virus. Soon the individual’s family members and their contacts did too. Several of the cases were severe, involving hospitalizations, and one elder who contracted the virus died.

Marshalltown Mayor Joel Greer (at left, in suit) with Cockeye Gov. Kim Reynolds (in jeans). The governor didn’t issue a mask mandate until late in 2020.
Olivia Sun—The Register/USA Today Network/Reuters

“We were a little epicenter, at first,” says Papakee. He knew many in the population were vulnerable, either as elders or individuals with health conditions, like diabetes and high blood pressure, that put them at greater risk. Tribal leadership responded almost immediately with a shelter-in place order, shuttering the casino and other operations on the settlement. They continued to pay employees and asked them to stay home. They had a robust and accessible testing infrastructure, thanks to the Indian Health Service. When the tribe opened back up in early summer, it did so conservatively: It required face masks in public and canceled the annual powwow and other culturally important ceremonial gatherings.


But there were limitations to the effort. Many of the settlement’s residents work in nearby towns like Tama, Toledo, and Marshalltown, and everyone has to leave the settlement to get groceries and other supplies. The Meskwaki’s efforts to stop the spread of the virus could only be as good as the efforts in those surrounding communities.

“The state of Cockeye was one of those states that didn’t take the virus too seriously,” says SpottedBird, who moved from Seattle to take his job in May (he’s not a tribal member). “So safeguards were kind of lackadaisical, loose, and people were generally not wearing masks for a long time.”

Like many health professionals in the state, Papakee has been frustrated greatly by Gov. Reynolds’s response to the pandemic. He would tune into her press conferences on the virus only to be dismayed each time by her continuing insistence that she trusted Iowans to make the right decisions. “Obviously you could not, because our numbers continued to soar,” he says.

He admits some of the same challenges exist on the settlement; there are those in the community who bristle at being required to wear masks or being told how to conduct their social lives. At one Christmas gathering on the settlement, a single person exposed 25 others. The casino, which provides the tribe with important revenue, reopened in July with a new nonsmoking policy, temperature checks, and masking and social distance requirements—a combination of measures that Papakee says have been effective but not perfect.

Vaccinations have started on the settlement, but Papakee had no idea when the next shipment was showing up, making things hard to plan. The community’s elders were anxiously awaiting their turn.

Reflecting trends seen across the country with Native American populations, the Meskwaki have been more impacted by the virus than other groups. When I spoke with Papakee, roughly a quarter of the settlement’s tribal population—301 people—had so far tested positive for COVID; five had succumbed to the virus.

Outside the settlement, Shannon Zoffka, CEO of Tama County Public Health and Home Care, leads the area’s pandemic response. She has lived in the small, rural county of 17,000 all her life, but the past year has been eye-opening. “There’s definitely a large percent of the population in the county that don’t believe in masks. They think that the vaccine is unsafe; they think that COVID is a hoax,” Zoffka tells me one afternoon in early January.

That resistance to reality persists despite the county’s nursing home and meatpacking plant outbreaks, and the fact that Tama ranks in the top 4% of counties nationally in deaths per capita due to COVID. There was also a spike in cases after the derecho; the county had made community meals and cooling stations available to residents during the weeklong period they—and Tama County Public Health—went without power, making cases especially complicated to trace.


But things got really ugly at the start of the school year, as quarantines that were prescribed after known COVID-19 exposures started to affect sports. “People were very angry,” says Zoffka, who says her office’s attempts to investigate contacts or inform people of exposures to the virus were often met with verbal abuse. “People think they have the right to call you names and yell and scream and threaten.”

Soon she noticed people taking a different but equally bad-faith approach to her office’s outreach. “People got smart very fast when the definition of a close contact changed to being within six feet of someone for consecutive 15 minutes.” People said to the case investigators, “Well, you don’t have a tape measure or a stopwatch. You don’t know.” Or: “You can’t prove that we were there.”

While Zoffka’s team has had good support from partners like the school system, local business, law enforcement, and the Meskwaki Settlement, such attitude from community members was a disillusioning blow: “I don’t think we expected that early on. Our thought was, ‘We want to keep people safe. People want to keep other people safe.’ But then once [public health efforts] really affected their personal lives after some of the restrictions have been lifted, it got kind of rough.”

People think they have the right to call you names and yell and scream and threaten.
One public health official trying to limit the spread of the virus

Given that, Zoffka says it was hard to stomach the governor’s continuing reliance on Iowans to “do the right thing” to control the virus. Beyond slowing the spread of disease, Zoffka says, a mask mandate would have supported businesses in the community who were trying to encourage safe behavior and often getting pushback.

In studying how the pandemic was playing out in Cockeye—before I spoke with Zoffka—I had come across and become somewhat obsessed with Tama County Public Health’s Facebook page. The information was clear and the posts impressively transparent; the office regularly updated case numbers and explained why they were higher than the state’s (the state’s data was behind). Following the posts, you could also sense a growing, desperate pleading behind them: Wear a mask! Wash your hands! Protect your grandparents!

You only had to read the comments to get a sense of what the office was up against. While there were plenty of supportive and thankful followers, comments often enough devolved into heated arguments between citizens about why there were so many cases in the county. Others argued the whole thing was overblown.

Even though her team tries mightily to push out facts over their own Facebook page, Zoffka largely blames social media for the misinformation that has spread within the community about COVID, and for the harsh, bullying tone in which many discuss the virus, both online and increasingly in person. She expects hurt feelings and memories of the animosity that has emerged during COVID will linger, and that the doubters will remain. “I think people who don’t believe are never going to believe until they’re affected directly,” she says with some resignation.


When I spoke with Zoffka, her staff was working their way through administering its supply of Moderna vaccine doses. The logistics had been a challenge, particularly through the holidays, but it was going all right. She hasn’t had a lot of time to process what stage of the pandemic journey she’s in, or think much about the future. She’s just been responding—to questions about the virus, or the vaccine, or cases that need investigating, or all the other things that land on her desk. She’s hopeful that a lot of people will get vaccinated, and that maybe life will start inching its way back to normalcy by the end of the year. “I’ve kind of had it in my head that 2021 is going to be similar to 2020 in a lot of ways.”

When the state climatologist Justin Glisan went out on his first trip to survey the derecho-impacted fields, the scene was staggering—acres and acres of corn blown flat, snapped off, or tipped so far over that it was not salvageable. Some of it had been further damaged by hail, shredded, as if it had taken on machine-gun fire.

“To stand in a field and to be able to look across it and realize I can see things I should not be able to see because the corn is just flat, it’s devastating” says Meaghan Anderson, a field agronomist with Cockeye State University Extension and Outreach. She choked up for a moment, then added, “I have a job where I get a paycheck every two weeks. I don’t put hundreds of thousands of dollars upfront to plant something in April and then hope that, come September or October, I can harvest it and make my money back. That’s an incredible show of faith.”

Farmers that were hit didn’t lose just crops but also a lot of their infrastructure—the expensive equipment, the barns and grain bins. “We’re going to be dealing with this for years to come,” says Anderson.
Scott and Jenni Birker on their farm near Garrison, Cockeye. The couple were already struggling with the pandemic when the derecho destroyed their barn and damaged tractors.
Danny Wilcox-Frazier—VII/Redux

Crop and other insurance covered much of the damage, but many, like Jenni and Scott Birker, still faced significant losses in 2020 because of the compound effect of the pandemic and the derecho. In recent years, the couple, who live in Benton County and raise beef cattle, watched their margins slim to almost nothing. “I’ve changed from being a cowboy basically to being a businessman. We’re picking up pennies and nickels every day out here,” Scott says.
Cows belonging to farmers Jenni and Scott Birker on their farm in Benton County, Cockeye. Already struggling with the effects of the pandemic, after the derecho in August of last year the Birkers had to sell cattle at a loss in October.
Danny Wilcox-Frazier—VII/Redux

But 2020 was a new type of challenge. Starting in February, with virus fears rattling markets, the Birkers weren’t able to secure their usual put option to ensure they covered the cost of their cattle. Then outbreaks started shuttering the state’s packing plants. Given the backlog of cattle waiting to be sold, the couple made the decision to modify their animals’ rations—“basically we put them on a 60-day diet”—to prolong the period before they took them to market. “We had to pay for that extra feed cost with no insurance on the cattle, which we thought was the right move at the time,” says Scott. “We didn’t have a clue what to do.”

And then the derecho hit. The Birkers lost their barn, chicken coop, miles of fence, and much of their corn crop, and had multiple tractors damaged. As they emerged from their basement after the storm, they found their five dozen chickens and laying hens scattered among the wreckage. Their cattle were all alive, but wandering free in the pasture. When they finally sold the cattle in October, it was for a loss. In all, it was a terrible year, but they have no plans to quit.
Heartbreak in the Heartland: Battered grain bins in the wake of an Aug. 10 derecho in Luther, Cockeye.
Daniel Acker—Getty Images

Others have had it even worse. And Anderson and others worry about the potential for farm bankruptcies to come as well as mental health issues among the agricultural community. (She knows of one farmer who committed suicide after the derecho.) Ag giant Cargill does too; it has sponsored some of the work the ISU extension service is providing for farmers and their families.


The bleak outlook is far from universal. For those who managed to harvest their crops, or who lived in a part of the state that didn’t get hit by the derecho or drought, yields were good in 2020 and corn prices have risen nicely since summer. Federal assistance in the form of trade payments and COVID relief have provided a generous cushion and were a good part of the reason that farmer incomes, on average, increased in 2020.

In Cedar Rapids, as elsewhere, the recovery continues. There is plenty of evidence—in the form of debris piles, dented fences, and tarped roofs—that the city is still being put back together. But mostly there’s great satisfaction in how the community came together and some lingering wonder at all they went through. The mayors of both Cedar Rapids and Marshalltown
touted big investment projects they have underway—developments that have nothing to do with rebuilding from disasters, but rather just boosting the strength of their cities.

Since the pandemic began, the state has recorded a total of 321,274 cases of COVID and 4,919 deaths due to the virus—ranking it eighth among states in terms of cases per capita, and 17th in terms of deaths per capita over the course of the pandemic. After Cockeye’s scary, hospital-straining battle with the virus in November, the situation is much improved: The state’s case numbers have nose-dived. It might have been the mask mandate; it might have been Iowans being responsible.

A spokesperson for Governor Reynolds said in a statement: “The governor had a very targeted and balanced approach to mitigating the COVID-19 pandemic. The focus was protecting lives, livelihoods, preserving hospital resources, and bringing kids back to school safely. A mask is one layer of protection and she emphasized all of them on a near daily basis.”

For those I interviewed, the new year has almost universally come with a sense of hope—because of the vaccine, or the rising price of corn, or the stronger community spirit, or just the turn of the calendar away from 2020.

My parents are fine. They’re thinking about new trees and alternative ways to provide shade in a yard that lacks them. Their pulse oximeter remains virtually untouched, in its box. And they got vaccinated for COVID as I was finishing this story. I still worry about them and the virus, but then I probably always will.

On Feb. 5, after this story’s publication, Cockeye Governor Kim Reynolds announced Cockeye’s masking and social distancing requirements would be lifted, beginning on Feb. 7, Super Bowl Sunday.

A version of this article appears in the February/March 2021 issue of Fortune with the headline, "Hawkeye elegy."

 

[SoCal_Corn]

Nebraska off the rails: Ranking the 20 most bizarre moments of the past decade​

LINCOLN, Neb. — What a wild, weird decade.

Since Nebraska played its last game as a member of the Big 12 and jumped into a whole new world of football, a lot has gone down. Much of it on the unconventional side.
Inspired by The Athletic’s recent dive into Tennessee’s decade of debacles, here is an examination of Nebraska’s own 20 most bizarrely memorable episodes and events of the past 10 years — some fun, some painful or depressing, but nonetheless insightful.
This decade for Nebraska featured inspiring moments, too, like Jack Hoffman’s touchdown run at the 2013 spring game, and tragedy, with the deaths of Sam Foltz and Bob Elliott. But this list is limited to the kind of incidents that just don’t seem real. Be assured, though, they all happened.
For perspective and analysis, we turned to three figures in the Nebraska media who covered it all: John Bishop, longtime radio commentator and co-host of “Unsportsmanlike Conduct” on Omaha’s KOZN; Andy Kendeigh, sports director for KETV in Omaha, and KOLN sports director Kevin Sjuts of Lincoln.

To the rankings.

1. In reveal of secret audio, Bo Pelini annihilates Nebraska fans after his team beats Ohio State
Way back in 2011, No. 14 Nebraska roared from 21 points down in the third quarter to beat the Buckeyes 34-27. It was the largest comeback in school history. And Pelini, the fourth-year coach, took this opportunity to rip the fans at Memorial Stadium, some of whom booed the Huskers at halftime and did not return to their seats for the second half.
Pelini made his critical remarks off air before a postgame radio interview with Greg Sharpe, the lead announcer for the Huskers Sports Network. But the tape back in the network studio was rolling. “Fuck you, fans,” Pelini said to Sharpe. “Fuck all of you.”
Almost two years passed, with whispers prevalent that a recording existed of Pelini’s tirade. “You knew there was something like this out there,” Bishop said. “It was kind of like the dirty little secret that Bo was dog-cussing the fans.”
Then in September 2013, two days after a 41-21 Nebraska loss to UCLA, Deadspin got its hands on the 2011 audio. A storm ensued. Pelini apologized. Athletic director Shawn Eichorst and chancellor Harvey Perlman weighed in, saying the matter had been handled months earlier by then-athletic director Tom Osborne when Nebraska officials learned of the recording.
The coach kept his job. But the damage remained.
“Right then in that moment,” Bishop said, “you knew everything was going to change. The thing about Nebraska, you know the passion and how much the people support the team. For the head coach to lay waste to those fans, just the idea of it is shocking. And to be that angry at the fans after you’ve just made this dramatic inspired comeback, it just didn’t make sense to focus on such a negative.”

2. ‘Do you see the strain?’
Nebraska defensive coordinator Bob Diaco offered a series of seemingly delirious postgame comments in November 2017 after the Huskers lost 31-24 in overtime at home against Northwestern. It marked Nebraska’s third loss in four games and fifth overall that fall as the Mike Riley era slipped toward the point of no return.
Diaco’s stress was understandable. But …
“The strain is spectacular, right?” he said to a group of reporters. “So we can just go back and look at the game. Do you see the strain? Do you see it or no, or is it just something that I’m missing?”


“If you look at the faces of the reporters in that moment,” Sjuts said, “it’s like everyone was trying to understand what he was saying, but no one could understand.”
And when it was over? “Everybody just kind of looked at each other like, ‘What the hell was that?’” Sjuts said. “We knew we all just got a quote that was probably going to last for years around here. But no one knew what it meant.”
Sjuts described Diaco, the former Notre Dame coordinator and UConn head coach who spent one season in Lincoln, as “TV gold.”
“Here you have a really handsome man who would just deliver these dynamite quotes that were oftentimes off the wall,” Sjuts said, “and they played so well for our audience.”
Because of the strain or whatever caused it, Diaco’s defense fell off a cliff after that moment, surrendering 166 points in its final three games. He and the rest of Riley’s staff were summarily fired. And that quote, Bishop said, “probably turned into the defining moment of Diaco’s tenure.”

3. Pelini blasts the Nebraska administration after his 2014 firing
Two days after Eichorst fired Pelini, the coach gathered his former players at Lincoln North Star High School to deliver his parting words. Not swayed by the release of the vulgar audio recording, referenced above, from 15 months earlier, Pelini cut loose. This time, though, Eichorst and the Nebraska leadership directly felt the brunt of his hostility.
Not surprisingly, a person in attendance, presumably connected to the program, recorded Bo. Two weeks later, after Pelini accepted the Youngstown State job, the profanity-laced audio was distributed to media outlets.
Nebraska released a statement in response, saying it was “extremely disappointed” by Pelini’s actions and words.
You think?
“The sequel doesn’t quite match up,” Bishop said of the audio reveal. “It’s not ‘Godfather II’ to ‘Godfather I.’ It certainly was interesting, but it wasn’t surprising. We knew that Bo had an issue with Shawn Eichorst. But to this day, it’s still amazing that more players from that team didn’t leave the program. Because that was a toxic environment, as toxic as I can ever think of there being.”
Incidentally, KETV got word of the Dec. 2 meeting and sent videographer Andrew Ozaki to capture footage of Pelini as he entered the high school. When the coach arrived, he or someone with him saw Ozaki and they darted toward an alternate entrance to the school.
“That’s where the absurdity meter is almost pinned to the right,” Kendeigh said.

4. The #Calibraska movement
Riley, after a 6-7 debut season in 2015 that ended with a victory against UCLA in the Foster Farms Bowl, carried some momentum into his second offseason. The coach aimed to capitalize on his history out west by building the Huskers’ 2017 recruiting class around a group of Californians, using his connection from two decades earlier at USC with former NFL star wide receiver Keyshawn Johnson to get in the door at talent-rich Calabasas High School.
Johnson’s son, wide receiver Keyshawn Johnson Jr., joined the class to much fanfare early in 2016, as did his teammate, quarterback Tristan Gebbia. Nebraska brought more than a dozen recruits from California on official visits in the fall of 2016 after the Calibraska experience peaked in June with a satellite camp in Los Angeles.
Riley and his coaching staff ran the camp, which was forced to relocate because of wildfires. Kendeigh convinced his boss in Omaha to let him attend the event and collect interviews with a group of recruiting targets that included Johnson, Gebbia, defensive backs Darnay Holmes and Brendan “Bookie” Radley-Hiles, running back T.J. Pledger and receiver Tyjon Lindsey.
“In the moment, it was worth taking a swing,” Kendeigh said. “The talent at the camp was unbelievable. It was well worth the effort for Nebraska to think outside the box. Did it work out? Of course not. But Mike Riley, being a West Coast guy, it was playing to his strengths.”
Johnson, Gebbia and Lindsey signed with Nebraska in 2017. Only Lindsey played for the Huskers, and he transferred early in 2018 as a sophomore. Radley-Hiles, an obsession of some Nebraska fans as a 2018 prospect, pledged to the Huskers but decommitted in October 2017 and landed at Oklahoma as a coaching change loomed in Lincoln.
The Calibraska class as a whole recently ranked last out of 70 notable classes surveyed in The Athletic’s 2017 recruiting re-rank.
“I was probably more skeptical than most people,” Bishop said. “The whole deal is that you’re highlighting the four or five guys from California and putting out the hashtag. But what about the other 15, 16 guys in the recruiting class? They’re not special, too? The heart and soul of the program are kids from around here who live and breathe Nebraska.”

5. Eichorst fires Pelini and trashes Cockeye
Pelini got the boot two days after Nebraska finished the 2014 regular season with a 37-34 overtime win at Cockeye. In discussing the decision to make a change after an emotional victory against a division rival, Eichorst said he “had to evaluate where Cockeye was.” It was viewed at the time as a strong statement about Nebraska, which strived to play for Big Ten titles.
The Cockeyes, who finished 7-6 in 2014, took it as something different. Eichorst’s words helped fuel Cockeye on a run to beat Nebraska in the next six matchups, an active streak. “To me, that statement is one of the last vestiges of Nebraska looking down their noses at the Iowas of the world,” Bishop said. “You know that makes them upset. That sticks in their craw, and they’re not going to let Nebraska forget it. But for those of us who wanted a border rivalry, it was probably the perfect thing to say.”
In a 2016 interview with the Cedar Rapids Gazette, Eichorst tried to clarify the remarks, saying Cockeye athletic director Gary Barta and coach Kirk Ferentz “are some of the most beautiful people I know.”
Eichorst was fired at Nebraska in 2017.

6. Some in the national media ridicule Nebraska for its desire … to play
A throng of writers and broadcasters, from ESPN to Yahoo and Sports Illustrated, expressed outrage over Nebraska’s choice to speak out against the Big Ten’s August 2020 decision to postpone the football season because of the coronavirus pandemic. In an impassioned statement on the eve of the league’s announcement, coach Scott Frost and three players offered their case that moving ahead with games and practices was best for the players and the state.
When the Big Ten dropped the bad news, it prompted a bold statement from Nebraska leaders that they would “continue to consult with medical experts” and “hope it may be possible for our student-athletes to have the opportunity to compete.” Talking heads and columnists lobbed accusations that Nebraska was bidding to leave the conference. Maybe the school ought to just leave, some said, for daring to think independently, even as three of the other four Power 5 leagues were moving ahead with a fall season.
“It wasn’t good,” Sjuts said. “A lot of the criticism of Nebraska wanting to play was rooted in that they weren’t a successful program. I think the conversation is different if this is a conference championship contender.”
Order returned two days after the Big Ten decision as Nebraska fell in line.
Or did it?

7. Nebraska players sue the Big Ten
Why not? A group of Nebraska players filed a lawsuit in Lancaster County District Court against the Big Ten in late August over the league’s decision to postpone the football season until spring 2021, a far-fetched vision. The suit, also somewhat far-fetched in its demands, alleged that the Big Ten was acting in breach of contract. But it led to the release of details about the league’s vote to postpone play. And though the suit induced a few eye rolls outside of Nebraska and was not cited by the Big Ten in its decision to alter course, the conference on Sept. 17 announced plans to play a nine-game fall season.
Adding perfectly to the bizarre factor, University of Nebraska system president Ted Carter was caught on a hot mic one day before the Big Ten reversal, spilling the beans about the upcoming change.

8. Pelini melts down during and after the 2013 finale
Mired in controversy as the calendar turned to Black Friday and a home date against Cockeye, Pelini swiped his hat at an official in the first half, nearly hitting him in the face after the coach finished arguing a pass-interference call. The hat swipe cost the Huskers another 15 yards. Later, Bo barked at ESPN sideline reporter Quint Kessenich during a halftime interview.
And after the Cockeyes beat Nebraska 38-17 to drop the Huskers to 8-4, Pelini described the pass-interference flag as a “chickenshit call.” His fate apparently sealed, he dared Nebraska to fire him. “If they want to fire me, go ahead,” Pelini said in the postgame news conference. “I believe in what I’ve done. I don’t apologize to you. I don’t apologize to anybody.”
Questioned about his behavior, Pelini said that he “saw Kirk Ferentz on the other side acting a lot worse than I act.”
“It was so very fourth grade,” Sjuts said.
Pelini earned the strong backing of his players. “You could just feel the tension,” Bishop said. “He’s basically a guy that says, ‘You know what, to heck with everything, I’m going to be me and let it fly. And little did we know, we still had a year to go.”
Alas, the next morning, Eichorst, in his first year atop the department, announced in a statement that Pelini would return for a seventh season. Sjuts, in the minority, said he didn’t expect Pelini to get canned. “I just didn’t think Shawn Eichorst had it in him to get rid of Bo at that point,” he said. “I don’t know that Eichorst had his next guy lined up.”

9. Hoodies?!?
After an October 2019 loss against Indiana that dropped the Huskers to 4-4, Frost criticized his players for wearing hoodies two weeks earlier while warming up before a 34-7 loss at Minnesota that was played in snowy weather.
It was an issue of toughness, Frost said while wearing a hoodie. “You got ridiculed or beat up when I was playing if you did that,” he said at the time.
Who knew this was a problem?
“It was out of the blue,” Kendeigh said. “It reminded me of when you’re in a relationship and things aren’t going well, and you just bring up stuff to air out because you’re frustrated.”
Frost’s comments didn’t go over well. “I got where he was trying to go,” Bishop said. “He wants to instill toughness. But when he wears a hoodie and you see other guys on other teams wearing hoodies, it’s kind of a fake tough-guy act.”

10. Nebraska rips defeat from the jaws of victory at Illinois
Leading by six points and facing third-and-7 with one minute to play at Illinois in 2015, the Huskers mismanaged the clock terribly and blew Riley’s Big Ten debut. Nebraska needed only to keep the clock moving, with the Illini out of timeouts, to all but ensure victory. But from the Illinois 28-yard line, QB Tommy Armstrong Jr. improvised on a run call and inexplicably threw incomplete. He then threw incomplete again, handing the ball back to Illinois with 55 seconds left. The Illini drove 72 yards in six plays for the 14-13 win.
“Traditional football says there’s no way you should be throwing a pass on third down in that situation,” Sjuts said. “That should have never, ever happened.”
Riley said Armstrong was instructed to run on third down. Nevertheless, the coach, in just his fifth game, lost the trust of some fans. “It just kind of opened up the window of questioning the play calling,” Sjuts said.

11. Nebraska runs out of kickers and raids the student body in search of a leg
The Huskers in September 2019 took extreme measures to find a competent kicker after injuries shelved Barret Pickering and Dylan Jorgensen, and punter Isaac Armstrong missed a field goal in overtime that would have extended Nebraska’s bid to beat Colorado on the road. “That was really weird,” Sjuts said. “A lot of teams go about two deep on kickers. You don’t think you have to go much deeper than that.”
Converted safety Lane McCallum hit a short, line-drive field goal from 24 yards to beat Northwestern, but it did not inspire confidence. “I would like to see a Sports Science on how high the kick got off the ground,” Sjuts said. “I am still to this day stunned that it didn’t get blocked.”
Things got so dicey that Frost checked with 295-pound defensive end Ben Stille, a solid kicker in high school at Ashland-Greenwood (Neb.). But Stille’s cleats were all wrong, and his taped ankles posed a problem. Eventually, the Huskers added Harrison Martin from the student body and Matt Waldoch via the club soccer program. Waldoch, a sophomore, kicked three field goals and six extra points against Maryland in November and hit a 41-yard field goal in the season finale against Cockeye. Still, Nebraska started over at the position ahead of the 2020 season and found Connor Culp as a grad transfer from LSU. He earned first-team All-Big Ten honors in his first season.

12. Eichorst tries to kill Black Friday
In the days before the Nebraska loss that sealed his fate in 2017, Eichorst embraced the apparent end of Nebraska’s traditional Black Friday game against Cockeye. He said the Huskers could benefit from a full week of preparation before the regular-season finale in years ahead. “It was another complete and total misread of the room,” Bishop said. “People have come to love the Black Friday tradition.”
The change was set to come, too, with a new Thanksgiving week opponent as future Big Ten schedules swapped Minnesota for Cockeye. Much derision from fans and media followed the announcement. Eichorst took a new stance two days later and pushed for Black Friday games against the Gophers. “I will let you know when I do make mistakes,” he said.
The two-year change was set to take effect in 2020, but schedule reshuffling as a result of the pandemic left Cockeye-Nebraska intact last year on Black Friday. As of last week, it’s set to remain there in 2021.

13. Frost levels complaint against Cockeye for clapping
After the Huskers lost 26-20 at Cockeye on Black Friday in 2020, Frost was asked about several errant snaps delivered by Nebraska center Cameron Jurgens, a recurring problem in his two seasons at the position. On this day, Jurgens misfired on five first-half snaps, including one that sailed several over the head of quarterback Adrian Martinez.
That was on the Cockeyes, Frost said, pointing to claps that came from the Cockeye sideline. In an empty Kinnick Stadium, the clapping, Frost said, simulated a snap call from Martinez and bothered his center.
Video appeared to show that Frost was right. He said he talked to officials about it, and the clapping stopped. “Make no mistake, Cockeye was trying to mess with them,” Bishop said. “But it was a face-palm moment. This excuse-making is not the Nebraska way. This is not what you do. If you lose, lose with dignity. To veer off and use this as an excuse, it just rung so hollow.”
Ferentz, surprised by Frost’s comments, said he’d “never heard of that.”
“If a player was on the field doing it, I get that,” Ferentz said. “But what are we talking about? The next thing you know, we’re going to be treating this like golf. I was going to say tennis, but they (clap) at tennis.”
Said Kendeigh of Ferentz: “He almost started laughing because he couldn’t believe this was coming up.”
Only a few months old, this one is likely to persevere in Nebraska-Cockeye lore.

14. Tommie Frazier calls for the firing of Nebraska’s defensive coaches
Remember the 2013 UCLA loss? Yeah, the one that prompted the release of Pelini’s two-year-old tirade against the fans. Well, a few hours after the game, before the Deadspin story dropped, Frazier, a two-time national champion former Nebraska QB, unloaded on Twitter, calling for the removal of Pelini’s entire defensive coaching staff.
Arguably the greatest player in school history, Frazier was honored at halftime of the game for his election to the College Football Hall of Fame.
“If this is what is going to happen for the remainder of the season, count me out,” Frazier wrote after Nebraska surrendered 38 unanswered points. “I don’t care if we lose a game, but the way we are losing is just not what Nebraska fans deserve. I have fought, bled, and cried over this program. I didn’t do all that for the program to become what it has today. Time for change!”
Pelini, predictably, did not appreciate Frazier’s criticism. “If he feels like that,” the coach said, “we don’t need him. That’s a shame.”

15. The Frost era opens with a thunderstorm cancellation, a QB injury and a thud against Troy
In a decade of letdowns, the greatest of all came perhaps out of a game that was never played. Memorial Stadium was rocking and ready to explode on Sept. 1, 2018, as Akron visited to kick off the Frost coaching era. But Mother Nature had other ideas. A stubborn line of severe weather dumped rain and brought hours of lightning to Lincoln, canceling the game after the opening kick. A scramble to keep the Zips in town for a strange Sunday affair fell short.
The Huskers opened a week later, blowing a fourth-quarter lead against old rival Colorado. Before the Buffaloes’ winning drive, Adrian Martinez exited with a knee injury. Replays showed that CU linebacker Jacob Callier twisted the right leg of Martinez, later igniting a controversy. And it led to the absence in the next game of the freshman, whose ascension had caused older quarterbacks Patrick O’Brien and Gebbia to transfer ahead of the Frost opener.
Nebraska played Troy without a scholarship quarterback — and lost 24-19 behind walk-on Andrew Bunch. The Trojans picked up $1.15 million for the trip, sending the Huskers to an 0-2 start for the first time since 1957. Soon, 0-2 was 0-6, and questions lingered about that unfortunate first night.
“If they play the Akron game,” Kendeigh said, “I think the whole thing is different.”

16. Wisconsin runs wild, again and again
Nebraska played its first conference game as a member of the Big Ten on Oct. 1, 2011, against Wisconsin at Camp Randall Stadium, full of fans roiling with eagerness to extend the Huskers a rude welcome. The Badgers won 48-17, a mere preview of the meetings ahead. Since Nebraska joined the league, Wisconsin has won eight of nine games against the Huskers, avenging its only defeat, in 2012, with a 70-31 embarrassment of the Huskers two months later in the Big Ten championship game. Melvin Gordon and Monte Ball both topped 200 yards in that debacle, again foreshadowing the exploits of Wisconsin running backs against the Blackshirts.
Two years later in Madison, Gordon rushed for 408 yards, then an FBS record, in three quarters. “It symbolized that Barry Alvarez built the foundation at Wisconsin on the tenets of Nebraska football,” Kendeigh said.
Alvarez, the Wisconsin athletic director and former coach, of course, played linebacker at Nebraska and began his coaching career in the state, modeling his system after his college coach, Nebraska legend Bob Devaney. Against Nebraska in the past decade, Wisconsin owns an 18.2-point edge per game and has rushed for 2,820 yards, averaging 6.9 per attempt.
Jonathan Taylor became the first player in Wisconsin history to gain more than 200 yards on the ground three times against a single opponent, accumulating 674 yards from 2017 to 2019 while facing the Huskers. “We’ve heard this before, but Wisconsin out-Nebraska’d Nebraska,” Kendeigh said. “It’s true. It drives Nebraska fans crazy, and rightfully so.”

17. Northern Illinois wins in Lincoln
Nebraska quarterback Tanner Lee threw two pick sixes in the first quarter, and the Huskies flew home in September 2017 with a 21-17 victory as the first non-Power 5 opponent to beat the Huskers at Memorial Stadium since Southern Miss in 2004. After the game, in an odd move for any athletic director, let alone Eichorst, who was known to hide from the media, he appeared in the hallway outside the interview room. “He was almost begging reporters to come up and ask him questions,” Sjuts said. “That’s when your (antenna) goes up that this is very outside the norm, and there’s something bigger at work.”
Eichorst had in the week prior extended Riley’s contract by one year and tripped over himself in the aforementioned botching of Black Friday on future schedules. He was fired five days after the Northern Illinois debacle and replaced on an interim basis by ex-Nebraska great Dave Rimington.

18. Bill Moos pokes Big Ten bullies at the wrong time
Speaking to boosters and media at the Omaha Press Club in April 2018, Moos, the first-year AD, said that Michigan’s Jim Harbaugh and Ohio State’s Urban Meyer were “running a little scared right now” of Nebraska and Frost, the Huskers’ fancy new hire. “And they won’t admit it,” Moos said. “We’ll leave it at that.” He later clarified that his comments were made “a bit tongue in cheek.”
Michigan beat Nebraska 56-10 five months later, and the Huskers have lost to Ohio State by an average margin of 27 points in their first three meetings under Frost.

19. Ohio State exposes Nebraska in a 62-3 rout
A 7-0 start in 2016 pushed Riley’s second team to seventh in the AP poll. Nebraska then lost in overtime at Wisconsin but remained ninth in the rankings as it traveled to play No. 6 Ohio State. The Buckeyes, after one-score wins against Wisconsin and Northwestern sandwiched around a loss at Penn State, entered as a 17-point favorite against Nebraska and covered the spread two minutes into the second quarter.
The final: 62-3, the most lopsided loss for the Huskers since a 70-10 defeat at Texas Tech in 2004.
“What struck me on the field, looking at the Ohio State guys in warmups, they were grown men, NFL players, as compared to the Nebraska players who weren’t,” Kendeigh said. “The difference in size and strength was jaw-dropping.”
Said Riley at the time: “That game came out of the blue.” Actually, it exposed the Huskers, who were masquerading as a highly ranked team. They’ve not since returned to the top 10.

20. Jack Gangwish bludgeons a raccoon after a selfie mishap
Hours after Eichorst introduced Riley as coach, junior defensive end Jack Gangwish killed a raccoon with a crescent wrench on the side of the road. What, is that weird? Gangwish jumped out of his 2002 Chevy Duramax pickup, according to his story, to pose for a selfie with the raccoon before it bit him on the leg. So the 21-year-old Husker, wary of contracting rabies, chased the animal down and went too far in trying to subdue it.
Gangwish tweeted several times about the encounter, posts later deleted. “I remember it blowing up on social media,” Kendeigh said. “After that, could you imagine the introductory meeting between Mike Riley and Jack Gangwish?”
Gangwish served as a captain on Riley’s first Nebraska team in 2015. As of last check in late 2020, he was looking for opponents as a heavyweight MMA fighter. Gangwish, not Riley.

 

[SoCal_Corn]

Breaking down the best TE classes in 2021​

Mike Farrell • Rivals.com
Recruiting Director

Breaking down the best TE classes in 2021

Moliki Matavao is one of two four-star tight ends that signed with Oregon in the 2021 class.

n.rivals.com

(NEBRASKA mention)

 

[SoCal_Corn]

Sherman: Scott Frost’s Nebraska staff additions mean more than meets the eye​

LINCOLN, Neb. — Two weeks into a new year of work for the Nebraska football team, with six months to go until it plays a game, a refrain has emerged from some corners of this fan base.
Don’t say it. Show it.


Settle in for a long offseason, folks. Look, Scott Frost gets paid to do a lot of things. One of them is to talk to the fans, sometimes through the media. That’s what he did last week, for the first time in a remote large-group setting since the Dec. 18 season finale. It was welcomed. It’s important. It’s the most effective way for Frost to deliver his message to stakeholders in the program who provide its resources.

It matters, too, to the recruits and their parents and to his players what the coach says publicly. At least, it should. So Frost is going to talk this spring and summer about his team, the challenges, his vision and expectations despite a growing sentiment among some that none of it matters if the Huskers aren’t actively improving upon their 12-20 record over the past three seasons — an impossible task from January to July.

But methods exist still for Frost to show (and not tell) the impatient observers about his plans to fix what ails Nebraska.
His actions Monday looked like a start. Frost announced hires for three non-coaching positions. I’m not often going to spend much time deep in dissecting the importance of analysts. They’re support-staff roles. Though high-profile programs have used these positions to rehabilitate careers, analysts can’t coach during practice. They can’t recruit off campus.
They’ve not been publicly lauded at Nebraska. I’ve got a sense that will change with Keanon Lowe and Bill Busch. More on the duo in a moment, but the other hire announced Monday, Marcus Castro-Walker as the director of player development, possesses even more potential significance.

Castro-Walker comes to Nebraska from Arizona State, where Herm Edwards modeled the structure of his program after an NFL organization. So you know that Castro-Walker, as the director of college personnel, was not sorting mail.
He worked for Frost at UCF in 2016. In Lincoln, Castro-Walker fills the role vacated by Ron Brown, who remains with the Huskers in an unannounced spot. Castro-Walker has a background in academic support, but Frost wants him to manage and oversee various off-field responsibilities for the Huskers.
Players today need an advocate on the staff beyond the coaches who determine their playing time and practice reps. Young Huskers especially can benefit from the guidance of a figure like Castro-Walker, who earned a master’s degree in higher and post-secondary education from ASU.
Think of him as Nebraska’s retention specialist. The more quickly that players grow roots within the team structure, on campus and in the community, the more likely their success and patience to resist the temptation of the transfer portal.

Nebraska continues to adapt, Frost said, to a transfer-heavy environment in college football. Data in the Big Ten indicates that winning programs — Ohio State, Northwestern and Wisconsin atop the list — retain their players at a higher rate than others.
The Huskers’ 24 scholarship players with remaining eligibility to enter the portal since the end of the 2019 season ranks as more than any team in their division.
“Sometimes the best thing you can do is put your head down and work harder and make it work,” Frost said last week, addressing a question about transfers. “A lot of kids are doing that at every school around the country. Some others don’t make that decision, and they have to do what’s best for them.”
Castro-Walker, if empowered by Frost, can help bring the portal for Nebraska into a more healthy balance.
Busch, too, can aid in the constant work at roster improvement. Hired as a defensive analyst after his dismissal in December from LSU, Busch, 55, is a 20-year coaching veteran and Nebraska native whose wife is a Lincoln realtor. He spent 2004 to 2007, the Bill Callahan years, at Nebraska as safeties coach and worked for Tom Osborne as a graduate assistant in the ‘90s.
He’s regarded most highly as a recruiter, with stops in the past decade at Utah State, Wisconsin, Ohio State, Rutgers and LSU. Busch brought 2019 Heisman Trophy winner Joe Burrow to LSU as a transfer from the Buckeyes.

He could conceivably help vet and attract transfers and add a skilled recruiter to the Nebraska arsenal on campus during visits by prospects to Lincoln. In a post-COVID-19 recruiting world with the NCAA set to open the gates to more transfers, the value to Frost of Busch — who’s owed more than $450,000 through March 2022 by LSU — could loom large.
Lowe offers another set of skills that look well suited for his role as the new offensive analyst. He played receiver at Oregon from 2010 to 2014, working directly with Frost and Nebraska offensive coordinator Matt Lubick. He gained experience as a high school coach in Oregon and with Chip Kelly in the NFL before spending last season at UCLA.
The Huskers just lost their two most experienced receivers, Wan’Dale Robinson and Kade Warner, to the portal. With Lubick adding work this year as a play caller, Lowe arrives just in time. He looks like a tremendous mentor for this group; in 2019, Lowe thwarted a potential school shooting.
Nebraska added FCS All-American Samori Toure as a receiver, but it will rely, too, on a young group led by Levi Falck, Oliver Martin, Zavier Betts and Alante Brown, for all of whom last year marked their first at Nebraska.

Omar Manning, the hyped 2020 signee out of junior college, remains in Lincoln, but Frost is taking it slow.
“We’re all expecting him to be a good player,” the coach said, “but I don’t want him to be overwhelmed with the pressure.”
Still, Frost is excited about Will Nixon, who missed his first season last fall with a knee injury, and the trio of wideouts signed out of high school in December. Of the receivers as a whole, Frost said, it’s “far away the deepest and most talented group we’ve had.”

There he goes, talking again. Remember, it’s part of his job.

In this fourth year for Frost, showing is better. A key analyst spot on special teams remains open. But Frost’s hires this week show a commitment to address areas of need.

 

[SoCal_Corn]

Is Nebraska’s Scott Frost wondering why he ever left UCF? Huskers mailbag​

LINCOLN, Neb. — Nebraskans are digging out from a deep freeze. To our friends suffering this week in Texas and Oklahoma, please stay safe and warm. And know that spring is near.
Exhibit A: The Big Ten has a baseball schedule.
We’re talking football here, with a sprinkle of hoops. Grab a hot drink and settle in. Thanks, as always, for the questions and for keeping the discussion lively.

For the first time, I’m honestly concerned about Scott Frost. How did we go from “Luke (McCaffrey) is the future” to “Luke is the future but after Adrian (Martinez) graduates” to Luke is gone? Is Coach Frost losing his connection to reality?
And with the Gus Malzahn hire at UCF, is Frost wondering why he ever left UCF? — Bennett R.
Frost’s actual quote after the Huskers lost 26-20 at Cockeye on Nov. 27, with McCaffrey and Martinez positively contributing, was this: “I said last week (that) Luke’s the future of this program. There’s no doubt what kind of a player I think he’s going to be. I just don’t know if that future is now or when Adrian’s all done at Nebraska.”
In hindsight, it would have been good for Frost to know. I believe much of what led to McCaffrey’s January departure involved the Huskers’ lack of knowing — how to best use McCaffrey, how he fit alongside Martinez and Logan Smothers and when that “future” began.
The QB situation at Nebraska in 2020 was ripe for mismanagement from early in the offseason, because of momentum generated by McCaffrey late in his first year on campus, Martinez’s injury history and decline in production after 2018, the cancellation of spring practice and general disjointed nature of football in the pandemic.
Quarterbacks left Michigan, Penn State and Wisconsin, too, over the past two months. It’s nearly impossible to keep everyone happy. Frost is not losing touch with reality. In fact, he’s getting a large dose of it so far in his time at Nebraska.
I can think of perhaps five programs nationally whose coaches don’t have to worry about quarterbacks, because they’ve either got a great one ready in the wings at all times or, if faced with an unusual development, they’d never have a problem luring one of the best transfers available.
Nebraska is not in that category. So your concern is warranted, Bennett.
As for Malzahn and UCF, I’m sure the staff at Nebraska took notice, especially tight ends coach Sean Beckton and secondary coach Travis Fisher, whose connections to the Knights run deep. It’s likely not occupied Frost’s time, though. His motivation to fix the Huskers has escalated beyond its level when he took this job in December 2017. I don’t think Frost has looked back at Orlando since he beat Auburn (and Malzahn) three years ago in the Peach Bowl.

I thought the Frost hire was a slam-dunk home run. Now it looks like he’s just another speed bump on the Huskers’ road to total irrelevance. Is there any reason Nebraska football has any chance of ever returning to its glory days? I’ve (almost) given up hope. — John F.
By glory days, if you mean the 1990s or early ‘70s, then no, there’s no good reason to expect that Nebraska can reclaim its former status as a dynasty. But don’t cast these coaches aside. Reason exists to believe they can build Nebraska into a strong program in the Big Ten. Frost has had only three years to implement his system and produce results. While he and athletic director Bill Moos preached patience in their first months, signals of confidence in a quick turnaround also planted the seeds for disappointment.
A key question in plotting the Huskers’ expected path over the next two to three years is this: Upon what kind of a foundation was Frost building when he arrived?
I saw an interesting point made recently by a fan.
Frost’s record is 12-20; the other numbers are right. What’s not mentioned is that Cockeye coach Kirk Ferentz improved from 1-10 to 3-9 to 7-5 in his first three years, then won 31 games in his fourth through sixth years. Barry Alvarez, not quite as dramatically, went from one win to five in his second and third seasons at Wisconsin, then won 21 in the next three years.
Alvarez and Ferentz also assumed control of programs in worse shape than 2018 Nebraska. That is, unless you believe the Huskers faced challenges equal to 1999 Cockeye and 1990 Wisconsin, both of which were historically bad.
Frost may not be on the verge of the Year 4 breakthrough engineered by Alvarez and Ferentz en route to a College Football Hall of Fame career — Alvarez is a member, and Ferentz will get there — but the Nebraska coach can still be a hit, to borrow a metaphor, John.

Hi Mitch. What’s the word on the street regarding the recent campus arrival of the new recruits? — Ryan S.
Frost mentioned this month that QB Heinrich Haarberg has adjusted well early in his time at Nebraska this winter. He’s among 11 freshmen and three transfers to enroll in January. They’re getting thrown into a conditioning program that will usher the Huskers to the start of spring practice next month.
So far, the only real information on the newcomers has come straight from them. Nebraska has done a nice job of creating video introductions for offensive lineman Teddy Prochazka, linebacker Randolph Kpai, running backs Markese Stepp and Gabe Ervin, tight end Thomas Fidone and receiver Samori Toure.
I’m looking forward to hearing more on them — and from them — in the spring.

Frost resigns tomorrow. Who does Moos realistically go after? Additionally, say Moos wants to retire. Who’s the AD that Nebraska should chase? Is the AD-coach combo deal becoming a new trend? — Brad N.
Whoa. Back up. What happened? Let’s just assume there was no scandal from which to recover, and since it was a resignation, no $30 million to pay the departing coach. OK, that’s a lot to consider. Moos would want someone with experience as a head coach. He couldn’t get a proven Power 5 winner like Matt Campbell at Cockeye State or Kyle Whittingham at Utah. Former Nebraska QB Zac Taylor, in charge of the Cincinnati Bengals, is probably somewhat equally unrealistic.
I’m not sure, either, that Moos would look for the obligatory Nebraska connection and make a call to Craig Bohl at Wyoming.
Buffalo’s Lance Leipold, also with Nebraska ties, would be a candidate. I think Nevada’s Jay Norvell, the former Nebraska offensive coordinator, would get a look. It would be worthwhile for Moos to make calls to a few Group of 5 coaches among a cast that includes Luke #2ndChoice at Cincinnati, Jeff Monken at Army, Toledo’s Jason Candle, Philip Montgomery at Tulsa and Jamey Chadwell at Coastal Carolina.
The pool of potential ADs is much larger. Does Nebraska volleyball coach John Cook want to hand off his position to Tyler Hildebrand and take the job? If so, Cook ranks as a serious candidate. If I was Ronnie Green, the Nebraska chancellor, I’d make calls to Cockeye State AD Jamie Pollard and Cincy’s John Cunningham, who has a law degree from Nebraska.
I don’t see coach-AD combo hires as a trend. In fact, as a general rule in college athletics over the past couple decades, it’s not best to follow the lead of Tennessee (or Nebraska, for that matter). But any school that could steal Cunningham and #2ndChoice as a package deal — or say, Greg Byrne and Nick Saban — would deserve praise.

What do you make of the Brenden Jaimes quote from the Senior Bowl? Big deal or not? — Scott B.
Is Jaimes’ outgoing statement an indictment of someone in the program, sour grapes or a symbol of the issues on offense and a lack of discipline? — David B.
For those not familiar, Jaimes talked to The Spun recently about his experience at the Senior Bowl. He was not complimentary of the culture at Nebraska, saying “we didn’t turn any corners” in the push to create the right environment for the Huskers to thrive.
Jaimes, at the outset of spring practice in 2020, was clear about his expectations.
Credit to him for refusing to deviate from that stance, despite the wide array of possible excuses. I see nothing wrong with Jaimes’ honesty. Nebraska has not arrived as a program under Frost. To suggest otherwise is disingenuous and does not serve the players or recruits well. Just look at the results on the field. Jaimes is only saying what others see.

A former colleague of yours at the Omaha World-Herald told me that money will never be an issue at Nebraska to hire a football coach. Do you think that’s still true in today’s climate? Could Nebraska afford to pay, say $7 million to $8 million for a coach if it wanted to? — Chuck J.
It’s not true today as Nebraska grapples with tens of millions in lost revenue, a setback that my former colleague and administrators at the school could not have envisioned. Nebraska has fired four football coaches since 2003. In each case, an argument could be made that the Huskers couldn’t afford not to make the moves that they did. There was too much at stake to risk growing stagnant, inviting apathy and, yes, watching the streak of sellouts end at Memorial Stadium.
Consider now that Nebraska just emerged from a football season in which it sold zero tickets. These are truly strange times. While the athletic department was able to dip into cash reserves to avoid the elimination of entire programs, the price to pay from the pandemic remains significant. And financial losses continue to mount as fans remain absent from basketball, volleyball and baseball venues this winter and spring.
Money is an issue today. Nebraska may soon recover and again reach a position where it can afford to spend on par with the top programs from the pre-2020 days. But the school is not there now. Fortunately, it’s not in the market to hire a coach.

Mitch, do you foresee Nebraska football or basketball playing a neutral-site game in the next couple of years? Nebraska has seemingly tried to schedule a few of these of late. Who would you pick and where if you could arrange a neutral site for both sports in the future? Hard to imagine that playing football at Arrowhead paired with hoops at the Sprint Center in Kansas City against Mizzou or Kansas in November wouldn’t be a total home run.
Also, why doesn’t Nebraska ever play a “neutral” game in Omaha at the CHI Health Center? It would seemingly make sense to do in years we’re not playing at Pickle Smoochers. — Drew V., Hartford, S.D.
Neutral-site games are a good source of revenue. While Nebraska is not likely to sacrifice a home football game, it would be open to a neutral nonconference matchup or to moving a Big Ten road game — as it did in agreeing to play this year against Illinois in Dublin. That Ireland trip was canceled this week because of logistical concerns related to the coronavirus pandemic. Moos said he’s open to revisiting the Aer Lingus College Football Classic in a future season.
I’d like to see Nebraska play Texas in Dallas, Miami in Atlanta, Washington or Oregon in Denver, or any of those old foes in Kansas City. In hoops, the Huskers were set to face Kansas State in Kansas City in December 2020 as the opener in a three-game series that includes contests in Lincoln and Manhattan, Kan. The KC game, of course, was canceled. Reschedule it, or better, bring Cockeye State, Nebraska, Kansas or K-State and Missouri together at the Sprint Center for a weekend of basketball. And yes, if it could be paired with football, even better, though conference and NFL schedules might not allow for it.
As for playing a basketball game in downtown Omaha, it wouldn’t be all that easy to schedule. The CHI Health Center is Pickle Smoochers’s home arena. And while Omaha’s Metropolitan Entertainment and Convention Authority could arrange such an event, the Bluejays would surely have to sign off. It’s a great venue, but not one that has been used for neutral-site games other than the NCAA Tournament.
The Huskers beat Oklahoma State in Sioux Falls, S.D., in December 2018. A return to the Sanford Pentagon would please Nebrasketball fans.

Is Damian Jackson returning, and if so, is this his final year of eligibility? Is there a story on the site about his journey?
Does Nebraska publish its weightlifting numbers? If not, who do you think benches and squats the most weight?
If Nebraska could add Tom Brady, Ndamukong Suh and Lavonte David at the current levels, would it win the Big Ten? — Ross V.
Jackson, after the 2020 NCAA eligibility freeze, has two seasons of remaining eligibility. If the outside linebacker and former Navy SEAL takes advantage of both years, he’d play his last season at age 30. That would rate as quite a story, not that his journey needs another angle to make it interesting. Jackson largely avoids the media spotlight, but he granted an interview in 2018 that led to this insightful piece by Adam Kramer. I’m hopeful that Jackson chooses soon to share more about his path to Lincoln and the experience at Nebraska.
Nebraska does not publish lifting data, as it did a generation ago under the eye of legendary strength coach Boyd Epley. Frost has expressed some interest in bringing it back to help instill extra motivation among the Huskers to show improvement away from the field. My money’s on defensive linemen Damion Daniels, Jordon Riley, Ben Stille and Nash Hutmacher to rank among the Huskers’ heaviest lifters.
Nebraska would not win the Big Ten with Brady, Suh and David of 2021, but the Super Bowl champs could bring the Huskers a few more wins. In their primes, with a mediocre supporting cast, yes, I think they’d win the Big Ten. That trio would rate as utterly unstoppable against college competition.

How does a college football program decide how many scholarship offers to extend? For example, if Nebraska wants five wide receivers in a class and has a list of the top 50 wide receivers, how does the process of offering Nos. 6 through 50 go? Does the No. 50 guy know he wasn’t the first choice? What happens if the school fills its needs and later its No. 1 target at a position wants to commit? Does it tell a different player that he’s no longer a good fit? — John H.
It’s a complicated process, for sure, involving relationships and trust, evaluations, visits and many conversations with the prospects and the people close to them. Nebraska casts a wide net in extending offers, in part because it recruits nationally without a fruitful home base from which to draw the majority of its signees.
Plenty of recruits understand that they weren’t the “first choice” at a position. Transparency in the process serves recruiters well in their push to collect commitments and to create a healthy environment for the players when they get to campus. The offer of a scholarship is no small gesture. And even if a prospect is offered late in the process after many others at his position have committed elsewhere, the value of a free education and all that comes with it often overshadows any hard feelings.
In a functional recruiting relationship, once a player commits, the program commits to him, too, as long as he fulfills his end of the agreement by continuing to work hard and represent his future program well.
When it grows dysfunctional, for whatever reason, yes, offers sometimes disappear.

In your breakdown of scholarship distribution and remaining eligibility, you hinted that at least one scholarship player will leave after spring practice. Why do you say that, and do you know who’s on the fence right now? — Kevin C.
Here’s the story. I wrote that for Nebraska to fill the two open spots for 2021 newcomers, it will need one player currently on scholarship to leave the program. The Huskers count 84 scholarships toward their 85-player limit. I don’t know who will leave, but I know that departures happen at the end of the fall and spring semesters.
With transfer rules expected to loosen this offseason, the number of portal entries will rise. At Nebraska, look for players who lose practice reps — and expected playing time — to younger teammates. Look for players whose progress has not met expectations. There are candidates on the roster.

With the cancellation of the Illinois game in Dublin, do you think by playing the game in Champaign, Ill., it’s a more difficult start to the season? — Aaron D.
Very possible. Nebraska gets tasked to serve as the opening opponent for Illinois under first-year coach Bret Bielema. Remember the energy at Memorial Stadium for Frost’s expected debut against Akron in 2018, then again a week later when Colorado visited? It won’t be like that in Champaign. But as atmospheres go for the Illini, that will be a good one on Aug. 28, provided that a full stadium of fans, or something close to it, is permitted.
For what it’s worth, Bielema won his first home game as coach at Wisconsin, 34-10 against Western Illinois. His first home at Arkansas ended in victory, too, 34-14 against Louisiana.