Holiday Blues

It’s late and like a dummy, I have to be in early Friday morning to talk about the crap that was the 2010 Holiday Bowl, so I’ll have some brief observations.

It is very easy to read too much into bowl game results and what it means for the following season, so while I’m sure many of you are frustrated that Washington owned Nebraska in San Diego, I’d be careful to feel too gloomy about the Huskers 2011 prospects just because they laid a dinosaur sized egg in the season finale. Bowls – particularly non-BCS/national championship games – are all about which team is motivated to be there.

As we suspected when this rematch was announced, Washington was motivated, Nebraska was not.

We also know this. Bo Pelini cannot will his team to motivation and he cannot B.S. us anymore. Talk all you want about “happy to be here”, but the Huskers were as happy about the prospects of playing in Qualcomm Stadium as Eli Manning was. Problem is, the Huskers couldn’t demand a trade to another bowl like Manning could to the New York Giants.

It’s sad to see this kind of performance especially considering the quality of players who suited up for the last time in scarlet and cream. The seniors deserved better, but in the end this emotionally gut-wrenching season ends in the quagmire of the most uninspiring Nebraska performance this side of 2007.

It’s ironic that the one area that we believed would be a hallmark of a Bo Pelini coached team is the one area that proved to be an Achilles Heel time and time again in 2010.

The 2010 Huskers had a surprising lack of discipline.

The penalties were flat out embarrassing. Forget conspiracies, as Chris Fowler pointed out during Thursday night’s game, every penalty by Nebraska was earned against Washington. While I can sometimes forgive pass interference penalties by defensive backs who are being physical, nobody in their right mind can forgive procedure penalties that kill drives, back-to-back delay of game penalties, facemask penalties that change field position. This team was sloppy in this regard from the start of the season and when they lost the ability to overcome their mistakes, they became a painfully average football team.

This is one area where the Huskers must improve or they will suffer through a terribly humiliating inaugural campaign in the Big Ten.

Put aside the “will he or won’t he leave” questions about Taylor Martinez. Assuming he is back and healthy next season, I still have major questions about whether or not Martinez has the intangibles to be a college quarterback.

Do you wonder why nobody else in major college football offered this talented athlete a scholarship to be quarterback? He is a fine runner. He can make people miss in the open field. But he is a liability running in traffic with the inability to hang onto the ball. The throwing mechanics are awkward at best. Reading coverages? How about just being able to get the play called in the huddle and get to the line of scrimmage in time?

There is room for Martinez on this roster. Even with the quirky personality and over-involved father. But as the field general? I don’t think so. Injury or not, there was not growth. I didn’t see someone take command of the huddle. You don’t have to be everybody’s friend to be quarterback, but you also cannot be distant and seemingly removed and expect people to be inspired by your leadership.

Nebraska desperately needs a Carnes, a Turner, a Green or a Starling to step up and make a serious threat give Bo Pelini an option.

I’m not for government over-regulation, but is there a way we can loosen the stranglehold The Worldwide Leader has over college football? There is no way one network can own the rights to 34 of 36 bowl games. That should never happen in a sport as popular as college football. It was bad enough that Nebraska’s game was delayed 15 minutes and wasn’t seen on its scheduled channel until midway through the first quarter, then we missed plays because of ESPN’s insistence to show us UConn’s women’s basketball team’s loss to Stanford, ending their 90 game win streak.

Isn’t this why ESPN has umpteen channels? I get the historic nature of UConn’s loss, but why not use your incessant score crawl to invite people who want to see the end of the game to switch the channel?!?!

I know people had issues with how FOX covered the BCS, but give me some diversity in college football coverage. Let me have a choice of the game I want to see and don’t put all the control in the hands of Bristol, CT.

Wish I had time to elaborate more. You can catch more of my comments on this game and the season on Friday morning’s Jack & John in the Morning on 1400 KLIN starting at 6am.