Closing The Book On Nebraska

Now, I said to myself that I was going to blog before I left for the great Midwest last Friday. That did not happen of course, as all of my three readers will be able to attest, and for that I apologize. I simply ran out of time, which I know is not a very good excuse but it is the best I've got.

I was not able to write anything on here until just now because of many obvious reasons. The most obvious was my trip to Huskerland this past weekend. Now, I had stated three things that I was rather curious about in my last post, so I plan on revisiting them during this post. Before I get into that though, I must say that I had one helluva time in Nebraska. Sure driving the thirteen hours apiece there and back and watching Ohio State blow a 21 point 3rd quarter lead was extremely far from enjoyable, but I those are the only two things I have to complain about. The atmosphere was absolutely unheard of, and nearly all the people there were awesome. There were at least five separate instances where a Nebraska fan told me and/or my friends that they were glad we could make the trip, were glad we were there, and asked us if we had a good time. In addition to that we all got various numbers of handshakes, and it was honestly the first time in my life during a sporting event that a fan of the opposing team asked me what I thought the outcome of the game was going to be. Not, "You guys suck" or "Go home Ohio State" or many other various and vulgar orations that I have heard at previous sporting events I have been to. In a word, their fans were awesome.

Back to the three things of interest that encompassed my mind prior to our trip. The first had to do with corn, and how much we were actually going to drive through. I had heard that it was going to be an obscene amount, and it surely was. It seemed like as soon as we got through the midway point in Illinois, that all we saw were three things: livestock, windmills, and corn. With the exception of Des Moines, Iowa was the absolute worst state that we had the pleasure to move on through. It took us about five and a half or six hours just to get through that state alone, and you couldn't help but be bored completely out of your mind because all you saw was field after field after field. So in response to my question of how much corn I was going to lay my eyes on, the answer is a whole bunch.

The next thing that was in my mind before our trip was Nebraska's campus itself. I was interested to see how it was set up and how gameday tailgates were outside of the stadium. Although we did not take a whole lot of time to walk around the middle of campus, I feel as if I got enough of the experience that I wanted to get. Tailgaters looked to be spread out all around downtown Lincoln which was awesome. The number of Buckeye fans were pretty impressive too, showing that we certainly do travel well no matter how good or bad our team is. Being on campus and around tailgating led me to my next point of interest-the people. I wanted to see if all the rumors about Nebraskans being real blue collar genuine people were true, and as I stated up above they really were. Now of course there were the few complete jerks who had a little alcohol in them that enjoyed telling us some things that I am going to choose not to repeat right now, but the vast majority were all stunningly nice. I could go into each and every experience I had with them in grave detail, but I'm only going to talk about the one that really sticks out in my mind.

As we were walking back to our cars after the game, we came upon a man who was talking on his cell phone. Now we are all a little upset because of how the game turned out because even though we all thought the drive was worth it, it would have been that much better had we held on to win. Anyways, the man was walking in the opposite direction we were down 9th Avenue in downtown Lincoln. He saw all of our OSU apparel and all of the sudden we heard him say into his phone, "Hold on one sec." He then turned to us, sticking out his hand for a handshake, and thanked us for coming to the game and he hoped we had a good time. We were all stunned and responded in various ways because we couldn't believe that he had put his conversation on pause just to say that to us. Simply awesome. It just goes to show you how original Midwesterners are. There are quite a few Ohio State fans who can take a lesson from the Blackshirt faithful.

Enough about Nebraska. I do not really want to think about it anymore because Ohio State lost and is now 3-3 on the season and 0-2 in Big Ten play. I have another hectic week on my plate right now, starting off with doing schoolwork all day yesterday and then finishing up with the final cut down day for club basketball. The workout was intense, and we were in the gym until a little past midnight. I must say that I am happy with the results of the tryout and as long as everyone commits themselves to our team and works hard, we should be pretty good. That being said, leaving the gym after 12:15 this morning and having to come home and take a shower before going to bed was a little rough. Especially because I have an 8:30 class every day. So with that being said I am going to wrap this bad boy up.

One quick side note though: Green Bay (and Detroit?!) is 5-0. The last six times the franchise was 5-0 to start the season they won the Super Bowl or NFL Championship-do I see another one on the horizon? Green Bay (and Aaron Rodgers) took care of a good Atlanta team on Sunday night and I cannot help but be excited for the rest of this season, especially because they have yet to play the Lions. GO PACK GO!

Off to get some much needed sleep, but one more thing:

"For nothing is impossible with God."

~Luke 1:37

Proud Buckeye and Sports Enthusiast,

Eric Seger

Daily Segs