Huskers Recap – Once again we can’t get over ourselves: Iowagians 13 Nebraska 10

Ah, for half an hour it actually felt like the turning point had come. The halftime score was 182-20. We even drove the ball 74 yards for a touchdown right before the shot. Even the final numbers were 334-164 yards. It shouldn’t have been close.

Jeffrey Becker-Imagn Images

But Iowa football head coach Kirk Ferentz, who was accused of racial discrimination by dozens of former players, and his son, who was fired for incompetence as an offensive coordinator rather than the aforementioned allegations, adopted a strategy that has worked since the football gods deemed it right to remove Mike Riley from his life.

Fart out on offense and hit the ball repeatedly until Nebraska does its impression of Sergeant Hulka’s platoon in stripes, racing down the obstacle course, screaming, stumbling, falling, slipping and crushing testicles on the log crossing, and finally through the like John Candy Forest crashes with hilarious force.

Nebraska was clearly the best team on the field that night. Iowa fans’ halftime tweets about Ferentz constantly eating a lemon at halftime ranged from “Please retire” to “Please retire,” but contained more sarcasm and/or swearing.

But Ferentz knew. Just as he firmly believes that racial slurs and telling certain players that their urban fashion needs to be replaced with boots and flannel is OK, he actually believed, rightly, if Iowa simply went three-and-out and repeated punting (which they did on 6/10 drives) and avoiding turnovers, the Huskers would eat their own shotgun.

In the 2nd half?

• John Hohl, who had turned into nails as a kicker, did his impression of someone trying to win an NCAA 25 rivalry game against AI by knocking in a sidewinder hook from Orange Bowl Byron Bennett from just 31 yards in 1994. If it’s good? A completely different night. But that wasn’t it.
• The Huskers botched a punt recovered by Iowa. Except… not really. The returnee, the renowned Nobel Prize winner Isaiah Garcia-Casteneda, did not touch the ball at all. (He’s not, but he certainly sounds like one.) Neither was another Husker the ball whizzed past. A third dove toward it and was tapped as if he had touched it first. A slow-motion DVR confirmed that Iowa did indeed touch it first, but…yeah, Big 10, you know how it goes.

But what the hell is this whole mess anyway? The Blackshirts stuffed Iowa’s mythically amazing rushing attack – so much heart and desire for #sarcasm – but still. 10-3

• After Brian Buschini, who had a couple of Shanks returns that night, punted to bury Iowa at 14? A few plays later, Ferentz’s dream QB Jackson Stratton (white, slow, weakly armed, but can deliver it like a human Pez dispenser…and what a flow!) hurled one into the arms of 17th-seeded Kaleb Johnson Runs were held for 45 yards on the night, behind the line, who took it and ran past and through Blackshirts, who looked like they had suddenly been dismissed in the huddle for a 72-yard TD, almost half of the Hawkeyes’ 164 yards on the night. 10-10.
• And in the end, almost like a repeat of last season, when Raiola passed the ball to Iowa for a kick at the end of the game, Raiola was stripped and fumbled it to Iowa, who then scored the winner to win 13-10 on the score of the Huskers’ last 27 losses.

(Feels like that, doesn’t it?)

But that wasn’t it. Yes, the ball was clearly fumbled. However, no angle showed that Iowa actually had possession before the whistle. It appeared to be in front of Raiola, with his back to an Iowa defender who appeared to have pulled it out from under him at some point. But when the whistle blew, there was no clear turnover.

On NBC, former Iowa quarterback Paul Burmeister and Suh attack victim Colt McCoy, of course, gave the ball to Iowa and called for overtime to be put back on the clock. Of course, the referees decided that the Iowa player running around with the ball a few seconds after the final whistle was good enough for them, and a 53-yard FG later was the end of it.

But again, what do we do about fumbling it away when overtime is unavoidable?

I would like to say this is heat of the moment. That’s not it. I’ll be sober in the morning and bundle up in winter clothes for four or five miles of hiking to take the pain away from that one (and give myself the green light for a chicken and steak breakfast afterward). We don’t have Hate Iowa Week to pretend that games like this don’t hurt.

That’s what they do.

And they hurt for me, for the boys. For Nash, for Dylan, for Emmett, for Jacory, for MJ… it could go on forever.

But mostly for John B and Ty, for reasons I won’t go into for twelve paragraphs, but I have a feeling some out there will get it. And no, we don’t all have to agree, it’s okay.

Sleep well – I love each and every one of you who read my ramblings to the end.

GO BIG RED until I die. I love you.

Photo by Scott W. Grau/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

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