Full disclosure, though I was born in Oklahoma and am a political Independent, I\u2019m an east coast progressive and supporter of civil progress. That being said, I gotta ask: what is this weird backwater place called Nebraska University?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First the main news: this week Nebraska football, one of the more storied programs in the game, fired its coach, a former beloved player and quarterback of the 1997 national championship team. Unfortunately, as a coach for the school, Scott Frost had gone 16-31 with no winning seasons and several hi-profile gaffes. So he was handed his hat and a buyout check for $15MM.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But there was some ancillary news: after the above story washed across the major news outlets, a second wave announced that the Cornhusker team will be led on an interim basis by Mickey Joseph, who was hired as Associate Head Coach just 3 games ago. And somewhat buried in that story was this nugget: he becomes the first black head coach of any sport at Nebraska.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wait, what? I had to check this out. The Husker athletics site lists 9 men\u2019s and 13 women\u2019s programs. And sure enough they have all had only white head coaches, even the ones with a high proportion of black athletes such as football, basketball and track&field. Some of the other sports have some small representation of non-white-American players, such as a Japanese golfer or a East European gymnast. But no high-level coaching diversity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I figured, c\u2019mon, at least the men\u2019s soccer program might have some hot-shot import from some place like Brazil, so I checked to find\u2026there is no men\u2019s soccer at Nebraska. I wasn\u2019t surprised they don\u2019t play ice hockey either. But if preppy white-bread sports are their thing, how about Lacrosse? Nope. Crew or Sailing? Uh-uh. They do have Swimming and Diving, but only for women, not for men. And they have 5 young ladies who compete in Rifle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And did I mention they\u2019ve never had a black head coach in anything?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was intrigued. I dug into the school history to find that \u2013 somewhat a propos \u2013 they were once known as the Rattlesnake Boys and then the Bugeaters. Thankfully, they gave that up to become Cornhuskers in 1900, which is quaintly cute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As for mascots, they are perfectly represented by Herbie Husker, a very muscular white dude in a red cowboy hat. And his junior sidekick is known as L\u2019il Red. Which I hear is some reference to their team colors, which leads some of their fans to call them…um… by a different name\u2026oh no\u2026an informal nickname\u2026which is\u2026ugh\u2026which is\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
No. NO. NO! NO!! NO!!! NO!!! I dug deeper. I found the website which lays out the school\u2019s brand standards. Nebraska\u2019s official team colors are Scarlett and Cream. That\u2019s not Red. That\u2019s not White. Not even close.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I gotta go on record. There\u2019s only one \u201cBig Red\u201d in NCAA Division One. And though this school can\u2019t play football to save its life, it has a handful of national championships in hockey and lacrosse. And its Women\u2019s Polo team has won 15 national titles, perhaps in part because this \u201cBig Red\u201d is also the New York State school of Agriculture (did I give it away?)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The school\u2019s colors are true to the name: \u2018Carnellian Red\u2019, chosen to honor its founder Mr. Cornell, is so handsome that Campbell\u2019s Soup adopted it for their labels; and Plain White to honor its first President, Mr. White. Pure Red, Pure White.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All of which explains why, when any self-respecting college sports fan rises and yells \u201cLet\u2019s Go Red!\u201d there\u2019s only one school they are actually cheering for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it\u2019s not some school in Nebraska.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Which, as I now understand, has never had a non-white head coach in anything.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Full disclosure, though I was born in Oklahoma and am a political Independent, I\u2019m an east coast progressive and supporter of civil progress. That being said, I gotta ask: what is this weird backwater place called Nebraska University? First the main news: this week Nebraska football, one of the more…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1780,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Lil-Red.png?fit=354%2C464&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1779"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1782,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1779\/revisions\/1782"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}