2018: Everything that happened before the season started.
AND
everything that happened in the second half of the season.
Scott Frost was coming home.
HE had returned. It was the right coach at the right time and the right place. That doesn't happen to us, here, very often.
Everything was going smoothly. Frost was back. He was bro-hugging with Jason Peter, he was doing pressers with a fat Wood-River-style dip of chaw in. And he was gutting it.
Old men didn't need Cialis for weeks, when they found out he was fully bringing back the Walkon Program.
He looked and sounded like the antithesis to Mike Riley. He was swagged out, impossibly jacked, and confident. I don't even know if he owns a pair of pleated khakis.
Then the season kicked off.
And that was literally all it did. The first game got lightning-delayed so hard a bunch of drunks were forced to resort to shaking their asses in rain ponchos for 2 hours and then having to do a wet-socked walk of shame back to their cars.
We blew a close game, got blown out. We had 10,000 spoons when all we needed was a knife. The irony was thick.
But we rallied in the 2nd half of the season. It seemed like we had a legitimate star in the making at QB. Optimism reigned.
2019: Mario Verduzco. Say it with me, people:
MARIO
F
VERDUZCO.
I know he's been here for a while, but this dude? He's the biggest mood of 2019.
What do you have, #Huskers fans? Favorite moments? Games? Plays? What defined the 2010s for you?
Bruce Willis announced that he's stepping away from acting due to an aphasia diagnosis.
About 12 years ago, my Dad had a massive stroke. He was diagnosed, shortly thereafter, with Aphasia. Here's a little bit what it's been like for us and for him.
First, I'll state the obvious: when it comes to matters of the brain and the human body, no two people seem to be alike. These are our experiences and in no way predictive of what the Willis family will go through or what Bruce himself will deal with.
Second: I'm far from medically inclined and I may miss on some of the details of his condition or get them wrong. I encourage all of you to go to aphasia.org for actual smart people saying actual smart things.
National pundits trying to burn Nebraska football with some giant, curtain-pulling reveal of our mediocrity like the miserably predictable magicians that they are; ignoring the fact that we put the fucking rabbit in the hat backstage already.
Like, "Tah-Dah!" You guys had Mike Riley as a coach and have underperformed.
What a fucking revelatory move, David Blaine. Hell of a plot twist, considering we were in the writers room the entire time, you stumblefucking twits.
"Abra-Cadabra! You guys care way too much!"
Whoa, Houdini. My mind just blew the fuck out of my skull, like we're not B-Rabbit kicking our own ass and then handing them the mic to try to tell us how we over-Tweet and underwin.
Nebraska leaves the Big Ten, signs a streaming deal with Amazon -- giving them access to the program a la 'Hard Knocks' -- and giving NU a direct & unprecedented pipeline to proper medical supplies and merch distribution (I have no idea how this actually works, so bear with me).
They show a fully televised scrimmage, a 7-on-7s contest, and a skills challenge on consecutive weekends that enable the team to showcase themselves and enable Amazon to have an "Adults Only", swear-words/drinking encouraged broadcast of a game against Iowa after a few weeks.
They also feature Scott Frost and Mario Verduzco going one-on-one in both chess and beer pong. Iowa gets a $2,000,000 check for participating and Nebraska makes bank.
RIP to the place that once sold me a case of Beer Thirty Light for $11.98.
Again, I bought an entire 30 cams of beer for under $12. And it tasted like it.
Beer Thirty Light, which has a STAGGERING 1.5 rating on a beer app.
And which -- and I'm sure this was purely in my own mind, but I can't shake the fact that it feels wholly accurate as I reflect on it now -- somehow TASTED purple, like the box.