Husker Football: 'The Process' Needs A Stopwatch For Titles

Stopwatches are amazingly common in football. Whether it be up until kickoff against a rival or days since a particular event, they’re used for motivation. The Husker football program could benefit greatly from one.

Picture it: Inside and outside of the Hawks Championship Center, in the locker room, everywhere it counts, there’s a big digital stopwatch with bright red numbers ticking by down to the nanosecond.

Nice and digital, too. We’re talking flat panel screens, the whole nine, because this needs to mean something.

The words above said numbers read “Days Since Last Championship”.

If that stopwatch existed as of this writing, it would be at 14 years, 8 months, 15 days, 6 hours, 7 minutes, and 59 seconds. I’m not going to go into milliseconds, nanoseconds, etc., but they would be on there.

Some other numbers would be, as well.

7,736,047.983 minutes, 128,934.133 hours, 5,372.256 days, 767.465 weeks, all vertical under those bad boys up there.

I don’t know what Bo Pelini’s “process” is, but there’s nothing wrong with a little motivation.

Let me give you a very personal example. Here’s the United States National Debt Clock. Makes you stop and think while those numbers continue to fly by.

You want to win a championship? Hate the clock. Despise it.

The Huskers’ numbers are far easier to reset than the nation’s debt, of course. The point remains the same and for Nebraska football, it serves as a reminder.

Nebraska has clearly lost a championship edge. The numbers don’t lie. However, there’s a push in them that causes the players who legitimately want to take home trophies to put in the extra hours, minutes and seconds to do so.

Want to win against big-time ranked teams? Make sure you’re using time properly while that clock ticks. Want to win the Big Ten West? Make sure the lights are on nice and bright as you study the playbook, lift weights and throw/catch extra passes.

You want to win a championship? Hate the clock. Despise it. Curse its very existence. Wish you could smash it to bits. Spit in its metaphorical face before walking out of the tunnel and if you deserve to, again coming back into the locker room.

Hate the clock as it taunts you after a loss. Let it remind you that you’ve set yourself – your team – back more days, more hours, more seconds.

Abhor that clock until finally, once another one counts down to zero in Indianapolis, the ones in Lincoln go black.

Bring the Big Ten Championship trophy back home and tweet out pictures in front of it. Hold it high and laugh at your nemesis.

One day, it’ll get even better. Not only do you do the taunting, but you rub salt in the wound with the National Championship Trophy and the Stagg Championship Trophy to point at.

Husker Football: ‘The Process’ Needs A Stopwatch For Titles

By Brandon Cavanaugh | Aug 19, 2014