Earlier this summer, we talked about whether or not the Nebraska football team could be a “chaos team.” In other words, could the Huskers create chaos in the Big Ten and college football landscape even if their season didn’t go the way NU fans hoped.
Now it’s time to discuss whether or not the Huskers might end up being a “fraud squad.”
This idea comes from a recent article in The Athletic that laid out several programs that could indeed be looked at as frauds. That is to say teams that got off to scorching hot records thanks in large part to a relatively easy early schedule.
The fraud part especially comes in when talking about a team that might even sniff the Top 10 at some point, only to come crashing down to earth once the schedule gets harder or the team simply succumbs to the law of averages.
The article did in fact, mention the Nebraska football team as being one of those that could very easily be a fraud squad. That’s because there is one team in the first seven games that prognosticators believe will be a legit contender for much of anything.
There’s also the fact that outside of Oklahoma, the Nebraska football team’s non-conference schedule is quite easy. Add in a Week 0 game that should be quite winnable for the Huskers and a 3-1 schedule is really about the worst the Cornhuskers have any business doing, if Scott Frost and company want to hope that this season is really part of a turnaround.
While NU is not in a situation where it should take any opponent for granted, things are going very poorly indeed in Lincoln if either Indiana or Rutgers (who combined for two conference wins in 2021) are able to pull off victories. That could mean that Frost’s bunch are 5-1 after six games. That could already see a program that is still well known around the nation jump into the Top 25.
Things get a bit murkier with the next three games. Purdue has been a challenge for the Big Red of late. So has Minnesota and Illinois. But none of the three are powerhouse programs and while it’s a stretch to call a sweep of those three games “likely” it shouldn’t be viewed as impossible.
So now the Nebraska football team is sitting at 8-1 at the start of the second week of November.
Two questions now arise. If the Huskers are sniffing a Top 10 ranking, as they likely would with that record that late in the season, did they earn it? The other question is, do they have any hope of keeping it? Or will they be exposed as Top 10 frauds?
The schedule closes out with Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa. That’s as tough as any trio of games that a Big Ten team is going to face this year. It would not be shocking at all if Nebraska closed out their slate with three straight losses.
The big question is whether or not that would qualify them as fraud. After all, it seems likely all three of those opponents could be Top 15 teams when they square off.
The real answer to whether or not the Nebraska football team is a “fraud squad” really comes down to whether or not they can get off to a fast start, and how long that “start” lasts. There’s also an argument to be made that this season, after five straight losing campaigns, Cornhusker fans would be perfectly fine with a “fraud squad.”
As long as it means the Nebraska football program is building towards something.