If you thought the Nebraska football loss to Minnesota was annoying, just wait until you get to the punchline of what was a wild and crazy Saturday in college football. With the loss, the Huskers dropped to 3-6 on the season and will need something resembling a miracle in order to make a bowl game.
Should they not get that miracle and lose at least one of the next three games, the Huskers will miss a bowl for the 6th straight year. That isn’t good. What’s even worse is that entering yesterday, there were two only two Power 5 programs in college football that hadn’t been to a bowl since 2017.
Nebraska football was joined by the Kansas Jayhawks as the only two P5 programs without a bowl berth since 2017. And then Lance Leipold and his gang beat Oklahoma State yesterday to notch their sixth win, snapping a 13-season bowless streak. Those two outcomes mean that while Kansas was the standard of ineptitude in college football, the mantel has now been passed to the Nebraska football team.
Barring that very special miracle that would include a massive upset win over Michigan in the Big House, the Huskers are going to have their sixth straight losing season. That’s officially the longest losing season streak since the 1940s.
The mantel passed to the Cornhuskers from the Jayhawks is just another reason why the next head coach hire is so important. It’s why it can’t be trusted to just anyone.
The good news is that Lance Leipold and several other coaches that are or were on NU’s radar have shown that a turnaround from being one of the worst programs in college football to respectable isn’t actually a project that takes four or five years.
Matt Rhule is one of the candidates that has shown a couple of times that a turnaround can be accomplished in a year or two.
Until that turnaround happens, the Nebraska football team is the new standard of ineptitude in the sport. That shouldn’t sit well with anyone and hopefully lead to Husker fans not accepting anyone to take over as the next head coach.