In Nebraska's third straight loss on Saturday, the team and coaching staff made plenty of unforced errors. Those unforced errors were incredibly frustrating because the Huskers looked like the better team until the fourth quarter. The most frustrating unforced error came after the game because it showed a simple lack of attention to detail.
Among the many things Husker fans weren't too happy about after Nebraska lost to Washington was that starting quarterback Anthony Colandrea didn't talk to the media. Postgame press conference reports said that he had "declined" to speak. For nearly two days, NU fans criticized someone who was supposed to be a team leader for not facing the media.
However, on Monday, Nebraska head coach Matt Rhule tried to put the situation to rest, saying Colandrea was meeting with the medical team after the game. On Tuesday, Colandrea confirmed he was with the medical team, and that's why he didn't talk to the media.
The question now is: why did Nebraska make such a silly unforced error? Assuming the claims are true—and I think everyone would assume this isn't a coordinated lie—Nebraska not letting the media know why Colandrea didn't speak after the game, either Saturday night or at any point Sunday, is a massive oopsie.
Nebraska football failed to quickly explain why Anthony Colandrea missed postgame media
This didn't need to be a press release or anything that official. Simply reaching out to a member of the media who reported that Colandrea "declined" to speak and explaining why he wasn't available wouldn't have been difficult at all.
The media isn't totally innocent in all of this either. They could have done a little digging into why Colandrea wasn't speaking. Though this sort of thing is likely fairly common, they believed the situation was similar to other times when players weren't made available after a game.
In the grand scheme of things, the Colandrea situation shouldn't go on much longer. But Nebraska's Sports Information Department needs to understand how badly this went, especially one day after the quarterback's agency announced he'd signed an extension.
Pairing that new contract with what the media and fans thought was Colandrea ducking the media allowed a narrative to spread around the state, one that some fans will now stick to even after Rhule and Colandrea did their best to end it. Hopefully this is a learning moment for everyone and this sort of thing won't happen again.
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