Before we get into the picks, here’s your reminder that KSB’s annual tailgate party will be held from 8-11 AM on September 4. In light of Lincoln’s new indoor mask mandate and to have a safer event, we’re hosting the tailgate outside, in the front of the Cornhusker Hotel (the 13th Street side). We’ll have a temporary pause in the party while the Husker team loads the buses, but you, your kids, and even Karen after a few drinks will get to cheer them on for a matchup against that perennial powerhouse...Fordham!
If you haven’t RSVP’d, you can do so here.
Now what you’ve all been waiting for . . .
KAREN’S PREDICTION:
It seems fitting somehow that the morning Shari told me I HAD to get my Husker predictions written is the morning that my daily Bible reading was from the book of Job. Specifically the second chapter where, after Job has lost everything and is covered in boils, his friends come to hang out and Job is so sad that the friends just sit there for a while, saying nothing. Well Husker fans, here I am for you. Let’s just all take a breath and feel each other’s pain shall we?. Ooooof. Please spare an extra moment of reverential silence for your KSB Husker fans. We are cooped up with Notre Dame, Michigan and (gag) Iowa fans here, people!
Now, for the good news. This Husker season reminds me of the episode of M*A*S*H when Colonel Potter put Charles Winchester in charge while the Colonel was gone. Charles said, “I’ll try not to let you down” and Colonel Potter said, “Son you can’t let me down, because I ain’t expecting nothing of ya!” And THAT my friends, is my theme for the Huskers 2021 season. The Huskers can’t let me down, because I ain’t expecting nothing from them!
Snaps sailing over the quarterback’s head? Been there, done that.
Piss-poor field position. LOL, let me count the ways.
Stupid penalties? Hold my beer.
NCAA violations? (WAIT - WE WERE CHEATING LAST YEAR AND WERE STILL THAT BAD? WHAT THE ----???) Nope, not even that can goad me into anger - I mean we at least got the benefit of extra help (WAIT - THE CHEATING WAS FOR SPECIAL TEAMS AND WE STILL HAD THE 124th RANKED SPECIAL TEAMS IN DIVISION I FOOTBALL???) Let’s take another deep breath here…..
No, this is the year of no expectations, and I refuse to budge from that resolution.
So, with completely ZERO expectations, here are my predictions for the Huskers’ 2021 campaign:
Illinois - The Fighting Illini will be all fired up and ready to chew through concrete for a new coach. And the Huskers will be pretty wobbly due to the distractions posed by the NCAA and Oklahoma-gate. I predict this will be a close game, but the Huskers should pull it out unless they do something boneheaded to lose it in the fourth quarter. Win
Fordham - This will be a typical embarrassing win against kids who are awed to be in Memorial stadium. (The Huskers should be grateful that the Westside Warriors are too busy with their high school schedule to have filled this open date.) This win will have the dudes wearing 1988-era Starter jackets calling sports talk radio saying “we’re back baby!” In fact, we will NOT be back. Win
Buffalo - see Fordham. Only Starter-jacket guy will be even more annoying and will start predicting that the Huskers will jump up and surprise Oklahoma. In fact, we will NOT surprise Oklahoma. Win
Oklahoma - The 2021 Huskers will look like those photographs of veterans who stormed the beaches of Normandy -- NO REALLY, THEY WERE ONCE STRONG AND HANDSOME! BUT LOOK HOW WITHERED THEY ARE NOW! The Game of the Century was a long time ago. And it will never seem as distant as it will on September 18. Loss
Michigan State - Sparty’s Jaylen Hunt will have his work cut out for him, but by the time the Huskers limp into East Lansing, he will have the kinks worked out. A beat up Husker team will talk about bouncing back, but instead Michigan State will bounce back from their loss the previous week (Miami -- ewww). Loss
Northwestern - These two teams should be pretty even, but we have this weird thing in the series where the visiting team wins more often. A shaky Husker crew will wilt late in the game at home. Loss.
Michigan - I would LOVE to have the Huskers pull down Jim Harbough’s khakis and give him a big ole swirlie. And I think Nebraska will put up a good fight. But the losses will be piling up and I don’t think this 2021 crew will have the starch to see it through. Loss.
Minnesota - Does anyone else remember when Nebraska played the Golden Gophers back in 1983? When their team’s play was as goofy as their mascot? Yeah, me too. Good times. Let’s remember how awesome that game was when, on October 16, we are all confronted once again by just how freaking annoying P.J. Fleck can be when his team is winning. #RowTheBoatOnYourOwnGoddamnedTime. Loss.
Purdue - This the most interesting game on the schedule, IMHO. The Boilermakers are obviously not the Purdue of old, and the Huskers will be at home. This will be a high scoring game with contributions from unexpected Huskers who will have to be on the field due to starters being either injured or benched for poor play. But in the end, the Blackshirts will not be able to hold their ground. Loss
Ohio State - Sigh. How about instead of a football game, we challenge the Buckeyes to a TikTok dance-off? No? Loss
Wisconsin - God how I hate these guys. They are a Budget Value™ Nebraska Football program who are now better than the real thing. Want to see great O line play? Running backs who sacrifice their bodies for the last additional yard? Disciplined defenders that stay home and mind their own assignments? You’ll see all that in Madison, but sadly it will be from the Badgers, not the Huskers. And those jerks have also spoiled the “Jump Around” song for me. Blech. Loss
Iowa - Ah, yea, the home of Idiots Out Wandering Around. The Ames Library fire that destroyed both books. The fanbase that has to tailgate so they can gather enough natural teeth for a full set. Yeah, those a-holes are going to beat us again in Lincoln. Loss.
Big Ten Championship - LOL (sob)
That’s it friends. A 3-9 season. We will not have any joy in Memorial Stadium this year unless Garth Brooks comes back for another encore. Because this team -- this team that we all love and cheer for no matter what -- this team will force Husker fans to once again have the patience of Job.
STEVE’S PREDICTION:
Illinois. Fordham. Buffalo. Oklahoma. Michigan State. Northwestern. Minnesota. Purdue. Ohio State. Wisconsin. Iowa. How do you think those games will turn out? Well . . . Because as we all know, only one game matters this year! That’s right – once every eight years, the winningest program in college football history graces you with its presence. On October 9th, Michigan returns to Lincoln, Nebraska!!! Perhaps you remember the last time Michigan and Nebraska played. Yes, that 56-10 ass-whooping at the Big House in 2018. The good news for Husker fans? It probably won’t be a 46-point drubbing this time around. The bad news? Both teams are still coached by their underperforming favorite-son quarterbacks – Jim Harbaugh at Michigan, and Scott Frost at Nebraska. They were going to “save” their respective programs. To say the results have been less-than-stellar is an understatement. The only performance in the last ten years that has been more disappointing than theirs is RBT’s on his wedding night [LINK REMOVED BY EDITOR]. While Harbaugh has been a disaster in big games, I predict the Maize and Blue prevail over the Scarlet and Cream 31-23. And if I’m wrong and a poorly-coached Michigan team manages to lose this game? We’re ready for you, Jim!
On the brighter side for Husker fans who love money, Vegas is BEGGING you to take some of theirs! They have set the over/under on Husker wins this year at 6. The Huskers are likely to finish 3-9, 4-8 at best. I strongly suggest you put some of your hard-earned dollars on the under so that you can at least profit from another painfully long and losing Husker season.
BOBBY’S PREDICTION:
She’s done it. The gravitational pull of Haase’s existential despair around this football program has finally broken some of my spirit, and now you get to read about it.
In the inimitable words of Bill Withers, there ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone. She’s been gone or in the process of leaving for 24 years. (Congrats to Frank Solich on his retirement, but there’s a reason I’m including his tenure in the body count. I think he was very well suited for a MAC-level head coaching job in 1998, too…).
Unlike Karen, I think there’s a future where Nebraska returns to a perennial top-20 team and wins the division as much as it loses it, but Scott Frost isn’t the guy to get us there, unfortunately. So, what does his penultimate season have in store?
Apparently, oddsmakers see betting interest on both sides of 6 (out of 12) regular season wins. There are plenty of predictions on either side of that line, but for the first time ever I join most of my KSB colleagues in seeing that as a ceiling. That’s true despite a schedule that looked brutal 3-4 years ago but now seems pretty tame by comparison. That won’t matter, though. Here’s what I see:
Illinois: I was planning to be in Ireland for this one (thanks, COVID). We’re lucky Bielema is in his first year. He may not be the best human being on earth, but he’s a good X’s and O’s coach who’s had our number. He’s also added a few layers of seasoning after his time at Wisconsin, spending time in the SEC and New England. His new coordinators have fielded good units at their past stops. I think we win this, but as the line shrinks closer to a one-score game as we near kickoff, I think that’s where it ends up. Illinois returns the most super seniors of any program in the country and only lost a few players from the 2-deep that drubbed us in Lincoln, but we’ll have 4-5 more practices in (they started about a week later to save some practices for bye weeks, apparently). Plus, if we lose this game, we just as well redo our picks for the year and start raising money to finish the new football facility, hire Matt Campbell, and pay Scott’s buyout.
Fordham: Win, but too bad Scott wasn’t successful booting OU and adding yet another puff game like this one...errrr...I mean he knew nothing about that (LOL).
Buffalo: Win at Illinois, win against Buffalo. Lose to Illinois, and who knows where the psyche of the team will be. I’ll go win, mostly because I think we beat Illinois and have a chance at Frost’s longest winning streak at Nebraska: 3 games.
Oklahoma: The current 21.5 point spread is exceedingly generous. I think this gets ugly in Norman after SOMEONE (but definitely not Scott Frost...mmmkay?) tried to bail on the game; real ugly.
Michigan State: Again, this is one of several in the next 4-5 games where it looked way harder when Scott was hired than it should be now. They’re in year 2; we’re in year 4. That said, what has Scott Frost done to prove he can beat Mel Tucker? Two straight losses when he was at Colorado. We should win this; I won’t be surprised at all if we don’t. Vegas sees it as a 6-point game in favor of Dear Old Nebraska U. I think Scott finally beats Tucker because he finally has a kicker who can make a field goal. (Gotta watch those flea-flickers, though. It’s hard to recall a recent memory more seared into my brain than that groin kick in Boulder a few years back.)
Northwestern: We’re technically due in the rollercoaster that is this series. Color me surprised a “meh” Hunter Johnson won the QB job over the South Carolina transfer Ryan Hilinski, but Fitz knows what he’s doing. I also think Adrian Martinez will be out for this game or one of the 3 after it, just based on his injury history. He hasn’t played an entire season of football since the Obama administration. I think we lose this at home.
Michigan: Once again, we’re lucky Harbaugh has somehow managed his roster and QB position as poorly as Scott Frost. In the battle of alums coaching for their jobs, and much to my chagrin given Steve’s affinity for Michigan and Jordan’s desire to kiss Steve’s a** and also become a Michigan fan, Harbaugh hands us our second straight loss at home. We lose by 3+ scores if this is the game Martinez is out. Michigan won’t be great, but they’re more talented. May eclipse 200 total penalty yards in this one, too. Just some ugly, mid-afternoon football in the Big Ten.
Minnesota: See Northwestern and Michigan. Minnesota’s OL may be one of the better units in the country, and their offensive backfield (especially Ibrahim at running back) is solid and experienced. They’ve lost talent at receiver and have holes to plug on defense, but they’ll be a pretty good team. Hell, they beat us with 30 guys missing last year and rushed for 200 yards with a decimated OL against our DL, the presumed strength of the Huskers’ 21 team. That said, I do think our defensive front 7 should be a strength and our new WRs should have some time to get comfortable by this game. Translation: this is a decent matchup for us. But a larger point, if you’ll indulge me. If you’d given me the choice between Frost and Fleck in 2017 I would have taken Frost and lost a lot of money betting on the relative win totals. That said, I think we find some magic in one of NW, Mich, or this game and win one. I think it’s probably this one just based on matchups, but who knows.
Purdue: I’m not sure what happened to Brohm, but he should have taken the Louisville job after his Cinderella season a few years back. We win this one unless the season is already spiraling (and there’s a 33% chance or better that happens).
Ohio State: Woof. I do not like giving CJ Stroud and Ryan Day ¾ of a season to get comfortable. They’ll have nothing but fond memories of embarrassing us with Herbstreit and Fowler in the booth in 2019 after College Gameday was on campus. The only reason Vegas sees this as a 21-point spread is it’s in Lincoln. Even if we somehow exceed expectations to this point in the season, the Buckeyes pound us at home and we tailspin to at least an 0-3 finish.
Wisconsin: No bellcow in sight for the Badgers...yet, but Paul Christ is too good and the system too entrenched. We lose this by 2 scores in Madison.
Iowa: As much as it would make the holidays more tolerable for me when talking to my extended family, I don’t think this is the year. I have us at 5-6 heading into Black Friday, and I have us at 5-7 heading out. Iowa has a picture of a sack-fumble on Adrian plastered in their weightroom. Because Iowa is the inferior program historically, they’ve long cared about this game way more than we have, and it shows. They may be the inferior program, but they’ve owned us since 2014. The fatigue of Ohio State/Wisconsin, a short week, and a coach on the hot seat is too much to overcome Iowa’s clean style of play.
Another year, another missed bowl, and the question of the head coach’s job status will be a national headline. As much as I don’t think 17-27 after 4 years should save anyone’s job at Nebraska, Frost’s buyout goes down after next year. I think 5-7 gets him one more year (and hopefully a transfer QB…). The NCAA investigation means little to me. Sure, it was colossally stupid to let Frost throw his compliance department under the bus in the press conference, but he’ll sink or swim based on his record, not recording his special teams analyst coaching players and holding off-campus workouts. Boy, for having an 11th coach and a bunch of illegal practices, it really didn’t show last year. It won’t this year, either.
SHARI’S PREDICTION:
The fact that the Huskers start their season on my birthday has to be a good thing! They will start off with a win against Illinois. I’ve never heard of Fordham, so if they can’t win that game we probably shouldn’t even be playing football. The Oklahoma game things will start to get ugly and it will be downhill from there. Hoping for a win against Michigan and Iowa to keep Steve and Tyler quiet in the office. I’ll go with a very generous 5-7. (Had to keep my prediction short and sweet since these attorneys I work with had to write novels for their predictions!)
COADY’S PREDICTION:
OK, folks. I am putting on my scarlet-and-cream-colored glasses with some unbridled (and unfounded) optimism here. It’s not that I think I will be proven correct (I fear I won’t be). It’s just that Karen and Bobby dumped enough grain trailers’ full of doom and gloom around here, so a contrarian opinion is needed.
Of course, I am not untethered from reality so I am marking down Oklahoma, Ohio State, and Wisconsin as losses.
But aside from those really good teams, it’s not like the rest of the schedule is all world beaters. In a best case scenario, the Cornhuskers easily take care of business against Illinois, Fordham, Buffalo, Minnesota***, and Purdue.
[***I think Minnesota is a solid team and it might actually be an uphill battle to beat the Gophers. Nevertheless, I refuse to live in a world where the mighty Huskers are assumed to lose to P.J. Fleck, Inc. (Row-the-Boat ©2021, All Rights Reserved).]
That leaves toss-up games against Michigan State, Northwestern, Michigan, and Iowa.
[Looks into the camera like an episode of The Office and admits: OK, I get that Iowa’s Thanksgiving weekend tradition is to relentlessly run the ball down the “Blackshirts’” throats, but Tyler Coverdale may read this, and I’m just not going to move Iowa into the same class as Ohio State and Wisconsin. I’m just not. So, a toss-up for the Hawkeyes it is.)]
Split those four [unrealistically perceived as toss-up] games, and Nebraska finishes at 7-5. That gets Nebraska into a bowl and provides the coaching staff precious opportunities for more on-campus (unhidden!) practices before the bowl game. It also buys Coach Frost another year to (finally!) bring Nebraska back to some semblance of national relevance.
JORDAN’S PREDICTION:
Most years, I arrive at my prediction by figuring out what would make Husker nation happy, and then working three steps backwards. Maybe that makes me a troll (Bobby would tell you it does), but I’d say it makes me a realist. This year, though, even the most fanatical member of Husker nation *cough* Bobby *cough* can’t watch enough ESPN Classic to detach far enough from reality to quantify what happiness would even look like at the end of this season. As a result, it brings me no satisfaction to predict a four win season after dropping the opener against Illinois. For your sake as much as mine, I hope this is rock bottom, because this just isn’t as much fun anymore. (Okay, who am I kidding, I still f****** love it.)
TYLER’S PREDICTION:
Rather than respond substantively to Bobby’s Iowa insults, (“They may be the inferior program, but they’ve owned us since 2014” is a heck of a sentence to say), I’ll just move to my predictions.
I’ve been on a 90’s music kick lately, so I’ll be using song lyrics to illustrate how the Huskers’ season will play out. I know Bobby will appreciate that since grunge was so big when he was in high school.
Illinois through Oklahoma: “Just when every day seemed to greet me with a smile, sunspots have faded. Now I’m doing time.”
Fell on Black Days, Soundgarden.
August and early September brings joy and hope as Big Red rolls through foes such as Fordham and Buffalo. Then they take a trip to Norman.
Hey, it could be worse Husker fans—you could still be in the “Big XII.” (Attn: Iowa State).
Michigan State and Northwestern: “Welcome to a new kind of tension”
American Idiot, Green Day.
Some hope? Nebraska loses a close one to the Spartans but beats Northwestern almost comfortably.
Michigan and Minnesota: “On a weekend, wanna wish it all away”
Yellow Ledbetter, Pearl Jam.
Steve Williams smiles. Huskers drop these two.
Purdue: “Only yesterday you lied, promises of what I seemed to be.”
Interstate Love Song, Stone Temple Pilots.
Nebraska feels good the day after beating Purdue.
Ohio State and Wisconsin: “Into the flood again, same old trip it was back then.”
Would? Alice in Chains.
Back to normal. Huskers drop these two.
Iowa: “Bring your friends, it’s fun to lose and to pretend.”
Smells like Teen Spirit, Nirvana.
Seven in a row to the Black and Yellow.
Overall: 5-7.
Off-Season: “I sit around and watch the phone, but no one’s calling.”
Longview, Green Day.
Scott Frost.
MATT’S PREDICTION:
Man this is the best time of year! We get to talk football, and I wish there were better things to say about the Huskers other than probation and fines, but there’s not! Can Martinez finally play up to his potential and get the Huskers to 6-6? (HA HA) I hope so, for Frosty's sake! Let’s GO S’KERS!!!!! I see some wins this year. They will get wins against Illinois, Fordham (FCS school), Buffalo (shocked they are an FBS school) and then I think they will go on a losing streak! Losses against Oklahoma (curb stomped), Michigan State and Northwestern. They will beat Michigan at home, a loss to Minnesota and a shootout with Purdue with Purdue edging them out. Now if the Huskers could only lose by 21 to Ohio State, then it wouldn’t be a bad loss for the Huskers. With that being said they will also lose to Wisconsin and as much as I would like them to beat Iowa (so Tyler doesn’t have bragging rights against half of KSB this year) they also will lose a tough, hard fought game! Overall another 4-8 year! (Scott Frost is the Man!)