From The Pulpit
Nov. 15, 2004

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.
Hebrews 11:1

Greetings Husker Faithful,

Sorry for my lengthy absence, it’s been that kind of crazy week/month/year.

It all started the Friday before the Missouri game. I was up underneath the balcony flooring running new sound cable. When you pastor a small church, you find yourself doing pretty much everything. Anyway, many, many moons ago, someone had nailed a piece of steel pipe to the floor, blocking the only place I had to run the cable. So I started pulling on this steel bar, but it wasn’t really budging. I figured I’d go and get a pry bar, but first I’d give it “just one more good tug.”

Oh, and did I mention that I was having to pull this bar towards my face?

The goofy thing let go and of course hit me right in the mouth, breaking off a crown on one tooth, and chipping the other. When I say “chipping”, remember watching those movies in grade school where Native Americans would make arrowheads by “chipping” pieces of flint? Well, the iron bar chipped off an arrowhead piece of itself about the size of Lincoln’s head on a penny, and pretty much just rammed itself up inside the gum line.

Yes, it did hurt. It also hurt to find that my dentist was out of town on an emergency. It’s Friday night. Nobody could see me. Since our medical insurance is, how they say, “not optimal” I gutted it out and waited until Monday for my dentist to get back. Called first thing, only to find that he wouldn’t be back until Wednesday. Fabulous.

By Tuesday evening I was running a 101 fever and my face was started to look like a chipmunk hoarding nuts for the winter. So to make a long story short, I sterilized a pair of tweezers and removed it myself using a hand mirror.

It was a painful process, but it worked.

Much like this year’s team, I might add.

However, after watching the Oklahoma game tonight, I don’t think we have anything to be ashamed of. We’re simply not up to that level of competition – yet. Remember that from 1992 through 1998, while we were racking up titles, Oklahoma was compiling a 37-40-3 record – which included 5 losing seasons over that 7 year period with their best record being 9-3. That was the only year they were ranked (17th/14th) and beat Texas Tech in the Sun Bowl. The following year they went 6-6-0 and got creamed by BYU in the Copper Bowl. That’s the only two bowl games they played over that period.

At the same time, Nebraska went 78-10-0, including 3 undefeated seasons, won 3 National Championships, and went 6-0-0 against Oklahoma by an average score of 41-8 – which included a 37-0 shutout, a 73-21 and a 69-7 shellacking.

My friends, their program made major changes and look where it is today. Oklahoma fans bemoaned the demise of the wishbone, but they hung in there and reaped the rewards.

We actually played a pretty good game tonight. With only a couple of exceptions, our open-field tackling was solid. Trying to push someone out of bounds instead of hitting them cost us a TD, but that was one of the few. Congrats to Mr. Ross, going over 1000 yards – and didn’t it bring back memories to see a fullback chugging his way up the field on a long gain. A couple of things in our passing game – why on earth throw short of the marker on third down? And Mr. Daley simply has to start hitting wide-open receivers – he tends to consistently throw short. Couple of other oddly-directed passes, one of which was intercepted, was painful to watch – but overall he made some nice connections, and 8-12-1 wasn’t too bad. The delays and draw plays worked well, but geez, we ran them over and over. We still had a couple of movement penalties; and personal fouls always hurt. But we only deserved one of the pass interference calls, and the goofy punt return interference call was bogus. Their return men were waiting until Shanle was 2 yards away before signaling – and he wasn’t even touched. Also listed among the bogus was the face masking call – Mr. Ross was blatantly masked 3 times, none of which were called.

Our defense played hard all the way till the end. We got burned on a halfback pass, and let them go 90 yards on one horrific series, but by and large had a solid game. Blocked a PAT, stuffed Peterson and Jones, not bad.

Husker fans, don’t despair. 30-3 could have been a LOT worse. Our boys played hard, and gave it a good shot.

It will be our turn on top of the mountain again before we know it.

The Rev

ps... Let's start a pool to see how much Kansas coach Mark Mangino is fined for his comments concerning the BCS being the cause of a bad call and the loss to Texas (I suspect Kansas' 40 yards total rushing had something to do with losing as well). I say he will be fined 15,000. Any takers?