Dr. Tom Osborne spoke at the Big XII annual meeting a few weeks ago. He promoted an idea to pay athletes $2500 beyond their scholarships in order to defer the increasing costs of attending college.

This is the exact opposite of what should be suggested. Instead, I want a plan that pays everyone but scholarship athletes $2500 to help pay for school.

Are student athletes abilities being exploited for the entertainment of the masses? No more than students are being exploited to fund research that brings intellectual property returns to the school.

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Bo Pelini should be hoping for ABC/ESPN to pick up the Virginia Tech @ Nebraska game as soon as possible. The exposure will be an immediate boon to his recruiting efforts for next year. Whatever may be said about the coaching staff’s abilities at this point - nothing helps recruits make decisions more than seeing the boys in red as much as possible. Win or lose, our spotlight time needs to show Nebraska in the most positive light possible.

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Bo Pelini and company have been in Lincoln, Nebraska for almost half a year now. That may be time enough to get things together, but I have little faith in this staff in terms of recruiting on their own. I know it sounds bad, but let me qualify the comment. I don’t know what they can do just quite yet, so I won’t try and guess how good or bad they are until next season or I have more information. They managed to stop the hemorrhaging so to speak when Billy C left. So they’re good enough to keep guys, but we don’t know if they can get good new ones.

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During the slow period of the off season, I like to make time for reflection upon the state of Nebraska Cornhuskers Football. Sometimes, I come up with insightful statements, such as, “If we start running the triple option next year, we’ll beat everyone to the latest offensive fad by at least five years! 25 National Championships, here we come!” While that gem is left for another blog, the thoughts weighing heavily on my mind the last week or so has focused on one area: Lil’ Red Seriously Freaks Me Out.

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I’ve been crunching the numbers on Open Office’s Calc for the past couple of days, and all I’ve figured out is that the Big XII is going to be one tough cookie to crack this year. I’ll be trying to guess more accurately in the fall, but for now I can say that 2008 may not look that different from the 2007 final standings. Hopefully, I can be objective when it comes to the Huskers abilities this year - it’s difficult trying to analyze if you’re giving too much or not enough credit to your team.

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Just wanted to wish everyone safe travels if you’ve got a long way to go to the Spring Game. If you’re not going to the game, sorry, it’s not on TV. I’ll be posting my analysis as soon as I can get back in front of a keyboard. Hope to see some of you bloggers there. I’m looking forward to a good solid effort from a bunch of people whose names I don’t recognize. While it will be nice to see guys like Ganz and company do well, I want to see something that makes me not worried about our defense in the fall. Remember, coaches are raving about a linebacker that’s been playing the position for about a month…

Since I moved away from Nebraska in 2004, the one major item I’ve noticed in fans of other Big 12 schools is the divisiveness. In the state of Nebraska, most Husker fans feel pretty much the same way about the state of affairs in the Nebraska Athletic Department. In Kansas City, you’ve got Kansas, Kansas State, Missouri fans all in one pressure cooker. On the other side of the state, you’ve got Missouri versus Illinois going on. And don’t get me started on Texas and Oklahoma… Last year was extremely difficult in that so many people had such varying opinions on what should be done and the level of optimism the future holds for Husker football. We finally got a taste of what so many other areas have been feeling all along.

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