Cindy Lange-Kubick: Husker coaches, you're not alone

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Coach Cosgrove, I feel your pain.

Coach Callahan, I’m with you.

Nearly every week, someone somewhere makes it a point to let me know what an idiot I am, too.

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Just Sunday, malcontents on the Web wrote: “I’m quite disappointed in you Cindy.”

And: “Could Cindy Lange-Kubick author any more worthless articles than she already does?”

Disappointing. Worthless.

Sound familiar?

Lots of us in the “helping” professions become targets for a disgruntled public.

We invite scrutiny and its ugly stepsister, ridicule.

Columnists, coaches, college presidents, cooks, weather forecasters, movie stars — we’re all game.

Look at it this way: At least you didn’t invite Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in to give the Blackshirts a pep talk.

You didn’t get on stage at the MTV Video Music Awards and fake shake your way across live TV like poor, poor Britney.

You’re not a YouTube laughingstock like Miss South Carolina.

But it’s still got to hurt.

All that Husker hate hailing down on your heads.

As the chef takes the heat for the overcooked salmon, so you take the heat for the underprepared linemen.

Cause. Effect. Simple enough.

You’re big boys. You can take it. Coaches take classes in turning the other cheek, don’t they? Rolling with the Public’s Punches 101? Detecting and Deflecting Pesky Reporters 200?

(Except for Bobby Knight, naturally. And that Gundy guy from Oklahoma State, the one who cut that uppity columnist to the quick last week.)

But still, it’s not nice, some of the things people are saying after last Saturday, the Ball State Bay of Pigs.

Being called merely disappointing must feel like a Shakespeare love sonnet right about now.

Might I advise staying away from those nasty Big Red message boards?

And might I explain some history? Folks here in Nebraska are big on their football. We’ve elevated it. When the athletic department has a budget bigger than Burundi’s, we’re talking serious sports.

Just like going out to eat at a fancy restaurant, you pay the premium for dinner and you don’t expect your beef tenderloin and truffle whipped potatoes on a Chinet paper plate.

We shell out the money to feed the machine, to pay for coaches to live in nice houses and drive nice cars and belong to nice clubs.

We expect satisfaction. The slogan of our discontent: We’re Done Being Patient.

Coaches can’t serve up an entree on the house when the porterhouse is tough or offer a white chocolate mousse as a peace offering for poor service; we get that.

It’s a hard spot you’re in at the moment.

Ask Coach Osborne about the patience of Husker fans and our long-term memory lapses.

Some of us realize football players are just boys.

But long ago, in an expanding red universe no longer discernable to the naked eye, some fans anointed the pigskin people as our Sports Saviors, glorified them to Superhuman status. The men who coach them, gods-in-waiting.

And when heroes prove mortal, we are never happy.

Think Judgment Day but without the Rapture.

But perhaps you’ve sensed that lately, and believe me, I know the feeling because I’m like you, in a distant way, the way goldfish are like hammerhead sharks.

We all have really great jobs — granted, some pay more than others — that put us out there, and we should expect some feedback.

I always try to think of my readers’ criticism as constructive, even when it’s not, because maybe there’s a pebble of truth amid those boulders of rage.

And if some guy on the Web wants to know if I can “author anymore worthless articles than (I) already do”?

Well, just keep reading, buddy, and find out for yourself.

So let’s put on the shoulder pads, guys. Coach like you’ve never coached before.

How about a W with a big side of D?

That would satisfy the starving masses. For a good seven days, at the very least.

Reach Cindy Lange-Kubick at 473-7218 or clangekubick@journalstar.com.