Cindy Lange-Kubick: It may be time for Husker fans to move on

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In the grand scheme of things — melting ice caps, rising pump prices, dysfunctional world leaders, never-ending war, housing gluts, shooting sprees, stolen guns, fleeting redemption, eternal salvation — it’s only football.

Granted, it is Husker football, two words that together once meant something special.

Like gold record. Prime rib. White knight. Dark chocolate. Four star. Hot fudge. Rodeo Drive. Academy Award.  Grand Canyon. Heisman trophy.

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Indeed, to be a Husker fan was once a grand thing, a reason for hearts to pound and pride to swell, a security blanket on lonesome winter nights.

Anymore, not so much.

Last Saturday night, all over the state, one could hear the sound of a collective identity crumble. It wasn’t a loud sound, just a faint click.

The sound of a remote control turning a television screen dark.

My text message screen blinked at midnight: “What was the final score?”

This from a daughter fed up with a team whose greatness was a mere glimmer from her growing up days.

This from a child who never really knew the teams Bill Bryson wrote about in his 1989 travelogue, his two pages on the state of Nebraska devoted to nothing but our boring landscape, our meager Platte River and our mighty football team.

“When I left America, the University of Nebraska didn’t so much play football as engage in weekly ritual slaughters,” he wrote.

“Watching Nebraska play football every week was like watching hyenas tearing open a gazelle. It was unseemly. It was unsporting.”

And Wednesday, we read on the sports pages that the tough boys from the ’97 championship team stabbed one another with thumbtacks to get the testosterone flowing.

One could almost hear the hyenas again. The whispers in the newspaper’s rustle: Oh, for the glory days.

For so long we’ve hitched our identity to the wagon that was Big Red football. To hell with your ocean breezes, buddy, we can whup your butt on the Fieldturf.

Where are you from, a stranger in the aisle seat might ask politely, 33,000 feet and many hundreds of miles from a shrine called Memorial Stadium.

Nebraska?

In the pause that followed, one could see brain cells strain, feel the longing for a flight attendant to return with pretzels, peanuts, unexpected turbulence, anything.

Then the relief, like a tourist in Paris figuring out the hotel clerk’s directions.

“Oh! Don’t you have that great football team?”

Strangers still conjure up that Rorschach  blot. Only now the tense has changed.

Had. Did. Used to.

Those hapless opponents? Not so hapless anymore.

Imagine that. The Big Red snickered at by rubes in Missouri, where they have the Cardinals, famous barbecue and a very big arch to fall back on during 7-and-4 years.

“Nebraska football,” a former colleague now in California wrote this week. “What a miserable thing that has become.”

Get over it already, says another friend, reminding me the mighty Huskers weren’t so mighty when her moving truck rolled into town from Texas seven years ago.

Move on, she says. The rest of the country already has.

Indeed, we risk appearing more pathetic than we already do to the T.J. Simers of the world, holding onto our glory days like Norma Desmond on “Sunset Boulevard.”

The time for our close-up has come and gone, my friends.

Yes, in the grand scheme of things there is this thing called football.

Yes, it is a fine diversion from the tedium of daily life, the sordid news of talk radio, the weight of world events. 

Yes, it is a sad time in our collective history, and it is time for us to come to grips with this sorrowful shift in our foundation. We must face that no longer are we omnipotent, 77,358 square miles defined by cornfed, national championship contenders with a holy host of the red-clad faithful following them into the sunset.

Yes, we must face reality. Get on with our lives. Move past the pain. Embrace a future free of the obsession of football and full of possibilities, never before imagined.

Yes.

Either that, or bring back Bo Pelini.

Take your pick.

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