Football players and coaches from around the Big 12 conference will meet with reporters Monday through Wednesday in Kansas City as the annual Big 12 Media Days gets under way.
BRIAN CHRISTOPHERSON / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Sunday, July 20, 2008 7:00 pm
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — All the important stuff comes out at Big 12 media days.
For instance: Husker offensive lineman Matt Slauson takes his pants in a size 40 waist. Joe Ganz has been to three Cubs games this year. These are the earth-shaking matters that can be learned when football players and media types in floral-print shirts meet in a Marriott.
Of course, there were the expected cliché questions and coachspeak that came with it, but also a few interesting nuggets that emerged Monday when Husker coach Bo Pelini and three of his players took on topics beyond pant sizes.
Perhaps the most grabbing discussion was the one about the Nebraska offense adopting the philosophy that less is more.
Pelini said the Huskers will have a condensed offensive playbook from last year. Bill Callahan used to go into a game with about 250 plays available. The team would maybe use about 60 of them. This year, the number of available plays is apparently going to drop under the charge of offensive coordinator Shawn Watson. “Pretty significantly,” Pelini said.
Watson’s idea, Pelini said. “Wats basically told me he was going to do it and I was all for it.”
The first-year head coach expressed great confidence in Watson, reminding that it’s not exactly the assistant’s first rodeo.
“He’s tweaking,” Pelini said. “The offense will be different than what you’ve seen. It will have some components that are the same and the terminology hasn’t changed much. But he has different beliefs. He’s always looking to keep going, to keep developing the offense, and he’s going to put his twist on it.
“We still have a lot of offense. I just think he’s trying to do things that make players more comfortable and confident. … Believe me, he still has plenty of weapons. It’s not like we’re going to be in a game and come out with four or five plays.”
Pelini was the first of the conference coaches to take the podium at media days, many in the room interested on his take about what defenses are to do about the great force that is the spread offense.
After 45 minutes of answering questions from the print media pool, Pelini — along with Slauson, quarterback Joe Ganz and defensive end Barry Turner — walked into another room with TV cameras, going from station to station and probably answering a lot of the same questions they fielded in the previous room.
Pelini was asked about his Youngstown, Ohio, roots and his relationship with boyhood friend and Oklahoma head coach Bob Stoops.
The coach said some flattering remarks about Stoops, but made sure to add: “I can’t try to be Bob Stoops. I can’t try to be Pete Carroll, George Seifert or anyone else I was around. But I did learn a significant amount from each one of them. Ultimately I have to take things I learned and apply it to my personality and my beliefs.”
He was asked when he first heard the score of the Nebraska-Kansas game last year and what he thought about the Jayhawks scoring 76.
Pelini believes it was the day after the game when he first found out. “Some people had been leaving some things on my voicemail and I had to ask one of the other assistants: What happened in that game? You hate to comment on what happened in that game, because it’s just one of those things where that snowball starts rolling and it’s hard to stop it. And I think that’s what happened that day. Believe me, you don’t want to be on the wrong end of that one because it’s hard to get your team back after they’ve experienced something like that.”
And what about those high expectations at Nebraska, asked a voice with a southern drawl? Pelini harkened back to his first time at NU, as a defensive coordinator in 2003.
“When I came in here the first time, I knew what I was getting myself into. They had struggled on defense and there was a challenge. I had a lot of people who told me I shouldn’t take that job the first time around because of the uncertainty that surrounded the job. That really didn’t concern me then,” Pelini said. “I look forward to the challenges that are ahead. That’s the great thing about this profession. That’s why I’m in it, because I like to compete.”
All the hype and Bo T-shirts that has surrounded Pelini’s return to Lincoln just makes players want to win even more, Ganz said.
“It’s tough, because there are a lot of expectations to turn this program around real quick,” said the senior quarterback. “And you just want to do everything you can to do everything possible for him. Because he’s a great guy. We want to do everything for him to succeed.”
Ganz said players occasionally joke about the various Bo slogans they see around town. PeliniMania has been hard to miss.
“Just from the commercials, the billboards, the newspapers, the looks I get around town, there’s an energy around Nebraska,” Slauson said. “It’s like everything’s going to be OK.”
While plenty are skeptical Nebraska can quickly turn things around from last year’s dismal 5-7 season, Slauson said the defense, ranked 112th in the country last year, made incredible leaps in the spring.
“I think the hopes and expectations of our defense this year are going to be no different than what they were 10 years ago,” Slauson said. “Our defense is going to be back and they’re going to be back real fast. They’re going to be ferocious and they’re going to be high-energy guys.”
Granted, the defense may be without one critical player when fall camp rolls around. Pelini said cornerback Anthony Blue, on the mend from an ACL tear suffered during winter conditioning, probably won’t be ready to go in two weeks and wasn’t sure of the sophomore’s recovery timetable.
The coach also said no final decision has been made about which side of the ball will get the services of Lincoln Southwest grad Baker Steinkuhler, the most heralded member of Nebraska’s last recruiting class. Slauson said so far Steinkuhler has spent a lot of time working with the defensive line, almost exclusively.
“That’s kind of an ongoing evaluation,” Pelini said of Steinkuhler’s status. “He’s had a couple of tweaks in his back. He’s had some things going on, but it’s a great problem to have because he can have some success on either side of the ball.”
While Pelini’s first appearance at media days made some waves, they were not the size of those created by Missouri coach Gary Pinkel and his quarterback Chase Daniel.
It was the Tigers answering the kind of questions Husker players used to answer at these sort of deals: How do you feel about being the preseason favorite?
Nebraska was picked third by media members in the Big 12 North, barely edging Colorado. Pelini couldn’t care less about it.
“I don’t really care where they pick us,” he said. “We do the right things, and that will take care of itself.“
Reach Brian Christopherson at 473-7439 or bchristopherson@journalstar.com.