Texas, USC and the 7 college football fan bases living in the past

6. The days of Tom Osborne are long gone.

This one hurts because Nebraska fans are some of the nicest in the country. They aren’t out of line, there’s never reports of attacks on opposing fans (that we know of), and they seem to be very favorable to just about everyone. Despite that, they’re still a raucous crowd that brings it every Saturday afternoon.

Yet, it cannot be denied that they expect their team to win as they did in their championship peak. The Cornhuskers were dominant in the mid-90s. They finished number one in the nation in three out of four seasons, winning two national championships and sharing another with Michigan in 1997. It was one of the more underrated runs (and should get more credit). It’s been a long two decades since that peak.

Nebraska signed Scott Frost to be the head coach to get them back to those glory days. He was great at the University of Central Florida, but he’s just been terrible at Nebraska. One could ignore a coach being bad in the first season. He doesn’t have his recruits and he’s still working on the gameplan. Frost was 5-7 in his second season, which is an issue.

Nebraska left the Big 12 to go to the Big Ten thinking it would be the move to make them National Championship contenders again. Instead, it’s had the opposite effect. They’ve gone 1-5 against Ohio State (including losses of 62-3, 56-14, and 48-7). In 2018, they lost 56-10 against Michigan. They not only lose to the best teams, but they also get destroyed. (At least they kept it close against Iowa last season.)

Nebraska is a bad college football team, and it could be a while before they turn it around. Scott Frost looks like the wrong hire, and if they need to replace him it could take another three years to recover. They shouldn’t even worry about championships, they need to worry about making bowl games again.