Continental Breakfast Suffering
- Sean Brennan
- Aug 28
- 7 min read
From coast-to-coast (and beyond), for a decade Huskers football has turned ‘free’ morning-after hotel breakfasts into hotel hell
If you, like me and thousands upon thousands of other mentally ill Huskers football fans, spend your hard-ish-earned money traveling to at least one road game a year, you’ve seen the scene I’m about to talk about (it’s all there in the cartoon above). Pick a campus, any campus. Pick a year, any – recent – year.
Hours before the game, the hotel lobbies are full of fans checking in and man, are we not kings of the world? Eight months of anticipation has come to fruition and everybody in red has about 50 new best friends. High fives abound. Where are you from? Think we’ll get ‘em tonight? Same goes at all the bars and tailgates prior to kickoff.
And then, kickoff actually happens and if you’re a travelin’ fan, I don’t need to tell you that the Husker movie franchise has had more sequels than friggin’ Freddy Krueger.
But for a decade at least, the next morning after – the breakfast scene – is, except for some rare cases, quite the opposite. Sure, people are still cordial; most even have the blind loyalty to still throw on a Huskers hoodie. But there’s a level of sadness. The bacon sucks. You have to wonder if the kids on their third bowl of Fruit Loops have their first realization of adulthood, wondering “why didn’t we go to Disneyworld?” Someone might inquire if the eggs are any good. Well, dumbass, that depends on if we won last night, doesn’t it? So no, they suck.
And if you know you know – at 9 a.m. there are happy bloody marys and there are sad bloody marys. Nebraska fans know the difference in taste. My point? Lingering underneath all that congeniality and coping is a sense of mass depression. Why do we do this to ourselves? East Lansing in ‘14. Eugene in ‘17. Bouder in ’19 (and ’23). Champaign in ‘21 (they misspelled pain, by the way). The poor bastards who ventured all the way to Dublin in ‘22. Minneapolis in ‘23. It even happens in Lincoln (possibly my most depressing morning-after breakfast was at the Cornhusker after we lost to Illinois in overtime last year). For factual accuracy, yes there have been some road wins along the way; I just wasn’t there for them. My “road” record as a Huskers fan is an appalling 0-8 over the last decade. And I’m surely not the only one.
But here we are. Or should I say, there we will be – once again, in Kansas City, bombarding the city’s hotels for Thursday night’s season opener against Cincinnati at Arrowhead Stadium. Conservative estimates have around 60,000 Huskers fans traveling down Interstate 29 for the game. That doesn’t account for the thousands of natives who already live there. Arrowhead only holds 76,000.
So the question is: Will we finally get a happy hotel breakfast? And if we do, will it be a one-off or a true indictor that Matt Rhule has finally gotten this program back on track? Gone are the days of blind positivity and whimsical thoughts of conference championship runs despite any and all recent evidence to the contrary. I hate to throw cold water on it, but I’ve been hurt too many times. The operative phrase for this game, and this year, is “we’ll see” (something you’ll read more than a couple times throughout this article).
Welcome to the Huskers Dispatch, a weekly column I’ll be writing this season in conjunction with our talented cartoonist Anthony Aleman, a Scottsbluff native; a musician and artist (he also plays in the Grown Ass Man Band, which is about the coolest band name I’ve ever heard of) now based behind enemy lines in Colorado who will give a fun and encapsulating take on the Nebraska narrative each week. Win or lose, we’ll get through it together and have a few laughs along the way. With that being said, let’s take a quick look at the Cincinnati game.
FOUR DOWNS:
1. Judging by the depth chart, Nebraska appears happy with their transfer portal additions as six of them are listed as starters (although the bizarre tale of Alabama transfer LT Elijah Pritchett, who was reportedly paid a cool million to come here but may or may not just be another dude standing on the sidelines Thursday … we’ll see). But the biggest addition to the program happened before last season even ended. I’m talking about the hire of offensive coordinator Dana Holgerson, of course, and what that could mean for quarterback Dylan Raiola. I don’t understand the negative narrative surrounding Dylan’s freshman campaign. Did people not realize how hamstrung he was by previous offensive coordinator Marcus Satterfield? He seems like a good dude but somehow made the offense slow-moving and overly complex at the same time. It’s also worth noting that Dylan was also a true freshman (playing quarterback isn’t easy). And last year’s receivers were never open – either due to Satterfield’s playcalling or their own inability. So, in swooped Holgerson, the renowned offensive mind associated with great offenses at West Virginia, Houston and Texas Tech, at the end of last year. Things weren’t spectacular – but it was easy to see they were better – and that improvement happened with the span of three weeks. Expect Dylan to get the ball out quicker and make better decisions. That’s what happens with rhythm, a good scheme and better receivers.
2. Don’t let last year’s 5-7 record fool you; Cincinnati is still a damn good program, notorious for packing its roster full of dawgs who are not intimidated by large crowds and blue-blood football helmets (more on the large crowds later). True, the 2021 team was overmatched against Alabama in the college football semifinal, but, lest you forget, they were in the freaking Final 4 whereas Nebraska was in the middle of a seven-year bowl-less streak and coming off a 3-9 season (the eggs especially sucked that year). Let’s not get cocky (although everybody already is). Their quarterback is good, tough and capable of running – and a running quarterback has become football’s great equalizer. Got all the receivers covered? Great. Get a good pass rush on the edge? Awesome. But before you know it, a mobile QB is stepping up in the pocket, beating some lead-footed linebacker towards the sidelines and there the referees go moving the chains again. The Bearcats also have a 6-foot-5 receiver whereas Nebraska’s starting cornerbacks are both 6-foot (which isn’t terrible, but five inches is five inches). Cincy also had a player in ESPN’s Top 100 Players in College Football List – Dontay Corleone aka “The Godfather” – and Nebraska did not. Out of love and borderline obsession we have a tendency to talk ourselves into thinking players that come from teams we still consider lesser than us don’t stack up – the Iowas (we’ve beat them exactly one time over the last 10 years), the Minnesotas (lost to them five straight times), and certainly, a former Group of 5 program like Cincinnati. The Huskers are 7-point favorites as of publication but haven’t beaten a power conference team in a season opener since 2003, so buyer beware. Hey, we’ll see.
3. Overwhelming positivity is back! That should come as no surprise – no matter how bad the previous season was, the Big Red Kool-Aid is readily available starting every spring. That being said, I swear I had convinced myself after last year’s 4th quarter Iowa debacle that fans and local media members alike would reserve positivity until they saw it on the field. That was certainly the sentiment after the Iowa torture chamber. But now? I personally haven’t read or heard one local media member suggest anything lower than eight wins. Some national media members include us in the College Football Playoff. Texts are rolling in from friends mapping out ways that Rhule gets us to 10. I want to believe this; I just can’t help but remember all the disappointment of the last decade. All the sad breakfasts, too.
4. From the Not Breaking News at All File: The atmosphere at Arrowhead is going to be crazy Thursday night and it will be of the Go Big Red variety. This is a de facto home game – the fact that they are calling it a neutral site game is simply a technicality. The sickness previously discussed is going to manifest itself in Kansas City in a few different ways. One, it’s going to be more of a party crowd, different from what you see at Memorial Stadium, which (and god bless the so-called blue hairs, but just sayin’) can be much more mild that wild. Two, whoever designed Arrowhead designed it to trap in crowd noise. I can’t stand the Chiefs but I’ve gotta give ‘em that. And three, to back this up, Steven M. (Milhouse?) Sipple of On3 and 93.7 The Break has noted a couple times that he had a discussion with Cincinnati media member Mo Egger, who told the Notorious S.I.P. that “he hasn’t talked to anyone (Cincinnati fan) who is going.” I’m sure some Cincinnati fans are going, but however many there end up being, I trust that that number will be extraordinarily low. The question is, then, will it matter? After a few plays, once the pads start popping, I think the players just start playing football and the crowd noise becomes white noise. And, as we know, the crowd effect seems to have the opposite effect on our cursed program, One more time: we’ll see.
And that is to say nothing of the depth chart drama and injury concerns – trust the guy who has listened to 500 or so hours worth of podcasts since the aforementioned Iowa game – it’s all been talked to death. Preseason positivity is percolating … but please tell me about a year when it wasn’. Whatever happens, Huskers Dispatch will be here for you next week. The Huskers story will continue to unfold and we’ll be here for the drama – and I’m guessing if you’ve read this far, you will be, too. The time for overthinking is done. The time for we’ll see is here.
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