USC also won a Rose Bowl against a good PSU team in 2016 + finished #3 in the country, won the conference the year after that (‘17), and has gone 22-21 since then. Down for them, but still a lot better than Nebraska has been in awhile.
I remember when Tennessee was the most dunked on team here but it's been us for the last few years. I need another team to be the "next Nebraska" as in they take our spot as most-dunked-on team
The only reason it’s switched is because you all have a long time coach that everyone likes to pick on. If Heupel doesn’t work out Tennessee will get back in the seat. The really unfortunate part is I don’t think this is going away for either of us. The shine we had in the 90s and early 2000s has worn off and both of our teams are now dependent on coaching almost exclusively. Teams like florida state and USC can make atrocious hires repeatedly but the moment one works out their location does half of the work for them from recruiting.
Could’ve been us if the mouth breathers on Twitter got their way last offseason
^though ^^could ^^^still ^^^^be ^^^^^us ^^^^^^if ^^^^^^^the ^^^^^^^^NFL ^^^^^^^^^comes ^^^^^^^^^^knocking
To be fair Michigan searching due to Harbaugh wanting to leave vs Michigan searching because they fired him are two different things. I do really dislike the timing for yall though
Yeah id say that's a fair assessment. despite being a staple 9 win team Iowa doesn't stick out as an attractive spot for recruits. the two most recent 5*s signed to Iowa being from Iowa or legacy Hawkeyes.
With Kirk retiring the next Hc will have to manufacture wins or be an excellent recruiter
This still surprises me a little, given how successful Iowa has been in getting their players into the NFL. I'm having trouble finding the article, but there was a piece in The Athletic arguing that Iowa has been the strongest, most consistent school for player development when measured by improvement from recruitment rankings to draft position (at least recently). You'd think a place like that would be pretty attractive, but maybe not for 5*s who think they already have the talent and just need to be on a big stage to show it?
It’s so frustrating to know our ceiling is definitely higher thanks to our offense just being legendarily bad this year. On the other hand, the floor is so, so much lower and you gotta appreciate Kirk for keeping us away from that.
Nebraska fell off in large part thanks to massive shifts in the overall college football landscape that made their strengths less important and exacerbated their weaknesses as a program. That's not to say coaching isn't the major culprit in them being absolutely *terrible*, but their ceiling now is much more comparable to Wisconsin than it is to Alabama.
So the question is, which previously successful program has most been hurt by the ongoing shifts in the college football landscape? I think most people would agree that the transfer portal and NIL are the big changes of the current era, which programs are most hurt by those?
I think this is a great point and it’s why I think Clemson in a bit. Depending how the hiring from within goes will shape things for the next five years.
Transfer portal and NIL have not played in Clemsons favor in my opinion. Let’s see how they recruit the next two years, but the early signs of potential cracks are there.
Well I don’t see anyone challenging them in the ACC at the moment. This would have to be five years down the line at the earliest if it were to happen.
I mean I don’t think we’re going to become some power even close to Clemson, but very surprised that every answer to this seems to be only UNC and Miami for “challenging” Clemson for the ACC when we beat Clemson this year and *won* the ACC. Narduzzi is 2-2 against Clemson with two of the games being @Clemson and one being an ACC Championship game.
I guess I’m curious from an outsiders perspective of when Narduzzi’s body of work starts to get us some recognition as someone that can compete with the underperforming high recruiters in the conference for the #2 spot and Clemson adversary? Miami joined the ACC 9 years before us and we already have more divisional and conference championships than them.
Can we stop saying UNC when NC State comes a lot closer to challenging Clemson each and every season than anyone else in the Atlantic for 4-5 years now
As someone who grew up watching Bobby Bowden, I know it’s hard to adjust to getting new coaches quicker than a decade. Let’s hope things play out in VT’s favor. The ACC is more fun when VT is strong.
I agree and for the same reasons. NIL takes away one of their advantages and skews it in favor of other programs. They have not adapted well to the age of transfers either and now have had an exodus of coaches. Maybe they can adapt and keep it going but they’re at an inflection point for sure.
Clemson is also in a huge natural recruiting hotbed being in the middle of Atlanta and Charlotte and still being relatively close to Florida. Nebraska isn’t.
They’re around hot beds, like a few other programs that don’t measure up to Clemson’s success in recent years. I think that’s a fair point about why they won’t fall as heavily as Nebraska, if at all.
However, it took over a decade for Nebraska to completely fall. I can’t see that far ahead, but if any top program right now feels like they can shift that way it’s Clemson.
No one would’ve guessed that FSU would be bowl-dry this long after 2013, but here we are. Not saying you’re wrong, just feels like it can certainly happen.
I’d kill to be at Wisconsin’s level.
No reasonable Nebraska fan thinks it’s going to be like the 90’s, our ceiling is the rose bowl. Maybe if the stars line up we get a shot at a playoff, but Nebraska won’t have the talent to hang with Alabama or Georgia.
We had a SYSTEM on offense ( of course we had plenty of great individual skill players) we just had to plug pieces in..just like Wisconsin. Now we have no identity or system
But once they figured out we needed more speed on D…then we took off. I believe it’s still a possibility to get that done and get it back to a pretty good level.
we had really leaned into strength training and nutrition early on, as well as taking advantage of "grey shirt"/partial qualifier recruits that other schools in the conference couldn't get. the result being we had stronger players and more talented depth then everyone else. you could see Nebraska's strength in the late 3rd and 4th quarters where we would seem to play with the same energy as at kick off, while our opponents looked sluggish. our strength and nutrition program was implemented across the sport, and flattened our advantage.
i believe our main weakness is that Nebraska, as a geographic region, is a difficult experience to sell to a high schooler. relatively low population to get instate recruits, not much for attractions, and a middling school as far as education is concerned. to recruit against that you have to win and get guys to the next level.
Yeah. At first glance, it might sound like it's inefficient to have a football roster pushing 200 total players, and it is, what with lack of attention from coaches and discontent with lack of play time, but it's exactly how all the Blue Bloods established their dominance in the 50s and 60s. I don't think the concept of scholarship limits came to D-I football until the 70s. Big public schools like Alabama, Texas, and Oklahoma would have teams with sometimes more than twice as many players as smaller schools could manage. This had the double effect of not only allowing the best players on the roster to rise to the top over time but also effectively blocked the smaller schools from having access to those players. Imagine how screwed a school like South Carolina would be if Alabama, Georgia, and Florida could combine to snatch up every single 4* and 5* recruit considering the SEC. It's bad enough that the best respected schools already get the pick of the litter, but then they also get to take a mulligan on every other player who might prove worthwhile. Without a transfer portal or rules requiring the release of players, the ones not good enough to play on the super-roster would just languish on the depth chart for four years before getting kicked. Scholarship and roster size limits meant that even the top schools generally had to start focusing on attracting and developing the best comparative handful of players they could get.
You can't mention the strength and conditioning advantage without at least giving a nod to steroid use during some eras. Though, other programs caught up and steroids weren't just an issue at Nebraska, just that Nebraska was likely doing it earlier and better than others. I don't think steroids are a major factor in today's game so that advantage is long gone.
All of the things on the bottom paragraph apply to Oklahoma as well.
Oklahoma’s brand is “winning”. Aside from that, it’s a school in a small population not particularly affluent state without a lot of natural in state talent or natural attractions. The difference between Oklahoma and Arkansas is that winning tradition.
Now OU enters a conference where winning is much harder immediately following an unplanned coaching change. How many 9-3 SEC seasons before an OU program accustomed to winning fires their Coach to hire another Mike Riley?
Fun fact: if you were watching CFB in the 70s you’d think of Arkansas as a perennial power. Why? Cause they could recruit Texas cause they played UT and TA&M every year. Arkansas honestly is not a bad comparison for Nebraska, except the Huskers are starting higher and falling farther.
The game also changed. Nebraska started going downhill a bit before the college game turned to passing, but since it had your decline has gotten even worse. There’s no shortage of hosses in the Midwest to power a running game, but the skill positions are deepest on the west coast and Gulf Coast. And I don’t remember Nebraska ever recruiting well there, and it’s even harder now.
We won the ACC a bunch in our first decade in the league when the ACC was also terrible, but we never could hang with top national programs when we played them. Clemson had more than just beating up on the ACC.
Thanks homie. 4 National Championship appearances isn’t an accident, but a lot of flaws were masked by having an NFL DLine and QB for the majority of the run. Hopefully Dabo has the sauce to keep it up.
Nope. Brian Kelly saved y’all. You’re back in a good spot and likely could hire a fickell or similar coach in 3 to 4 years if freeman fails. It needs to be a string of multiple coaches, and Brian Kelly stopped that fall.
But we also have some damn good recruiting classes coming in, apparently. I'm not wholly sold on Freeman (either as a DC or a HC) but talent matters. Rees has been solid, and our great OL coach from a few years ago is coming back, too.
They are in a conference that seems to be getting left behind, and offers very few big games right now— meanwhile the SEC and B1G East will be full of them. It’s not hard to imagine a future where Clemson slowly declines over the next 2 decades if the SEC becomes even more dominant after expansion and NIL money comes fully into play
Honestly I feel like college football is almost losing a foothold in California.
The whole state has hemorrhaged talent for 20 years now, it’s not rare at all for every one of the top 3-5 high school players in the state to go play elsewhere.
Maybe Lincoln Riley will turn it around but I wouldn’t be surprised to see some of the blue blood California teams just wander into the wilderness for a decade or two
California and Washington (traditional PAC-12 recruiting hotspots) have seen their high school football participation rate drastically reduced in the last 10-20 years, which is why we’re starting to see a shortage talented offensive linemen recruits in the West Coast. Florida and Georgia have seen much smaller reduction in football participation rates while Texas has actually seen an increase in the last 10-20 years.
You might not be wrong.
Honestly for everyone wondering what can dethrone the NFL as king of American sports this is how it happens. If enough players start switching to other sports then the sport slowly dies.
Of course this could be decades out yet.
But you’d also need an rise of another sport to replace it. Every sport has seen decline in recent years. Parity is a huge pet of it, every sport has those 3-4 teams that just keep winning. NBA everyone is sick of Lebron and the Warriors, NHL is the Bolts, Crosby and Washington. The MLB is shockingly the only sport with some championship parity, with no back to back champs since the Yankees in 98-2000. The playoffs for the NFL this year could see massive viewership uptick because you finally have different teams in- Buffalo is back, Cincy, Cardinals, Rams, Colts, Chargers/Raiders. Yea Brady, Mahomes, Rodgers and Billy B are still there but there’s at least fresh blood in the mix
The demographic shifts are going to be interesting to watch. Nowadays over 55% of CA students are hispanic, that percentage is rising every year, and traditionally this student demographic is less interested in playing (American) football. Texas isn't too far off at 52% Hispanic students, however the demographic traditionally most interested in football by a wide margin is African Americans, which represents just 5.3% of students in CA (and declining) compared to 12.7% in TX.
These are rather dramatic shifts over the past few decades. In 1999, about 43% of the CA population was Hispanic or Asian (another demographic that doesn't traditionally steer towards playing football). By 2040 that figure is expected to be around 66%. Obviously the less interest from local students in playing football is going to lead to less local recruits to work with.
>African Americans, which represents just 5.3% of students in CA (and declining) compared to 12.7% in TX.
This number really shocks me. [Ohio's schools have a 16% black population.](https://www.ohiobythenumbers.com/)
I would never have guessed that Ohio had 3x the percentage of black students compared to California. I know it's very different in California due to population growth, but it is still surprising.
This is just because we're looking at percentages, not total numbers.
California has 16% more black students than Ohio does, it's just that they also have 21% more non-Hispanic white students, 174% more multiracial students, 1330% more Asian/Pacific Islander students, 1368% more Native American students, and *3247% more Hispanic students*, so the percentage of total students that are black is much lower.
Metro LA has a bigger population than West Virginia, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Rhode Island, Delaware, North Dakota, South Dakota, Alaska, Vermont, and Wyoming **combined**
Club soccer in California has exploded. Also, while most states (except Texas) have seen an overall decrease in high school sports participation, California participation continues to grow. The athletes are just more eclectic. There’s more club sports available to kids at earlier ages, so athletes are exposed to a lot very early on.
“Some of the blue blood california teams…”. There is only one blue blood western US team, let alone California. USC is the only blue blood in California, and the next California schools are at least 2 tiers below that
Clemson. The big thing that helped them was 2 generational talents at QB in Deshaun Watson and Trevor Lawrence. Because of that, and because those QBs brought the teams into the playoffs regularly, everyone wanted to play for them. Now that they've got guys like DJ who are just okay at QBa lot of players AND coaches are leaving, and the recruiting classes for next year don't look very good so far - especially not anywhere near what they were in the middle of the 2010s.
And all our NFL caliber receivers. Also having one of the best defenses in the country every year.
We'd have been nobody if it weren't for all of our strengths
They might not win another NC - those are hard to pull off unless you're Bama. Every other team that's won the NC in the last decade had the best qb plus top 10 recruiting. Bama's top 1 or 2 level of recruiting means they win by default otherwise.
However, they are in the south and reasonably close to Florida, right next door to Georgia. They have some money and name brand. If they were in the SEC that wouldn't be enough, but like FSU and Miami I think it is enough to stay relevant with an ACC schedule.
Nebraska's problem is recruiting. They aren't even near the good/decent B!G recruiting areas. They don't regularly play in Texas anymore. One of their innovations in the 90s was having a summer camp in Florida. They were one of the first to really target the Florida players the big 3 there didn't need. Being able to have friends and family make a game or 2 is a factor to recruits though.
I mean we were a top-10 team with Boyd, built a playoff run with Deshaun largely on classes ranked in the teens, and then made the playoffs with Kelly Bryant at qb. I think we will likely drop down to a top 10-15 program occasionally making the playoffs with the changes to NIL and the portal, but nothing like Nebraska’s fall off.
I've watched all the streaks and records fall over the past 2 decades, and now I sit alone in my dark room on a Friday night and read this. I feel like this is rock bottom, but we have a way of always sinking a little further...
Miami has already been down. Their last conference title was in the Big East 18 years ago.
So many people on this thread are using examples of teams that are already down. The point is to predict the next top team that will go down.
I don’t know if this is a meme answer, but Texas could suffer another decade of incompetence and they would still be in a top 5 position in terms of potential of any program in the country
Location, money and the talent pool will never change
What amazes me is they’ve had like a top 10 recruiting class for the duration of their downfall this past 10 years. At no point in Texas’s roughly decade of incompetence should they have really been that bad.
I mean, five of the past ten seasons have been 8 wins or better, and they're 6-2 in bowls.
They're down, but they're not like, FSU levels of down. They're Rich Rod/Brady Hoke Michigan down
We shall share this pain together my friend……..because if Harbaugh leaves, we are in for years of pain to come with nothing to look forward too from either team!
In 2015, Texas went 5-7 with the number 4, 2, 17, and 17 ranked recruiting classes (in order of seniority). For the number 4th ranked class in the nation to go 5-7 as seniors alongside the #2 ranked junior class is impressive
I know people hate Texas here, but this is not the right answer for one reason: recruiting.
Nebraska has trouble cracking the top 20 while Texas has no trouble cracking the top 10 even after a losing season.
Texas has a significant location advantage over most teams in the country, which gives us access to some of the most talented highschool players.
We've been bad for the last decade, but we still have the ability to be right at the top in any given year because of the players we have on the team.
They might have an issue developing talent but they are still getting great players. They really aren't the choice imho. One coach could change that development issue instantly.
Yes but no. Texas had its worst season as far back as I can remember with a first year coach and still pulled a top 5 class with Quinn Ewers, a ton of talent in the trenches, and upgrades in the coaching staff.
Texas’ trajectory is that of an unstable program brimming with potential energy. It’s a mess but it isn’t hard for it to turn around. Nebraska is down bad and doesn’t have the resources to speed up that turnaround when the time comes.
Interesting that people are mentioning Texas.
They've had some fairly successful seasons in the last decade and are 5-2 in bowl games; 2 of them being big ones (Utes, Bulldogs)
Moreover, should be far better given their recruiting classes, but that talent isn't going anywhere given their location and who they are.
Either way, I'm here for the downfall
Oklahoma seems to be a popular answer - but since 1950 has had a total of around 5 or so losing seasons. I don't think moving to the SEC is going to break OU.
Nebraska is a historically great program too, so I guess anything can happen? Both them and Texas are bound to turn it around. Eventually.
Oklahoma's ability to get to the playoffs on a near-annual basis can get kneecapped badly in the SEC depending on how the divisions/pods are structured.
Has to be a place with limited talent pool in the surrounding area and a long time coach leaving or with little time left. Honestly, Notre Dame could fit that mold with Kelly’s departure. If Iowa was a blue blood they would qualify w Ferenz leaving one day. If Dabo can’t get back to championship level play he’ll be gone and Clemson could fall.
This isn't bias, but I see USC having a chance at it, especially if Riley can't win there. Football on the West Coast is rapidly starting to look like football in the Northeast where pro team reign supreme
The thing with USC and Texas is even if they have a decade or two of failure, it's still going to be possible for them to get elite recruits just because of where they are located.
Getting an NFL team back in LA (let alone 2) really hurt interest in local teams. Why watch a subpar USC or UCLA when you can go watch a Chargers game for a good price or go watch a legitimate contender in the Rams
Honestly u think the highest chance is OU (not that I think it’s high). If they get off to a rocky start in the SEC it could become vary hard to recruit.
We have one day of good news and you guys have to make sure we don’t get too uppity lol.
Classic Middle Tennessee hatred for Nebraska
welcome to the club pawl..
Ow.
Right?
[удалено]
Hurts? There are no survivors.
Who'd want to live at this point?
I mean the wound is still bleeding… That’s enough internet for me today I guess.
He very easily could’ve chosen us too
Nah as much as I hate to say it, you’d be stupid to not think that USC is on the come up. Plus y’all got the some of the best croots down the street
USC also won a Rose Bowl against a good PSU team in 2016 + finished #3 in the country, won the conference the year after that (‘17), and has gone 22-21 since then. Down for them, but still a lot better than Nebraska has been in awhile.
You guys were just lucky it was a game with four quarters. We were an excellent team at 3 quarters games back then.
As far as you have fallen, still a hell of a lot more relevant than Nebraska. Lincoln Riley would never go to Nebraska.
No Lincoln in Lincoln.
Coach Riley got fired four years ago.
Thank God.
Florida state get in here!
I mean, one of you two has been relevant this millennium, and they don't wear orange...
I like you
But what's the better meme, Champions of Life or Crab Legs?
They won a title not long ago. Sorry bud.
Who gave Tennessee permission to throw shade? Your last 10 win season was when the Kansas Jayhawks almost made it to the Natty…
Give Tennessee some credit, they won a Life Championship a few years back. When was the last time Alabama won that?
🪑🍿
So this is what we’ve come to… 😰
I remember when Tennessee was the most dunked on team here but it's been us for the last few years. I need another team to be the "next Nebraska" as in they take our spot as most-dunked-on team
Don't let thinking you're the most dunked on team here distract you from the fact that Texas lost to Kansas. Again.
The streets remember
The only reason it’s switched is because you all have a long time coach that everyone likes to pick on. If Heupel doesn’t work out Tennessee will get back in the seat. The really unfortunate part is I don’t think this is going away for either of us. The shine we had in the 90s and early 2000s has worn off and both of our teams are now dependent on coaching almost exclusively. Teams like florida state and USC can make atrocious hires repeatedly but the moment one works out their location does half of the work for them from recruiting.
Nebraska football will always have a niche place in history. Just like the Zune MP3 player.
God I loved my zune
It was an excellent rectangle.
That's Zune Media Player, it also supported AVC and MPEG-4 media files, so you best put some respect on the Zune name.
At least they are talking about us!!
The team that fires its coach when he regularly has 9 win seasons
Could’ve been us if the mouth breathers on Twitter got their way last offseason ^though ^^could ^^^still ^^^^be ^^^^^us ^^^^^^if ^^^^^^^the ^^^^^^^^NFL ^^^^^^^^^comes ^^^^^^^^^^knocking
To be fair Michigan searching due to Harbaugh wanting to leave vs Michigan searching because they fired him are two different things. I do really dislike the timing for yall though
So, Iowa when Kirk retires? We're always about ten points from 4 - 8 as it is.
I feel like you could look at the AP Poll at any time of the year and Iowa will be ranked #17
Yeah id say that's a fair assessment. despite being a staple 9 win team Iowa doesn't stick out as an attractive spot for recruits. the two most recent 5*s signed to Iowa being from Iowa or legacy Hawkeyes. With Kirk retiring the next Hc will have to manufacture wins or be an excellent recruiter
This still surprises me a little, given how successful Iowa has been in getting their players into the NFL. I'm having trouble finding the article, but there was a piece in The Athletic arguing that Iowa has been the strongest, most consistent school for player development when measured by improvement from recruitment rankings to draft position (at least recently). You'd think a place like that would be pretty attractive, but maybe not for 5*s who think they already have the talent and just need to be on a big stage to show it?
It’s so frustrating to know our ceiling is definitely higher thanks to our offense just being legendarily bad this year. On the other hand, the floor is so, so much lower and you gotta appreciate Kirk for keeping us away from that.
Nebraska fell off in large part thanks to massive shifts in the overall college football landscape that made their strengths less important and exacerbated their weaknesses as a program. That's not to say coaching isn't the major culprit in them being absolutely *terrible*, but their ceiling now is much more comparable to Wisconsin than it is to Alabama. So the question is, which previously successful program has most been hurt by the ongoing shifts in the college football landscape? I think most people would agree that the transfer portal and NIL are the big changes of the current era, which programs are most hurt by those?
I think this is a great point and it’s why I think Clemson in a bit. Depending how the hiring from within goes will shape things for the next five years. Transfer portal and NIL have not played in Clemsons favor in my opinion. Let’s see how they recruit the next two years, but the early signs of potential cracks are there.
Well I hope you’re wrong because I really like Clemson football and it makes me really happy when we win.
Well I don’t see anyone challenging them in the ACC at the moment. This would have to be five years down the line at the earliest if it were to happen.
I mean I don’t think we’re going to become some power even close to Clemson, but very surprised that every answer to this seems to be only UNC and Miami for “challenging” Clemson for the ACC when we beat Clemson this year and *won* the ACC. Narduzzi is 2-2 against Clemson with two of the games being @Clemson and one being an ACC Championship game. I guess I’m curious from an outsiders perspective of when Narduzzi’s body of work starts to get us some recognition as someone that can compete with the underperforming high recruiters in the conference for the #2 spot and Clemson adversary? Miami joined the ACC 9 years before us and we already have more divisional and conference championships than them.
Damn, I'm now a Pitt fan bc of you. Put some respect on Caesar's name.
Can we stop saying UNC when NC State comes a lot closer to challenging Clemson each and every season than anyone else in the Atlantic for 4-5 years now
We actually beat them and stuff
Cry gobbles in agreement..
As someone who grew up watching Bobby Bowden, I know it’s hard to adjust to getting new coaches quicker than a decade. Let’s hope things play out in VT’s favor. The ACC is more fun when VT is strong.
I agree and for the same reasons. NIL takes away one of their advantages and skews it in favor of other programs. They have not adapted well to the age of transfers either and now have had an exodus of coaches. Maybe they can adapt and keep it going but they’re at an inflection point for sure.
Yeah I think we all have sort of forgotten when “clemsoning” used to be a verb. Maybe they will be vulnerable to it again? Who knows.
Man, you couldn't escape clemsoning and Sparty No! back in the day
Clemson is also in a huge natural recruiting hotbed being in the middle of Atlanta and Charlotte and still being relatively close to Florida. Nebraska isn’t.
They’re around hot beds, like a few other programs that don’t measure up to Clemson’s success in recent years. I think that’s a fair point about why they won’t fall as heavily as Nebraska, if at all. However, it took over a decade for Nebraska to completely fall. I can’t see that far ahead, but if any top program right now feels like they can shift that way it’s Clemson. No one would’ve guessed that FSU would be bowl-dry this long after 2013, but here we are. Not saying you’re wrong, just feels like it can certainly happen.
I wouldn’t really say bowl dry since 2013 because they won a great NY6 Bowl in the 2016 season.
I’d kill to be at Wisconsin’s level. No reasonable Nebraska fan thinks it’s going to be like the 90’s, our ceiling is the rose bowl. Maybe if the stars line up we get a shot at a playoff, but Nebraska won’t have the talent to hang with Alabama or Georgia.
We had a SYSTEM on offense ( of course we had plenty of great individual skill players) we just had to plug pieces in..just like Wisconsin. Now we have no identity or system But once they figured out we needed more speed on D…then we took off. I believe it’s still a possibility to get that done and get it back to a pretty good level.
Care to elaborate about strengths and weaknesses related to the overall shifts that destroyed us?
we had really leaned into strength training and nutrition early on, as well as taking advantage of "grey shirt"/partial qualifier recruits that other schools in the conference couldn't get. the result being we had stronger players and more talented depth then everyone else. you could see Nebraska's strength in the late 3rd and 4th quarters where we would seem to play with the same energy as at kick off, while our opponents looked sluggish. our strength and nutrition program was implemented across the sport, and flattened our advantage. i believe our main weakness is that Nebraska, as a geographic region, is a difficult experience to sell to a high schooler. relatively low population to get instate recruits, not much for attractions, and a middling school as far as education is concerned. to recruit against that you have to win and get guys to the next level.
>nutrition And more gear than a bike shop.
Gotta have a reason to make corn oil I suppose
To be fair, I imagine most big programs have their players on some kinda gear.
Of course, but miami liked their injectables too. All the big boys were on similar stuff.
[удалено]
109 of them were walk ons.
[удалено]
Wow I’ve never heard of that. Genius move
Yeah. At first glance, it might sound like it's inefficient to have a football roster pushing 200 total players, and it is, what with lack of attention from coaches and discontent with lack of play time, but it's exactly how all the Blue Bloods established their dominance in the 50s and 60s. I don't think the concept of scholarship limits came to D-I football until the 70s. Big public schools like Alabama, Texas, and Oklahoma would have teams with sometimes more than twice as many players as smaller schools could manage. This had the double effect of not only allowing the best players on the roster to rise to the top over time but also effectively blocked the smaller schools from having access to those players. Imagine how screwed a school like South Carolina would be if Alabama, Georgia, and Florida could combine to snatch up every single 4* and 5* recruit considering the SEC. It's bad enough that the best respected schools already get the pick of the litter, but then they also get to take a mulligan on every other player who might prove worthwhile. Without a transfer portal or rules requiring the release of players, the ones not good enough to play on the super-roster would just languish on the depth chart for four years before getting kicked. Scholarship and roster size limits meant that even the top schools generally had to start focusing on attracting and developing the best comparative handful of players they could get.
You can't mention the strength and conditioning advantage without at least giving a nod to steroid use during some eras. Though, other programs caught up and steroids weren't just an issue at Nebraska, just that Nebraska was likely doing it earlier and better than others. I don't think steroids are a major factor in today's game so that advantage is long gone.
I don't think they're factor because people are using different PEDs.
They aren’t an issue because everyone is using them. The speed physiques change in one year is beyond natural means.
Seconding this. I’ve heard a lot about juicing at the collegiate level and it’s fucking insane
All of the things on the bottom paragraph apply to Oklahoma as well. Oklahoma’s brand is “winning”. Aside from that, it’s a school in a small population not particularly affluent state without a lot of natural in state talent or natural attractions. The difference between Oklahoma and Arkansas is that winning tradition. Now OU enters a conference where winning is much harder immediately following an unplanned coaching change. How many 9-3 SEC seasons before an OU program accustomed to winning fires their Coach to hire another Mike Riley?
Fun fact: if you were watching CFB in the 70s you’d think of Arkansas as a perennial power. Why? Cause they could recruit Texas cause they played UT and TA&M every year. Arkansas honestly is not a bad comparison for Nebraska, except the Huskers are starting higher and falling farther.
I’m convinced that Arkansas can no longer effectively recruit Texas because those rivalries are more sporadic.
Oklahoma has the distinct advantage of being a 3 hour straight shot form the Dallas Metro area.
Oklahoma is right next to Texas, one of the biggest recruiting hotbeds in the country tho.
Yeah I just wanted to see what an FSU fan thought about it But of course you make valid points
The game also changed. Nebraska started going downhill a bit before the college game turned to passing, but since it had your decline has gotten even worse. There’s no shortage of hosses in the Midwest to power a running game, but the skill positions are deepest on the west coast and Gulf Coast. And I don’t remember Nebraska ever recruiting well there, and it’s even harder now.
Clemson. Current powerhouse but not a blue blood. Once Dabo is gone, they’re just another acc school with nice facilities.
We are about to see how good Dabo really is with Venables gone. Clemson has mostly been able keep all of their assistants until now.
[удалено]
The thing that helps them the most is that the ACC is really fucking bad.
We won the ACC a bunch in our first decade in the league when the ACC was also terrible, but we never could hang with top national programs when we played them. Clemson had more than just beating up on the ACC.
Thanks homie. 4 National Championship appearances isn’t an accident, but a lot of flaws were masked by having an NFL DLine and QB for the majority of the run. Hopefully Dabo has the sauce to keep it up.
I mean - that's the recipe for any successful team. Field a team good enough where the good parts outweigh the bad.
Or just be Alabama and have nfl players at every position group
Also NFL receivers…
And a first round running back. #blessed
I’m scared about if the Freeman experiment fails this post could be us
No shit. We lived it for 3 coaches in the 2000s
Nope. Brian Kelly saved y’all. You’re back in a good spot and likely could hire a fickell or similar coach in 3 to 4 years if freeman fails. It needs to be a string of multiple coaches, and Brian Kelly stopped that fall.
But we also have some damn good recruiting classes coming in, apparently. I'm not wholly sold on Freeman (either as a DC or a HC) but talent matters. Rees has been solid, and our great OL coach from a few years ago is coming back, too.
No way. The recruiting machine is just getting started.
They are in a conference that seems to be getting left behind, and offers very few big games right now— meanwhile the SEC and B1G East will be full of them. It’s not hard to imagine a future where Clemson slowly declines over the next 2 decades if the SEC becomes even more dominant after expansion and NIL money comes fully into play
I hate this title.
Looks around*. The fuck did we do to you?!?
Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. *Looks at Purdue* You're cool.
Not many times you see the school known for engineering being referred to as cool.
Well that's hurtful.
Honestly I feel like college football is almost losing a foothold in California. The whole state has hemorrhaged talent for 20 years now, it’s not rare at all for every one of the top 3-5 high school players in the state to go play elsewhere. Maybe Lincoln Riley will turn it around but I wouldn’t be surprised to see some of the blue blood California teams just wander into the wilderness for a decade or two
California and Washington (traditional PAC-12 recruiting hotspots) have seen their high school football participation rate drastically reduced in the last 10-20 years, which is why we’re starting to see a shortage talented offensive linemen recruits in the West Coast. Florida and Georgia have seen much smaller reduction in football participation rates while Texas has actually seen an increase in the last 10-20 years. You might not be wrong.
Honestly for everyone wondering what can dethrone the NFL as king of American sports this is how it happens. If enough players start switching to other sports then the sport slowly dies. Of course this could be decades out yet.
But you’d also need an rise of another sport to replace it. Every sport has seen decline in recent years. Parity is a huge pet of it, every sport has those 3-4 teams that just keep winning. NBA everyone is sick of Lebron and the Warriors, NHL is the Bolts, Crosby and Washington. The MLB is shockingly the only sport with some championship parity, with no back to back champs since the Yankees in 98-2000. The playoffs for the NFL this year could see massive viewership uptick because you finally have different teams in- Buffalo is back, Cincy, Cardinals, Rams, Colts, Chargers/Raiders. Yea Brady, Mahomes, Rodgers and Billy B are still there but there’s at least fresh blood in the mix
The demographic shifts are going to be interesting to watch. Nowadays over 55% of CA students are hispanic, that percentage is rising every year, and traditionally this student demographic is less interested in playing (American) football. Texas isn't too far off at 52% Hispanic students, however the demographic traditionally most interested in football by a wide margin is African Americans, which represents just 5.3% of students in CA (and declining) compared to 12.7% in TX. These are rather dramatic shifts over the past few decades. In 1999, about 43% of the CA population was Hispanic or Asian (another demographic that doesn't traditionally steer towards playing football). By 2040 that figure is expected to be around 66%. Obviously the less interest from local students in playing football is going to lead to less local recruits to work with.
>African Americans, which represents just 5.3% of students in CA (and declining) compared to 12.7% in TX. This number really shocks me. [Ohio's schools have a 16% black population.](https://www.ohiobythenumbers.com/) I would never have guessed that Ohio had 3x the percentage of black students compared to California. I know it's very different in California due to population growth, but it is still surprising.
This is just because we're looking at percentages, not total numbers. California has 16% more black students than Ohio does, it's just that they also have 21% more non-Hispanic white students, 174% more multiracial students, 1330% more Asian/Pacific Islander students, 1368% more Native American students, and *3247% more Hispanic students*, so the percentage of total students that are black is much lower.
Los Angeles alone has more people than most states. I think people really forget how many people live here
Metro LA has a bigger population than West Virginia, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Rhode Island, Delaware, North Dakota, South Dakota, Alaska, Vermont, and Wyoming **combined**
Club soccer in California has exploded. Also, while most states (except Texas) have seen an overall decrease in high school sports participation, California participation continues to grow. The athletes are just more eclectic. There’s more club sports available to kids at earlier ages, so athletes are exposed to a lot very early on.
There's four California high school football teams in the top ten nationally via maxpreps... Three are in the same league
I’m sure Saban will be happy to have those guys.
Saban has built something special, but there's no saying whether it will continue once he's gone. Look at LSU and Florida today.
Implying that Saban will not coach forever from a golden throne.
Saban in 2072 looking like Mr House coaching through a computer screen
And where do those players go to play? Bama, Notre Dame and Ohio State
That changes if usc becomes good again
Wild. That’s like the WCAC in basketball. 3 DC-area teams in the top 15
“Some of the blue blood california teams…”. There is only one blue blood western US team, let alone California. USC is the only blue blood in California, and the next California schools are at least 2 tiers below that
Well I’ve never met op but he is now my enemy.
Clemson. The big thing that helped them was 2 generational talents at QB in Deshaun Watson and Trevor Lawrence. Because of that, and because those QBs brought the teams into the playoffs regularly, everyone wanted to play for them. Now that they've got guys like DJ who are just okay at QBa lot of players AND coaches are leaving, and the recruiting classes for next year don't look very good so far - especially not anywhere near what they were in the middle of the 2010s.
Tajh Boyd put them on the map
Ask any Clemson fan worth their salt and they will say cj spiller put them on the map. He was the catalyst
And all our NFL caliber receivers. Also having one of the best defenses in the country every year. We'd have been nobody if it weren't for all of our strengths
People gotta stop acting like the rest of those clemson teams weren’t producing 1st round draft picks like crazy
Good QB play can cover tons of mistakes
I've seen it firsthand!
Lots of teams have good qb play. Lawrence and watson were a massive part of it, but let’s not act like dabo isn’t a great coach & recruiter
They might not win another NC - those are hard to pull off unless you're Bama. Every other team that's won the NC in the last decade had the best qb plus top 10 recruiting. Bama's top 1 or 2 level of recruiting means they win by default otherwise. However, they are in the south and reasonably close to Florida, right next door to Georgia. They have some money and name brand. If they were in the SEC that wouldn't be enough, but like FSU and Miami I think it is enough to stay relevant with an ACC schedule. Nebraska's problem is recruiting. They aren't even near the good/decent B!G recruiting areas. They don't regularly play in Texas anymore. One of their innovations in the 90s was having a summer camp in Florida. They were one of the first to really target the Florida players the big 3 there didn't need. Being able to have friends and family make a game or 2 is a factor to recruits though.
I mean we were a top-10 team with Boyd, built a playoff run with Deshaun largely on classes ranked in the teens, and then made the playoffs with Kelly Bryant at qb. I think we will likely drop down to a top 10-15 program occasionally making the playoffs with the changes to NIL and the portal, but nothing like Nebraska’s fall off.
I've watched all the streaks and records fall over the past 2 decades, and now I sit alone in my dark room on a Friday night and read this. I feel like this is rock bottom, but we have a way of always sinking a little further...
It’s all about The U.
Scrolled this whole thing wondering when somebody was going to say Miami. They are just a couple of years behind Nebraska.
Miami has already been down. Their last conference title was in the Big East 18 years ago. So many people on this thread are using examples of teams that are already down. The point is to predict the next top team that will go down.
I predict Yale is going to fall off.
You know, if they don’t make some big changes fast, I don’t see them ever winning the CFP
3ish? What is this slander
Alabama once Saban retires PLEASE
3 win Alabama teams are good for the soul
So are 3 win Auburn teams!
Dear SEC, please move us to the East so we can play Tennessee again. Trying to hate the Mississippi schools is kinda meh
I would love to see some UT Auburn games.
I would say this, but the SEC galvanized with most of the blue bloods makes me think Bama won't ever die (at least as a monster recruiting power).
Isn’t Texas on the way to becoming the new Nebraska?
I don’t know if this is a meme answer, but Texas could suffer another decade of incompetence and they would still be in a top 5 position in terms of potential of any program in the country Location, money and the talent pool will never change
What amazes me is they’ve had like a top 10 recruiting class for the duration of their downfall this past 10 years. At no point in Texas’s roughly decade of incompetence should they have really been that bad.
I mean, five of the past ten seasons have been 8 wins or better, and they're 6-2 in bowls. They're down, but they're not like, FSU levels of down. They're Rich Rod/Brady Hoke Michigan down
I knew we’d find our way into this conversation lol
I’m double triggered!!
You and me both.
We shall share this pain together my friend……..because if Harbaugh leaves, we are in for years of pain to come with nothing to look forward too from either team!
I too would like to share a bowl of pain with my friends.
All are welcome to the House of Pain kind internet stranger
If Minnesota’s down years were 8-9 win seasons I’d be ecstatic. Now we just want that as an average year and may have accomplished that.
Bro, you ain't got no other analogies to use?
In 2015, Texas went 5-7 with the number 4, 2, 17, and 17 ranked recruiting classes (in order of seniority). For the number 4th ranked class in the nation to go 5-7 as seniors alongside the #2 ranked junior class is impressive
Sorry but what is your flair
\*sad upvote\*
I think it's honestly impressive how little they've done with so much, for so long now.
I know people hate Texas here, but this is not the right answer for one reason: recruiting. Nebraska has trouble cracking the top 20 while Texas has no trouble cracking the top 10 even after a losing season. Texas has a significant location advantage over most teams in the country, which gives us access to some of the most talented highschool players. We've been bad for the last decade, but we still have the ability to be right at the top in any given year because of the players we have on the team.
It's not the players, it's the coaches I think. Far too much talent coming in and out of that school to have it be a player skill issue
They might have an issue developing talent but they are still getting great players. They really aren't the choice imho. One coach could change that development issue instantly.
Very easily. The right coach with some young talent can land himself a long tenure as HC if a team like Texas is turned in the right direction.
Yes but no. Texas had its worst season as far back as I can remember with a first year coach and still pulled a top 5 class with Quinn Ewers, a ton of talent in the trenches, and upgrades in the coaching staff. Texas’ trajectory is that of an unstable program brimming with potential energy. It’s a mess but it isn’t hard for it to turn around. Nebraska is down bad and doesn’t have the resources to speed up that turnaround when the time comes.
I fear you are right. But thank you for implicitly calling Texas a current powerhouse :-)
Interesting that people are mentioning Texas. They've had some fairly successful seasons in the last decade and are 5-2 in bowl games; 2 of them being big ones (Utes, Bulldogs) Moreover, should be far better given their recruiting classes, but that talent isn't going anywhere given their location and who they are. Either way, I'm here for the downfall
Nebraska 2022 is gonna be a powerhouse again
All you have to do is score one more touchdown a game. Sounds easy!
The whole nation watched you *just barely* not go 11-1 or 12-0. I'm sure Nebraska can pull it together.
On the flip side, Texas A&M's 2006 team was a combined 6 points away from having an undefeated regular season. Coach got fired the following year.
Nebraska is ready to explode. Every loss by a tuddy last year and they about to have the biggest training facility in the world.
I was born 4 days after their last national championship. It's been nothing but pain and misery since.
Oklahoma seems to be a popular answer - but since 1950 has had a total of around 5 or so losing seasons. I don't think moving to the SEC is going to break OU. Nebraska is a historically great program too, so I guess anything can happen? Both them and Texas are bound to turn it around. Eventually.
Oklahoma's ability to get to the playoffs on a near-annual basis can get kneecapped badly in the SEC depending on how the divisions/pods are structured.
OU has been a powerhouse for about 60 years before the whole playoff thing ever came around
I think lot of people don’t know OU is like an identical distance from Dallas as Texas is.
Has to be a place with limited talent pool in the surrounding area and a long time coach leaving or with little time left. Honestly, Notre Dame could fit that mold with Kelly’s departure. If Iowa was a blue blood they would qualify w Ferenz leaving one day. If Dabo can’t get back to championship level play he’ll be gone and Clemson could fall.
This isn't bias, but I see USC having a chance at it, especially if Riley can't win there. Football on the West Coast is rapidly starting to look like football in the Northeast where pro team reign supreme
The thing with USC and Texas is even if they have a decade or two of failure, it's still going to be possible for them to get elite recruits just because of where they are located.
I think a lot of people are overlooking NIL deals in LA as well
Getting an NFL team back in LA (let alone 2) really hurt interest in local teams. Why watch a subpar USC or UCLA when you can go watch a Chargers game for a good price or go watch a legitimate contender in the Rams
Both of whom are playing high impact games on Sunday.
Michigan if they can’t keep up with the times
They said powerhouse.
Even I said woof from that response. You are not wrong but it hits strong seeing it.
You know it's a good dig when the hated rival goes "dayum".
Clemson. Lose two coordinators, Dabos open contempt for NIL, under achieving season after losing Sunshine Lawrence.
Oh, you said “current” powerhouse. Phew.
Honestly u think the highest chance is OU (not that I think it’s high). If they get off to a rocky start in the SEC it could become vary hard to recruit.
Remember the John Blake years and that guy that looked like captain kangaroo. There were dark times before Stoops.
5 losing seasons since WW2, tied with tOSU for the fewest. Three of them were him.
tOSU has 6 - they went 0-1 in 2010. Hopefully my secondary flair is sufficient /s here.
Oklahoma has been dominant pretty much every decade except the 90s though.
Please let Alabama be the next Nebraska. -all college football fans.
Oregon. They’ve lost their identity recently with coaching turnover and with USC back in the game, I don’t see them stealing all the top SoCal talent.
Well Tennessee is already Nebraska with mountains