intertribal | Nebraska 40, Colorado 31 (Reply)

We won that game because of spirit. Because the players never gave up and Coach Pelini never gave up and I bet the fans at Memorial Stadium never gave up either. I guarantee that under Callahan last season, we would have lost this game. We would have given up. But Pelini, you know, he fucking knows Nebraska football, he knows what it means, and he found a way to pull it out. This is why I love the Huskers. This is why I love college football. Pure pathos, pure pathos all the way.

I didn't actually catch the 57-yard field goal, a school record - I caught the immediate aftermath. Our kicker Alex Henery (the one in the middle in the picture above) got the Player of the Game, as he rightly should have, because it put us in front 33-31 with 1:43 left. 57 yards. Think about that. That's more than half a football field. Apparently it just barely got in, but it was a school fucking record. He's a great kicker. Not such a great faker, but a great kicker.

I called my mother at like a minute left, when Colorado was trying to drive back up the field for a gamewinning field goal. On the very next play, while I was on the phone with her, SUH intercepted a pass and ran it back for a touchdown. It was amazing. We were screaming together. It was like 2000 all over again: me digging my nails into my mother's arm and hiding behind the dishwasher watching to see if Josh Brown would nail the gamewinning field goal (which he did).

Colorado games are always like this - no offense to anybody who lives in or loves Colorado, but when Oklahoma State played at Colorado this year some asshole Colorado fan shone a laser in the OSU quarterback's eye. Then of course there's the time they beat Nebraska in Boulder and not only memorialized the score on team rings (who does that??) but chanted "No more Heisman!" to our quarterback (who won the Heisman anyway, SUCK IT COLORADO). So yeah. It's a very, very bitter rivalry, it always comes down to the wire, it often determines our bowls, and in many ways, the Colorado game makes or breaks the season. It is, after all, the last home game for the seniors, the last regular-season game. The players know its significance: one senior, Peterson, apparently had a dream the night before where the Huskers lost 40-4. It would have indeed been awful if we had ended this great, dawn-of-the-new-era season with a loss. And ending it with a win, and a win with so much spirit, is really the best Christmas present Coach Pelini could have given the Husker faithful.

All you can really say is alhamdulillah. We're 8-4 and bound for a good bowl game in Bo Pelini's first year, after finishing last season 5-7. And it feels so damn good.

Apparently when ESPN2 showed the clip of Suh's final interception, they said, "My name is Suh! How are you! Now you gonna die!" That's a modification of "A Boy Named Sue", by the way - one of my favorite Johnny Cash songs.