Yeah, we're stuck with playing Colorado this week, on Friday.
Colorado is a pain in the ass.
Nebraska leads in the series, something like 47-13 (don't quote me on this), but playing Colorado has never been a whole lot of fun.
Colorado has an inferiority complex when it comes to Nebraska; Colorado is much larger, much wealthier, much better known, than Nebraska, but for some reason Colorado has usually been excresence when it came to playing football with Nebraska.
Perhaps I should disclose that when in college, about half of my roommates were from, of all places, Colorado. They however were generally okay, because at the time Nebraska was pounding Colorado on a boringly routine basis, which dampened their egos.
One recalls the controversy during the 1980s, when Colorado whined because it usually had to play Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Missouri one right after the other, three hard games in a row, with no "easy" games in between.
Odd, that Iowa State, Kansas, Oklahoma State, and Kansas State, faced with the same predicament, didn't whine.
This was about the time the coach at Colorado made Nebraska Colorado's "designated rival," which of course was bullshit. Authentic rivalries evolve naturally, unmanipulated, and are hallowed with Time and Tradition. And besides, at the time Nebraska's only rival was, as it always had been, Oklahoma (and in more-ancient days, Missouri).
As a rival, Colorado's never been shit, compared with Oklahoma.
Much of the difference is in that Nebraska takes football seriously, while Colorado has always viewed it as a shiny glittering cheap new toy.
A more suitable rival for Colorado would be Iowa State.
When the Big 12 was formed, Nebraska was dismayed that Oklahoma, preferring shiny brass to dull gold, decided their annual game with Texas was more important to them, than their annual game with Nebraska, and so we weren't playing Oklahoma every year any more.
Which left Nebraska without a rival.
Because of television, and because Colorado was considered hip, cool, trendy, with it, at the time, the game with Colorado was moved from the middle of the season to the season-ending game.
Everybody else's football season ends with a bang and a boom--Ohio State and Michigan, Southern California and UCLA, Kansas and Missouri, Texas and Texas A & M, Tennessee and Vanderbilt, Alabama and Auburn, and so on--while ours ends with the bounce of a lead ball, playing Colorado.
It's a bitch.
Colorado fans are generally regarded as the most ill-mannered, coarse, uncouth fans in the midwest. (There are plenty of fine outstanding people from Colorado, but those tend to not be Colorado football fans; there's lots of other sports in Colorado to entice the attention.) They make fans of Iowa State look courtly in comparison.
Barbarians.
Of course, there's the matter of the Nebraska-Colorado game of 2001, when Nebraska melted down and unexpectedly lost.....62-26, the most humiliating thrashing of Nebraska until Texas Tech beat us a few years later.
I have my own ideas why that happened, but never mind.
When Colorado won the Big 12 championship that year, beating Texas, for their championship rings, the players got no jewelry heralding the win over Texas, or the Big 12 championship, but rather rings that simply said "62-26."
Just totally classless.
However, despite the hurt of the loss, it didn't hurt Nebraska as much as a similar loss to a respectable opponent (say, Oklahoma or Missouri) would have.
Within a couple of weeks of that loss, there were already, all over Nebraska, bumper-stickers advertising COLORADO 62, NEBRASKA ROSE BOWL.
Win or lose, Colorado isn't in Nebraska's class.
