Okay, I have it all figured out now--for reasons to be made obvious (if they aren't obvious now), I had to wait and read all the stories about the football game in the Sunday newspapers.
I checked something first--Nebraska has played football for 122 years now, a little over a thousand games. In all those games,
the biggest deficit Nebraska ever overcame was 17 points.....one time (out of more than a thousand, remember).....until last Saturday's game, when Nebraska overcame a -21 disadvantage to win the game.
I was not kidding when I said Nebraska is
not a "comeback" team; in my own lifetime I've always noticed that if Nebraska ever gets behind by a couple of touchdowns (fortunately not a frequent occurrence), the game's pretty much over. Nebraska's not a comeback team. The opponent's won, no matter how much time is left in the whole game.
That's the way we are; that's the way it's always been.
So what happened with Ohio State, to make this miraculous exception?
I had to wait to read the news stories. I can't listen to a game on the radio, or watch it on television. All I ever have to go by is watching the "scoreboard" on the internet, in which numbers are punched in every time something happens. I know nothing about what's going on in the game; just the numbers as they show up on the scoreboard.....and then wait until the next day to read about the "action" in the newspapers.
(It's better than it used to be; before the internet, I had to have people tell me the score, and then read about the game the next day--despite that the scoreboard is just a few numbers, it still gives me more information than I used to get, pre-internet.)
I read all the stories about Saturday's game now. What I did not know while it was going on, was that the Ohio State quarterback got injured and pulled out of the game.....after which Nebraska made this astounding "comeback."
Until I read the Sunday newspapers, I had no idea this happened.
That explains it all, and Nebraska is
still not a comeback team.
Ohio State had some bad luck; if such hadn't have happened, there was no way in Hell Nebraska would've won that game. We were too far behind, and given the way we are, we would've never caught up.
So it wasn't any "coming back" on our part; it was wholly because of Ohio State's bad luck.
And so my original point remains the same--if one wishes to beat Nebraska, the "key" is by scoring early and scoring often.....(and nobody getting hurt). A lead of 14 points at the end of the first quarter, or of at least 21 points at half-time, over Nebraska, and one's pretty much won the game. Nebraska's not coming back.
Never has, never will.
This is of course why I--and most Nebraskans--have always been an advocate of ourselves scoring early and scoring often (as, obviously, the record shows we usually do); to get that score up as high as possible as quickly as possible.....because if we fall "too much" behind, we lose.
I've seen it all my life, and it of course was happening long before I was born.
