The Nebraska mascots Herbie Husker and Lil’ Red should consider trading in their overalls for camouflage.

In recent years opposing teams have declared open season on Nebraska and the Husker Nation. But being a marked team is nothing new for the Cornhuskers – you get used to the idea of teams taking aim at you each week when your program has been one of the most dominant teams in college football for the last 33 years.

Forty consecutive winning seasons, 33 consecutive nine-win seasons, 33 consecutive bowl bids and 250 consecutive sellouts – all NCAA records. You might as well draw the bull’s-eye on your back yourself.

“It seems like whoever we play, they play better against us than they play against anybody else,” Nebraska I-back Dahrran Diedreck said. “Everybody wants to beat Nebraska. We’re the team that everybody’s hunting for and trying to beat. We’ve got to know that we’re the hunted, so we have to go out and play our best football and get it done, big time.”

The reasons vary as much as the color of the uniforms of the opposing teams. For some teams it’s a chance for their program to take the “next step” and for others, a win against Nebraska can make a program’s season.

Then there are those teams who simply want revenge for a decade or more of corporal-style beatings at the hands of the Blackshirts and the option left.

One needs to look no farther than Nebraska’s last three road games to see the results of years of tracking the Huskers across miles and miles of the gridiron all over the country.

Colorado let out five years of frustration as they pummeled the Huskers 62-36 in Boulder, and Miami – well, Husker fans don’t talk much about that game. Wasn’t that game for the National Championship or something? Eh, I don’t know.

Penn State, a team coming off back-to-back losing seasons, successfully wounded the beast two weeks ago with a 40-7 thrashing. Reveling in the glory as it became apparent there was little hope for a dramatic Nebraska comeback, fans began to yell, “This is for 1994, Nebraska,” referring to the year Penn State was snubbed for the National Championship despite going undefeated that year.

Now it’s Iowa State’s turn, and they could choose any number of the reasons listed above to join in the festivities and the hunt.

But the Cyclones now find themselves eye-to-eye with a wounded Nebraska team backed into a corner and quarterback Seneca Wallace with sword in hand. What better time to slay the beast than the 10th anniversary of the last time Nebraska was stunned in Ames in 1992?

Iowa State can count on the fact Nebraska won’t just roll over and die, although the Cyclones have to be licking their chops.

A wild animal is dangerous when he’s wounded, backed into a corner and fearing for his life – exactly where Nebraska is right now.

The warning alarms aren’t going off just yet, but after the Huskers were taken out behind the woodshed by Penn State this year and humiliated by Colorado and Miami at the end of last season, things have definitely been upgraded to condition yellow in Huskerville.

Faced with the possibility of back-to-back losses and four in a row on the road, people get nervous. The malcontents are starting to rise up – some going as far as already calling for the heads of Nebraska head coach Frank Solich and defensive coordinator Craig Bohl.

Solich and Bohl understand and even expect such pressure at a school were the words ‘good season’ and ‘national championship’ are synonymous and a nine-win season is a bad year.

“The thing you do as a coach, you recognize that when you don’t perform well, there’s going to be criticism, and as a coach, if you begin to let that criticism affect how your attitude is, then that’s going to spread over to the players,” Bohl said. “The outside stuff – you can’t really let it affect you, and honestly it has not.”

Although Solich and Bohl may not be updating their r‚sum‚s just yet, the seeds of revolution are definitely ripe in the heart of the Husker Nation, at least among the less than diehard. So let the hunt begin and may the best man or “beast” win.

Mike

Nichols

is a senior in political science from Lincoln, Neb. Nichols is currently an ISU student and a visiting student at the University of Nebraska, where he reports for the Daily Nebraskan.