What If Nebraska's 2018 Game Against Akron Hadn't Been Canceled?

Josh: Yeah, I think that you're hitting on a lot of the things that happened in the lead up to that game because you remember more hyped seasons, right? Like national championship seasons or seasons where they came close to it. So this is obviously different because nobody went into 2018 thinking that they were going to win a national championship. But there was definitely a feeling of, “thank God, it's time to turn the page.”

You know those shirts that have become very popular over the years when Nebraska has fired coaches where it's like, Bob, Tom, some other guys, then like whomever the new coach is. I remember that there was one, was like “Bob, Tom, Frank, some other guy, Bo.” And there was very much a “some other guys… Frost,” about that whole build up to that game.

So go back in your mind with it. Oregon is still in the Chip Kelly/Mark Helfrich era; not that far behind. Of course, Scott Frost was very much a part of that. The UCF season. We hit on it throughout much of these Groin Chronicles episodes. And we'll continue talking about it with some of these other 2017 games, but starting in October, we're watching Nebraska, but we're peaking; we're looking south. We're looking at these games that UCF is playing and their offense that year was like a firecracker. It was so much fun. And then Adrian Martinez shows up.

And so there’s this thought of, wow, not only is it time for the homegrown guy to come back, but he's going to do it, and Nebraska is finally going to be cool again. They're going to have an offense that's modern again. They're going to score points again.

Jack: There had been such a cliche around bringing former Huskers back. “Our defensive coordinator should be Jason Peter and Grant Wistrom,” right? That sort of thing. But everyone thought, “hey, it's OK with this one because he's legitimately the number one coach that anyone's trying to get anywhere.” And so we got both sides of it. So it's totally OK for that. We'd be going for him if he wasn't a former Husker. And we ended up getting him.

Oh, and also, he's going to bring a modernized version of this offense that we all like. He's going to take the things that we love about the old Nebraska offense, and he's going to take the things that we all saw with the Oregon offense over the last decade, which looked unstoppable at times, and he's going to put them together in this cauldron like he did successfully at Central Florida. I understand why we were so excited.

Now that I'm talking about it; I'm so jaded by how the years went after this, but man, I see why we were so excited. It was justified at that moment for so many reasons. Now I might've blown up the potential of that offense and the scheme to something that was more than it actually was.

And I think the other thing about it, Josh, is that I think we probably looked at that schedule and we were like, all right, well, obviously you're to beat Akron, and you got Colorado coming in; man, that's going to be fun. Scott Frost against Colorado. And then you got Troy, so you're going be 3-0 going into Michigan. Scott Frost vs. Michigan and all of the hype about that and you'll take your chances there. Sort of like how you think about the schedule this coming year to some degree.

Josh: Yeah for sure and so in the end of course we know what happens is that the weather is great that day and suddenly the weather is not great. I mean it just rolls in so fast and remember Jack; this was the game Tim Brando was on the call. And as Scott Frost leads the team on the Tunnel Walk, he's like, "this is going to be Urban Meyer, Nick Saban.” He said Scott Frost was going to be Nebraska's version of one of those guys. The crazy thing is, man, we didn't think that it was that nuts. We were all like, “absolutely he is going to be that dude.”

And so they, they kick the ball off. Nebraska was going to be on offense. It's a touchback. The offense comes out onto the field. Adrian is in the shotgun formation and then suddenly…

Jack: Butch Hug! That was kind of Butch Hug’s swan song at the end of his career.

Josh: And so that happens and Jack I don't know if I've ever verbalized it until right now but you know like a lot of people have always viewed this as like the, “If they play this game, they win; they're 3-0,” like you just said. And then the Scott Frost era is entirely different.

But the thing that I've never thought until now is, wow, this is in a way the only way the Scott Frost era could have begun. With drama, with weird drama, because the thing that then happens next is hours of misinformation, confusion; “is the game going to get played late tonight? Is the game going to get played on Sunday morning?”

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Want access to the entire podcast? Head to patreon.com/i80club and hear the entire conversation, including the answer to two big questions that came out of this game: Had the game been played, would it have changed things? Plus, where would this game rank on the list of groin kicks if we could give it a proper score?

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