Nevada Gasser & 2007 Tunnel Walk Revealed

A few initial thoughts on today's Nevada-Nebraska game (and the 2007 Tunnel Walk towards the bottom...).

• If I had to award game balls, I'd hand them out to the Husker offensive line. 413 yards rushing on 70 attempts? That's simply outstanding.
• Marlon Lucky put up some huge numbers in the 3rd quarter with some nice runs as the o-line wore down the Wolfpack. Quentin Castille looks to be the real deal, adding 79 yards on 18 carries. Major Culbert showed the best moves of the day on his 4th quarter touchdown. I'd like to see him get a shot returning kicks.
• Terrence Nunn had a very rough day, suffice it to say.
• After some early issues, the defense was smothering after the 1st quarter. Steve Octavien made some huge plays, and Kevin Cosgrove mixed up his defenses quite nicely. Keeping the Nevada offense off-the-field combined with a heavy dose of pound-the-rock on offense lead to a 2-1 advantage for the Huskers in time of possession. The Wolfpack simply got gassed today.
• Sam Keller had a quiet start at quarterback, making a few nice throws but also forcing the ball into coverage a few times. From the south end zone, you could see trouble as soon as he threw that interception. His 25-yard completion to tight end Mike McNeil also looked like a ball that was lucky to not be intercepted, let alone be caught.
• The new clock rules are going to really limit Callahan's ability to shift before the snap. They whistle the ball ready for play much sooner this season than in the past, meaning there's about 10-15 seconds less time to get plays in. Both teams seemed to be caught off guard by how fast the play clock started, resulting in many delay penalties. Most of the time, Sam Keller was snapping the ball with only about 3 seconds left on the play clock.
• Adi Kunalic's leg is as advertised. Putting kickoffs into the back of the end zone from the 30 yard line is going to be a huge weapon. It's a sight for sore eyes as kickoffs have been a consistent problem during the previous three years.
• Did Bill Callahan look back at some film from the previous regime? Quentin Castille lined up at fullback and took several handoffs for positive yardage, and Andy Sand caught a few passes as well. In the old offense, handing off to the fullback occasionally resulted in huge gains for guys like Tom Rathman and the Mackovika brothers. It also means that defenses have to keep an eye on both backs. Also, did anybody else catch Joey Ganz trying to run the option? I thought people said that the option was obsolete!
  

Off the field, I had to chuckle at the irony of today's "Pound the Rock" game plan combined with the new "winged-N" logo and "Nebraska Air Force" tunnel walk. Speaking of the tunnel walk, well, the 2007 Tunnel Walk is the worst one ever. (Though according to Randy York's blog, Steve Pederson loves it calling it "Great!" ... though once again, they previewed it in a conference room rather than in a stadium with 85,000 people standing and screaming.)

What was wrong with it? Well, first of all, the concept was confusing as can be. It starts off with a plane from the "Nebraska Air National Guard" flying over Memorial Stadium, then cutting inside to guys wearing suits in a plane jumping out with parachutes. They land and somehow find their way into the new Osborne complex, where as they walk through Steve Pederson's waterfall, they morph into Husker players ready to storm the field. Another animation cuts away from this animation to the field where the video pans out from the giant HuskerVision screen to the field then under the stands to the locker room doors, when the Tunnel Walk begins. Figure that out? Neither did I. And from what I've heard from others, they didn't like it either.

Compounding it was the extremely distorted audio. The Journal-Star reports that the sound was pretty much garbage everywhere within the stadium except on the top of the press box. Plus the stupid fireworks are back again.


On the video, the Mikey Bo track is the prelude, switching to Sirius (with a weird, unnecessary drum track remix) once the players begin to emerge from the locker room. But if they don't fix the sound system, it doesn't matter whether Nebraska uses the Mikey Bo remix, the original Sirius, or Wayne Newton's "Danke Schoen"...

In fact, they are probably better off going back to the original 1994 version where there were simply stars circling the screen before the team appeared. What a waste of time.

Fans in the stadium may have noticed that the team stood for nearly a minute after the gate was opened rather than going onto the field. Seems that the Huskers' entrance was being held at the request of ABC who wanted to show the entrance in their broadcast. (Memo to the idiots at ABC...that's what you have instant replay for!)

In other college football news...

• Appalachian-frickin-State takes out the Weasels! I tried to tell Husker Jeffie last month that Michigan was severely overrated, but he still voted them #3. Me thinks they'll be a lot lower next week.
• Kansas State nearly shocked Auburn tonight. Ron Prince is delivering on the field.
• Oklahoma was simply dominating, while Texas looks overrated.