Monday Night Beer: Husker QB Debate and UNO Arena Problems

For what it's worth, I still think Zac Lee trots on the field at quarterback for Nebraska's opening possession on Saturday night against Western Kentucky. I do admit that I don't blame Lee that much for the struggles of the offense last year; injuries and poor play by the receivers still are the responsible parties from my perspective. That being said, I do expect to see all three quarterbacks.  The first one to see the field will be Taylor Martinez, in my opinion, and likely in non-traditional roles. The more I think about it, I think Martinez could be used like Florida used Tim Tebow as a freshman.

No, I'm not saying Martinez is Tebow-like; I'm merely suggesting his role could be similar to Tebow as a freshman.  Come in for specific plays in the middle of drives to throw a new wrinkle into the offense. Maybe not even line up at quarterback, but perhaps elsewhere on the field to take advantage of his athletic ability.  Lee could be like Chris Leak, the starting quarterback who's skills don't exactly fit what Nebraska now wants to do on offense, but still doing enough to be effective.  In any event, may the best quarterback emerge.

I'll be posting my season prediction either here or at Corn Nation later this week, but let me throw one little bit out there tonight:  I'm feeling pretty optimistic about the Huskers this season.

The rumor mill coming out from UNO is not sounding very good about the proposed arena near Aksarben at Chili Greens. Namely, UNO may be seriously considering building a 7,000 seat arena as they don't feel a larger arena is viable. The devil is in the details, of course, but my initial thoughts it that if a 7,000 seat arena is all that UNO can afford to build now, they should simply shelve the project for two or three years. Last season, UNO averaged nearly 6800 fans, which leaves almost no room for UNO to grow as a program.

I understand ... and I still agree with many of the reasons for UNO to build it's own arena, but I also don't believe that UNO has really tapped into what it's potential is. We're just one year into the Dean Blais era and preparing for a switch in conferences. Expectations seem to be increasing everywhere around the program, which makes it puzzling that you'd spend millions of dollars to entrench the program where it is from an attendance perspective.

Instead, I'd suggest that UNO let Dean Blais and his program develop for two or three more years, and see where things go. Then revisit the whole question at that time. If UNO really is still only drawing 7000 fans, then go ahead and do it.  But if UNO has progressed as a program to where they are drawing much more than that, it would be a shame to slam the door on that progress because UNO built an arena that became obsolete during construction.

One of the things that we learned during Trev Alberts first year on the job is that we really don't know what UNO is capable of, and that the days of saying UNO can't do something are over.

And frankly, I don't believe that UNO is only capable of a 7000 seat arena.