Sunday, March 02, 2008

Sunday Night Dessert: Osborne Looks to Better Schedules

A few items of interest on a cold, snowy Sunday night. (How long until spring practice starts?)

Tom Osborne talked to the Lincoln Journal-Star about his plans for the next couple of years as athletic director. Some of the topics include a potential Haymarket arena and practice facility for basketball, expansion of the academic support center, remodeling of the skyboxes, and HuskerVision migrating to HDTV. Nothing we haven't heard before, really. The most interesting revelation is Osborne's philosophy with respect to scheduling, as Osborne says he'd like to avoid scheduling 1-AA opponents. In fact, it sounds like he'd like to toughen up schedules, saying "I’d like to play at least a couple of games from major conferences." I've criticized the Husker scheduling for the next three years, so I'm hoping that we'll see some more competitive schedules starting in 2011.

Today's Omaha World-Herald has more on Sarah Pavan's comments on the Husker volleyball program. Pavan isn't talking to the media anymore (for obvious reasons), but the World-Herald makes it sound like the schism isn't as severe as the Lincoln Journal-Star made it sound.

And just after CornNation started getting all warm and fuzzy about Doc Sadler, the Nebraska basketball team laid a clunker in Stillwater yesterday. Three steps forward, one step back. I still think postseason play would be a heck of a way to finish up this season.

Sam Keller told the Omaha World-Herald that while he expected the NFL to ask about his departure from Arizona State and his injury last season, he was surprised by the questions about the cup incident last spring. Keller knows that he's a late round pick at best, but you've got to wonder if he further hurt his chances by bringing up his love of horse racing in his draft profile.

UNO starts the CCHA playoffs this Thursday night against Alaska. The Mavs went 3-0-1 against the Nanooks during the regular season, so you have to like UNO's chances in the first round. But in those games, UNO had a healthy Bryan Marshall, who's missed the last three weeks with a knee injury. Will he be ready to play?

The World-Herald also salutes some of UNO's most die-hard fans, the "Red Army". I'm not a member, though we do sit a section away for about half the games and join with them in many of their cheers. A good group of fans.

Finally, I know I talked about not bashing Bill Callahan too much, but I couldn't resist this one. A family member showed me an obituary from last week's paper. Ester Eberle passed away a couple of weeks ago in Palm Springs, and her family mentioned her love of the Huskers in the obituary...not to mention a slam at Callahan:
She was especially excited about the Nebraska Cornhuskers football team and was delighted to see that the current coach would be replaced for the upcoming season.
Ouch! I'd say she got in the last word.

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