Calinger: Huskers, Steelers offer similar problem for loyal fan
By J.W. CALINGER
ISL Correspondent
I like to say that my loyalty to my sports teams is a lot like my loyalty to my family and friends. If my friends are having a bad week, I’ll stand by them. If they’re having a rotten year, I’ll stand by them.
Being a friend or a fan means something to me, and the biggest reason I distrust people who hop on and off bandwagons too quickly is that I imagine them ditching their friends the same way when those friends hit a rough patch, and magically re-appearing when those same friends are back to business as usual.
If, on the other hand, friends or family members consistently engages in reckless, self-destructive behavior over a period of years and doesn’t make reasonable efforts to change things, I lose the will to keep supporting them. I’ve been well off in that none of my relatives have been in that sport, but some casual friends have been. In those cases, supporting them brings me down, and doesn’t do them any good – so I break off contact and let them know that if they ever change their attitudes and start rebuilding, I’ll be their friend again. Obviously, I feel the same way about the sports teams I support, except that there isn’t much use letting them know how I feel.
Both my college football team, the Nebraska Cornhuskers, and my NFL team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, are going through some rough patches. The Huskers have been playing poorly on defense; they’ve been gashed by the likes of Wyoming, UCLA and South Dakota State, and they’re won two of those games only because their offense was better than those of their opponents. The Steelers have rushed for less than 200 yards in three games and, this past Sunday, the Chicago Bears’ front four collapsed the pockets regularly and forced quarterback Ben Roethlisberger to fumble twice – one fumble returned for a touchdown – and throw two passes to the other team, one of which the Bears also took all the way back.
As similar as the two present situations appear to be, there’s a difference between them. The Steelers are in a rebuilding year in which the coaches decided to replace all the aging linemen at once and let them gel. The Pittsburgh coaches knew the line would stink in the near future, but decided that this is what had to happen for the team to improve in the long run.
There also are some growing pains because offensive coordinator Todd Haley wants to teach quarterback Ben Roethlisberger some habits he hasn’t had in years, like throwing short timing passes and handing off to running backs – plays that aren’t as thrilling as his scrambling 30-yard passes, but are a valid part of any standard offense. Once the line improves, though, I imagine that Big Ben and Company will be a lot more comfortable, and like me, my fellow fans will like seeing the power running we used to love when Jerome Bettis and Willie Parker were carrying the ball.
The Huskers, on the other hand, have had problems for a number of years. To be sure, Nebraska reached the Big Ten Championship last year, but then, “we” were blown out by a team “we” beat in the regular season. The year before, Wisconsin clobbered the Huskers with the same strategy Nebraska used to perfection in the 1990s, and Ohio State would have killed “us” in Lincoln, had their quarterback not left the game with an injury.
Against the likes of Wyoming and South Dakota State, the front four couldn’t maintain containment, the secondary didn’t vary its coverage against UCLA, and if there were any spies against the running quarterbacks the Huskers faced, I didn’t see them. The offense has done well this year – except for the second half against UCLA – but that could change once Nebraska starts Big Ten competition. Quarterback Taylor Martinez still has poor throwing mechanics, and if Big Ten opponents know he’ll fall back on the zone read, they’ll be able to stop it easily enough.
So, we have one team with problems that the coaches probably will fix by the end of the season, and another team with problems that have been ongoing for a number of years, and that probably will stick around for a while, except for the quarterback situation. On one hand, this puts things into perspective for me as a Steelers fan – we’re having a bad year, and if my friends who cheer for the Colts, the Chiefs and the Lions can handle the abysmal seasons their teams have had in the last decade, I can handle being a Steelers fan in 2013. On the other hand, I’m starting to look very carefully at how much more I can take from the Huskers before I take all my Nebraska gear to the thrift store.
This wouldn’t be the first time I stopped cheering for the Huskers. After a few seasons with Bill Callahan as head coach, with an overly complicated West Coast offense and a defense as porous as the one we have now, I decided that enough was enough. I already had been cheering for Ohio State a little – my father went there and I still have a lot of family in Ohio – so I just started cheering for them full-time. I decided I’d start cheering for Nebraska again when the Huskers started to deserve it.
After Bo Pelini became head coach, and after I moved to Pittsburgh and missed my home, the Huskers started to become special to me again. After Nebraska joined the Big Ten, I made the difficult choice to cheer for the Huskers first – I have lived here nearly all my life, after all. The Huskers showed the attitude and commitment to fundamentals we used to love. And then, it started to unravel, slowly but surely.
Seeing the Huskers now is like seeing a friend finally pull his life together, only to start backsliding. I haven’t taken any T-shirts to the thrift store yet, and I won’t this season, but if the front four don’t learn to contain, the defensive backs don’t learn to cover, and if the coaches remain despite the defenders not learning, I may well end up dusting off my Buckeyes gear, come the start of the 2014 season.
