Our facilities are not even the best of the West, we are 8-16 over the past two seasons, UNL is not a great school academically (which matters to some recruits), and high school football in Omaha no longer produces running backs as of old. Those are the negatives.
On the positive side, we have a great coaching staff who know how to recruit. We have a great fan base and tradition. Lincoln is whitebread boring, but is a bigger and nicer city than most recruits expect.
So things are kind of a wash and a bit in limbo. Winning changes everything. We really, really need to have a rock solid season with wins over teams like Wisconsin, Iowa, Northwestern and Minnesota. I also think beating CU is critical this year. I think we will. But we need to go into the OSU game at 4-0.
I agree our recruiting is worrisome so far. But it is a marathon and not a sprint. Win and they will come. Personally, I think we need to do better than 8-4. I will be disappointed if we do worse than 10-2. All of the pundits are high on us right now. The high expectations are because of last year’s finish and Frost’s second year at UCF. But if we go 8-4 the gild will be off of the Frost lily, at least with regard to fast turnarounds like UCF.
I know our program was in a shambles after Riley. I know Frost is building a program for the long haul. I am patient in that regard. But I think also that Frost damn well understands how important it is to win THIS year. He has said as much and you can just tell he has a sense of urgency and a fire in his belly. He knows he has a really special QB.
We need to win. And pull off some statement game upsets.
GBR