Nebraska...not feeling Frosty anymore

[entropy]

http://sports.omaha.com/2013/06/27/nebraska-researching-wi-fi-options-for-fans-at-memorial-stadium/

UNL researching wifi options at memorial stadium.

[entropy]

from ESPN:

The 2013 season will be upon us before you know it -- just nine weeks until our first football weekend, people! With that in mind, we're offering you a primer on each Big Ten team's nonconference opponents.

Let's take a look at Nebraska's non-league schedule:

Wyoming, Aug. 31

Coach: Dave Christensen (22-27), fifth year
2012 record: 4-8, 3-5 Mountain West

Offensive headliner: Quarterback Brett Smith was banged up last year and missed two games, but he threw 14 touchdowns and no interceptions in his final five contests. Now healthy, Smith -- who finished last season ranked 11th in the FBS in quarterback efficiency -- can also be a threat running the ball.

Defensive headliner: Junior cornerback Blair Burns was fourth on the team in tackles (60) last season, returned an interception 99 yards for a score against Colorado State and had 10 pass breakups.

The skinny: The Cowboys have a chance to score some points this year behind a healthy Smith and with Christensen assuming playcalling duties. But a defense that ranked 117th last year in rushing needs some serious improvement, and that number is pretty scary going against Nebraska.


Southern Miss, Sept. 7

Coach: Todd Monken, first year
2012 record: 0-12, 0-8 Conference USA

Offensive headliner: No one, really. The Golden Eagles were terrible on offense last year and saw their top two QBs transfer. Receiver Dominique Sullivan (19 receptions for 331 yards in '12) might benefit from Monken's spread offense.

Defensive headliner: Senior linebacker Alan Howze was second on the team with 66 tackles last year, but Southern Miss will have a hard time replacing Jamie Collins, who had 92 tackles, 10 sacks and 20 TFLs as a senior in 2012.

The skinny: Southern Miss somehow went from 12-2 in 2011 to the only winless team in the FBS last season, prompting the school to fire Ellis Johnson after just one year as head coach. Monken, the former Oklahoma State coordinator, will try to put the pieces back together. Nebraska beat the Golden Eagles 49-20 in last year's opener.


UCLA, Sept. 14

Coach: Jim Mora (9-5), second year
2012 record: 9-5, 6-3 Pac-12

Offensive headliner: QB Brett Hundley passed for 3,745 yards and 29 touchdowns last year as a freshman. That included a 305-yard, four-touchdown, no-interception performance in the 36-30 win over the Huskers at the Rose Bowl in September.

Defensive headliner: Anthony Barr had a whopping 21.5 tackles for loss and 13.5 sacks from his linebacker spot a year ago, putting him in the top 12 nationally in both categories. With him, Eric Kendricks and Jordan Zumwalt, the Bruins are well stocked at linebacker.
The skinny: The Bruins made a surprising run to the Pac-12 title game last year and still have some firepower. But they return just six starters on both sides of the ball and will have to find a replacement for one of the country's top tailbacks in Johnathan Franklin.


South Dakota State, Sept. 21

Coach: John Stiegelmeier (102-75), 16th year
2012 record: 9-4, 6-2 Missouri Valley (FCS)

Offensive headliner: Junior running back Zach Zenner led all of Division I in rushing last season with 2,044 yards (6.8 yards per carry) and 13 touchdowns. The Minnesota native also had 28 receptions for 197 yards.

Defensive headliner: Senior defensive lineman Doug Peete led the team with 13.5 tackles for loss and added six sacks, with six pass breakups and two forced fumbles.

The skinny: The Jackrabbits won their first-ever FCS playoff game last season before being eliminated by eventual champion North Dakota State. Athlon ranks SDSU No. 10 in its preseason FCS poll.



Thoughts:

To oversimplify things, the UCLA game is the key to the first two months of the season for the Huskers. Win that one, and there's a very real possibility that Nebraska will be 7-0 heading into its Nov. 2 game against Northwestern.

Of course, the Bruins offense gave Bo Pelini's team all kinds of fits last season, and Pelini's green defense had better make great strides in the first two games to get ready for the challenge. It helps, of course, that the game is in Lincoln. In fact, Nebraska will play all four nonconference games at home, giving its young players some time to get their feet wet.

Southern Miss figures to be improved -- the Golden Eagles can't be any worse than a year ago -- but still has a bunch of question marks. Wyoming hasn't competed very well in its own league in recent years and shouldn't pose much of a problem. South Dakota State could be an interesting trap game, coming a week after the UCLA showdown. But Nebraska figures to have too much talent to lose to an FCS squad, even one of the best ones in that division.

[entropy]

[lineygoblue]

I like that!

It should be done.

[Wild Hoss]

I thought it was already a done deal that Denard Robinson was on the cover this year?

[THE_WIZARD_]

Just his hair.

[Optimus Prime]

There's been a lot of great ones...I don't think there's been one that accomplished more with less than Osborne did. I believe that applies nationally as well.

Correct me if I am wrong but "TO" never coached a single down as a B1G coach?

For that matter, Neither of them.

[entropy]

A review of the 5 preseason mags..

http://www.omaha.com/article/20130629/HUSKERS/706299871

[Wild Hoss]

Correct me if I am wrong but "TO" never coached a single down as a B1G coach?

For that matter, Neither of them.

Take it up with Dennis.

[entropy]

blast from the past....

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A Diamond In Orange County
Apr 1, 2001 8:00 PM EDT
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Tempe, Ariz.--Out here where the desert sun almost makes the dry air crinkle like cellophane, the best baseball player you know next to nothing about is preparing for his fourth full season. His team does its spring training in Diablo Stadium. That figures. The Angels have had a diabolical history.

Born in 1961--22 managers ago--the Los Angeles, then California, now Anaheim Angels are one of only six teams (with Detroit, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Montreal and Tampa Bay) that have not even made the playoffs in the last 13 seasons. They have never been to a World Series. They were one pitch away in 1986, but the pitch became a two-out, two-strike, two-run Red Sox home run.

It sometimes seems as though the Angels play 162 road games because scads of people who come to their 81 home games in Orange County, home of transplants, used to live where the visiting team is from, and they root for it. Last summer, when the Angels were doing well enough to dream of playing in October, an Angels official wistfully wondered, "If we win the World Series, where do we have our victory parade?" Good question. What is Orange County's downtown? Disneyland?

Darin Erstad, 26-year-old centerfielder, is determined to make the victory parade a more than hypothetical problem. Last year he produced a number--240 hits--that should have seized the attention of numbers-obsessed baseball fans. Even those mellow Southern Californians who trickle in around the third inning and in the seventh begin heading for the parking lot. Only 11 players in the 20th century got at least 240 hits in a season. Three of those (Bill Terry, Chuck Klein and Babe Herman) did so in the notoriously aberrant season of 1930, when the juiced ball produced absurd numbers. (Nine teams batted over .300.) Since 1930 only two players have accumulated at least 240 hits--Wade Boggs in 1985 and Erstad. To reach George Sisler's season record of 257, set in 1920, Erstad would have to hit .367 in 700 at-bats. In 2000 he hit .355 in 676 at-bats.

On opening night last year he went three for four against the Yankees. He reached base safely in each of his first 27 games. He set a major league record with 48 hits in April. He got his 100th hit in his 61st game, the fastest spring to 100 since (you probably knew this) Heinie Manush of the 1934 Senators. He reached 200 hits in fewer games (132) than anyone since, as you recall, Joe Medwick of the 1935 Cardinals. He became the first lead-off man ever to have 100 RBIs. Think about that. In every game, the first time he batted there was no one on base to drive in. He had more three- and four-hit games (30) than no-hit games (29).

Baseball people torture numbers imaginatively. Divide a player's number of putouts and assists by his number of defensive chances. Erstad's result: .953, highest among major league outfielders. He committed three errors in 362 chances. His defensive excellence won him a Gold Glove.

So, he had a crackerjack year. Trouble is, he had it in Orange County, so who knew? A well-brought-up young man, he politely says, "I'm playing big league baseball. I don't care where I'm playing." He wants to play in October, so he has spent the winter further fine-tuning his 6 feet 2 and 200 pounds. He has reduced his body fat from 8.5 percent to 7 percent. You do not want to know yours.

He has the reddish-blond hair of the Scandinavians who settled the northern plains. He is a descendant of Vikings, playing on the shores of the sundown sea--the Pacific. Which he is not. Pacific, that is.

Not until the late 1980s did sunny California supplant Pennsylvania as the state that had produced the most major leaguers. (California's climate provides abundant opportunities for athletes to be athletic; for decades Pennsylvania provided players with an incentive--escape from the mines and dark satanic mills.) Erstad is only the 12th major leaguer born in North Dakota. In high school Erstad was an all-state selection in football, hockey and track. Not in baseball. His high school had no baseball team.

At the University of Nebraska he was punter and kicker on the 1994 national championship team. His coach (now congressman) Tom Osborne remembers his "intensity." His teammates mention the same thing. The Angels' hitting coach, Mickey Hatcher, thinks Erstad resembles one of Hatcher's teammates on the 1988 world champion Dodgers--that year's MVP, Kirk Gibson, former Michigan State football player. Erstad's "focus" (baseballspeak for monomania) energizes but also worries those around him who doubt that you can play a 162-game season with the ferocity that adrenaline-crazed football players bring to 16 games.

The Baltimore Orioles' Hall of Fame manager Earl Weaver used to say, "This ain't a football game--we do this every day." Another baseball axiom: "You can't play the game with your teeth gritted." Erstad does, at least figuratively speaking. When manager Mike Scioscia (another former Dodger trying to assert a new baseball supremacy in California's Southland) gets to Diablo Stadium, sometimes before 7 a.m., Erstad is there.

Fifty years ago, the 798 square miles of sleepy Orange County were planted thick not with people (population was 280,000) but with orange groves. Today it is a teeming (population more than 3 million), polyglot (26 percent Hispanic, 12 percent Asian and Pacific Islander) monument to American mobility and immigration. Thirty-three percent of the population was born outside of California, 24 percent outside the United States. Two years ago the four most common surnames of Orange County home buyers were Nguyen, Kim, Lee and Tran.

The county is full of centrifugal forces. It needs a center--if not a geographic one, an emotional one. Perhaps it could be touched by an Angel. A Norwegian-American from North Dakota cheered on by Nguyens in the bleachers. Only in America.



Few news columnists are as erudite, opinionated, controversial and widely read as Pulitzer Prize-winning writer George F. Will. A Newsweek Contributing Editor since 1976, Will produces a back page column addressing diverse topics from politics to baseball.

[Wild Hoss]

He caught a pass for a 2-point conversion against somebody in 1994. Snap got botched, and he took off upfield. John Vedral picked up the ball and flung it as he was being brought down, and Erstad made a perfect over-the-shoulder catch in the end zone.

[entropy]

Craig Smith says they're scouring the country for a big man, or 2, to bring in. I think we're open to JUCO's, transfers or undergrads. That's our focus.

************

http://www.omaha.com/article/20130701/HUSKERS/707019894/1002#husker-hoops-assistants-make-combined-636-000

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[entropy]

I doubt he'll be allowed to enroll while facing felony charges. Even if he did beat up a Coloradoan, which should get him on scholarship....

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A Colorado judge on Monday set an arraignment date for a potential Husker football transfer facing charges in connection to the beating of a 22-year-old in May.

Alex Lewis now is set to return to court July 26, following Monday's preliminary hearing, according to a clerk at the Boulder County Combined Court.

Prosecutors charged him with second-degree assault and two misdemeanor counts of harassment for a May 11 fight.

Colorado quarterback Jordan Webb, who is facing a second-degree assault charge for the same fight, was in court Monday, too, and given an Aug. 2 arraignment date.

According to a report from the Boulder Police Department, witnesses say Lewis and Webb left another man "disoriented and unaware of his surroundings" after the early-morning fight.

Witnesses told police that Lewis pushed the man into a brick wall multiple times, then both players started to punch him and throw him to the ground. Lewis also allegedly pushed away a female witness who tried to step in.

Both men are free on $10,000 bonds.





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[entropy]

21 hours ago ? By DARNELL DICKSON / Lincoln Journal Star
(1) Comments

The post-college career life of a former Nebraska football player, by J.B. Phillips? own admission, isn?t overly exciting.

Phillips, a blocking tight end for the Huskers from 2004-2007, earned his master's degree in business administration and sells medical devices for Nuvasive in Omaha. He married former Nebraska soccer player Jacy Wicker and they have a 2?-year-old son, Landry. Phillips also helps out coaching football at Yutan High School.

And he plays golf.

?I?m not a pro, and I realize that,? he said. ?I don?t hold myself to a professional standard.?

Phillips grew up playing golf in Texas ? not competitively, but for fun. In high school, he worked at Texas Star Golf Course in Euless. His father is a retired airline pilot and a marshal at Bear Creek Golf Course near Dallas.

At 6-foot-5, Phillips still looks like he could play college football. At his size, finding clubs that fit his swing can be difficult.

His love of golf has led him to an opportunity to live the high life of a professional golfer, at least for the summer. Phillips is one of 12 amateur golfers around the country selected as a winner in the ?Play Famously? contest, a campaign cooked up by athletic supplier Mizuno Golf.

?It was an unexpected surprise,? Phillips said. ?I heard about the contest and went to the website. I filled out the form halfway then I stopped. I thought, ?It?s not like I?m going to win this thing.? But I came back the next day and filled out the rest of the form.?

The form included an essay explaining why he deserved to be one of the winners. Phillips wrote that he had played sports collegiately but not that he was a former Nebraska tight end.

He soon got a phone call telling him he was one of the 12 golfers selected from thousands of entries.

The "Play Famously" campaign is described by Mizuno as a way to ?build the company's momentum in the game-improvement category by championing the legions of recreational golfers who support the golf industry through their passion for the game and meticulous quest to improve.?

What did Phillips win? Golf lessons from PGA master instructor Dr. Gary Wiren and Mizuno gear, including apparel and a set of custom-fit golf clubs. Mizuno employees flew to Omaha so they could measure Phillips for the fitted clubs.

?They wined and dined me,? Phillips said.

Here are some highlights from his bio page on the Mizuno site "playfamously.com":

? Phillips won?t say what ?J.B.? stands for.

? He?s naturally left-handed but switched when his grandfather bought him a right-handed set of clubs.

? He once took second place in a par-three tournament with his father-in-law.

? His best round is an 83.

? Hits his 6-iron 190-195 yards.

He looks like a pro and has professional equipment. He takes razzing from his golf buddies about his newfound fame in stride.

But have the new clubs helped Phillips? game?

?Truthfully, I really didn?t fathom how much getting custom clubs would affect my golf game,? Phillips said. ?I can swing more naturally instead of trying to adjust my swing to a shorter club. The other thing is that if I show up to a golf course with custom clubs and Mizuno gear, at least I need to play decently. I?m sure people notice. The last thing I want to do is duff a shot, so there?s a little more pressure.?

He also has an opportunity to compete in a tournament against the other ?Play Famously? winners at Country Club of the South in Atlanta in September. He?s a little anxious, because he figures some of the other golfers might be much better than they let on.

Phillips is a competitor, but he plays golf to relax. So that?s how he?s going to approach the event in Atlanta.

?I?m going to bring my dad, my father-in-law, my wife. ? We want to make it a weekend and just enjoy it,? Phillips said.

[entropy]

New Nebraska research center to study concussions
By ERIC OLSON

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) ? If all goes according to Dennis Molfese's plan, the day is coming when a football player who takes a hit to the head will come to the sideline, take off his helmet and slip on an electrode-covered mesh cap.

The team's medical staff will analyze the player's brain waves on the spot and determine within minutes whether he can safely return to the game or whether he has sustained a concussion and, if so, how severe.

Putting the finishing touches on that device is among the projects planned in the University of Nebraska's Center for Brain, Biology and Behavior, which opens this month in Memorial Stadium's newly expanded east side.

CB3, as it's called, is housed in the same $55 million structure that holds 38 luxury suites and an additional 6,000 seats for the football stadium. The center is one of a number university-affiliated research centers across the nation looking for better ways to diagnose and treat traumatic head injuries and make football and other sports safer.

"There has been great concussion research that's been going on for decades," said Molfese, the CB3 director. "It's disconcerting to realize just how little we really know."

Tom Osborne, Nebraska's retired football coach and athletic director, said CB3 and the adjoining Athletic Performance Lab fit his vision for what he wanted to include in the stadium expansion.

The project was one of Osborne's major initiatives in his five years as athletic director. Osborne envisioned a collaboration of the athletic and academic sides of the university. So while athletes participate in concussion studies, political science researchers might use CB3's brain-scanning technology to see if they can figure out why some people lean conservative and others liberal.

Concussions have become one of the top concerns in sports in recent years after prominent brain injuries and disease in former NFL players, driven in part by some high-profile suicides. Thousands of former players are suing the league, saying that for years the NFL did not do enough to protect players from concussions. The NCAA also is addressing the issue.

"There are a lot of things that are very important with the NCAA as far as the health and safety of the student-athlete," NCAA chief medical officer Brian Hainline said, "and concussion is right up there as first and foremost. It's the elephant on the table, and we, with everyone else, we have to solve it."

There are about 300,000 sports-related concussions reported in the United States annually, and hundreds of millions of dollars have been funneled into research, with much of the funding going to universities.

Nebraska recruited the 67-year-old Molfese away from the University of Louisville, giving him virtual carte blanche in the design and equipping of CB3.

Molfese is among 14 experts serving on the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine Committee on Sports-Related Concussions in Youth, which will report to Congress and President Barack Obama on brain injuries in children and young adults. He also heads a Big Ten-Ivy League partnership studying brain injuries in sports.

Nebraska's brain center is connected by a 100-foot skywalk to the new Athletic Performance Lab, which will research, among other things, injury prevention and high-tech ways to maximize performance of athletes. CB3 and the performance lab will partner on some projects.

CB3's main attraction is a type of magnetic resonance imaging machine, known as a functional MRI, that tracks the brain's blood flow. It's hoped the $3 million scanner helps in the effort to better define what is and is not a concussion.

"There's no question it's going to move the dial forward," the NCAA's Hainline said. "The big, hoped-for dream would be, let's have a biomarker in brain imaging. If you're to the left of that, you're safe; if you're to the right of it, you're not. That's probably a few years out. But functional brain imaging and blood flow are going to be a very important part of that."

The MRI machine also can be used on game days to assess injuries of all kinds.

Molfese said the sideline concussion assessment tool would be the first of what he hopes are many groundbreaking developments to come out of CB3. The device would allow medical personnel to go beyond the standard practice of asking the injured athlete questions and judge, based on his or her answers, whether it's safe for him or her to return to a game.

If a linebacker took a hit to the head, he would come to the sideline and have an electrode net placed over his head. Battery-powered brain-recording equipment would measure the player's responses to stimuli.

"We can get an idea of what area of the brain is being involved in the process, whether the speed of processing is at the rate it should be," Molfese said. "The different areas of the brain that normally integrate information quickly stop doing that, so that's another way we should be able to pick up whether there is an injury or not."

Molfese said the device eventually could be used in hospitals to screen patients for head injuries.

"It would be routine," he said, "and they'd know within 10 minutes."

Osborne said he's fascinated by the possibilities. He said suspected concussions were dealt with the same way throughout his football coaching career. The athletic trainer would hold up two or three fingers in front of the woozy player's face as he came off the field and ask him how many.

"If you could come close," Osborne said, "they'd put you back in. That wasn't very effective."




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