Nebraska...not feeling Frosty anymore

[Mike]

Gimmicks are not for legendary programs.

Amen! Fortunately, Michigan's victory over ND last year will go down as one of the greatest games in the history of the program, thereby diminishing the clown suits they wore. Had they lost, Michigan would have looked a lot more like Maryland and a lot less like Oregon. (in terms of "getting away with it").

[entropy]

Football-Loving Nebraska Nurtures Baseball Books
By DAVID DAVIS

Published: April 2, 2012

On fall Saturdays, the sold-out football stadium at the University of Nebraska resembles a vast scarlet sea, with 80,000-plus fans cheering for the five-time national champion Cornhuskers.



Nebraska has never won the College World Series, and its most famous former player may be Joba Chamberlain of the Yankees.

Some of the publishing companies books have landed on Baseball America magazine’s top 10 list for 2011, including Volumes 1 and 2 of David Nemec’s “Major League Baseball Profiles, 1871-1900.”

By contrast, Nebraska’s baseball stadium accommodates 8,500 spectators. The team has never won the College World Series, and its most famous former player may be Joba Chamberlain of the Yankees.

But through the university’s nonprofit publishing wing, the pulse of baseball beats strongly in the heart of Cornhusker Nation.

From offices about a mile off campus, in the shadows of the state capitol in Lincoln, the University of Nebraska Press and its imprint, Bison Books, publish four to eight books a year for the hard-core hardball fan. Via its partnership with the Society for American Baseball Research, or SABR, Nebraska also distributes the organization’s wonkish publications, The National Pastime and The Baseball Research Journal.

“We’re a humanities-based academic press that happens to publish scholarly work about baseball,” said Rob Taylor, the Nebraska press’s interim editor in chief. “People sometimes forget that sports is a vibrant part of American history.”

Other university presses, including those at Syracuse and Temple, have long published sports titles. But Nebraska’s baseball focus, with a decided emphasis on the obscure and the offbeat, has won praise. Some of its books landed on Baseball America magazine’s top 10 list for 2011: Volumes 1 and 2 of David Nemec’s “Major League Baseball Profiles, 1871-1900” and “Pitching in the Promised Land: A Story of the First and Only Season in the Israel Baseball League,” by Aaron Pribble.

Titles for spring 2012 include Robert K. Fitts’s “Banzai Babe Ruth,” about the all-star barnstorming tour of Japan in 1934; Chris Lamb’s “Conspiracy of Silence,” about the role of journalists in the desegregation of the major leagues; and the second volume of Norman L. Macht’s biographical trilogy of Manager Connie Mack.

“We published a biography of Joe Cronin,” the former player and executive, Taylor, 42, said. “Most fans don’t comprehend the impact Cronin had on the game beyond his playing days.”

Taylor, who directs the Press’s editorial staff of seven, said print runs for baseball books are in the low thousands, a small number compared with releases from major for-profit publishers. And none of Nebraska’s titles are likely to achieve the best-seller status of books like Jose Canseco’s “Juiced” or Jane Leavy’s 2010 biography of Mickey Mantle, “The Last Boy.” But driven by an alliance with SABR, the Nebraska press has found an appreciative, if niche, audience.

“Nebraska has helped keep the literature alive,” said Jim Gates, the Baseball Hall of Fame librarian, who estimated that 300 to 400 baseball books were published annually. “They’ve become a major source of quality publications on a variety of topics, including history.”

All of which raises the question, how did football-centric Nebraska get its baseball focus? Taylor gave the credit to Daniel Ross, one of his predecessors.

In the early 1990s, Ross began buying the rights to overlooked older gems that trade publishers were dropping. Through Bison Books, Ross resuscitated Eric Rolfe Greenberg’s cult novel “The Celebrant” and Mark Harris’s fiction oeuvre, including “The Southpaw” and “Bang the Drum Slowly.”

Bison republished two compendiums by the New Yorker essayist Roger Angell (“The Summer Game” and “Five Seasons”) and books by the “Boys of Summer” author, Roger Kahn, in addition to Christy Mathewson’s “Pitching in a Pinch” and Sol White’s “History of Colored Baseball.”

Ross “gave new life to classic books,” Taylor said. “All of that baseball history was in danger of disappearing from bookshelves.”

Bison recently issued two collections by the sportswriter turned screenwriter John Schulian: “Twilight of the Long-ball Gods” and “Sometimes They Even Shook Your Hand.” In turn, Schulian urged Taylor to publish a compilation of sports columns written by John Lardner, the son of Ring Lardner.

“Here was a guy that hadn’t been in print for 40 years,” said Schulian, who served as editor for “The John Lardner Reader” in 2010. “Mainstream publishing houses didn’t want anything to do with him. This is the sort of book that university presses exist for — the books that other people back away from.”

After Ross left the house in 2001, Nebraska moved to publish more original titles. That attracted the attention of writers like Fitts, who abandoned a career in anthropology to pursue his passion: Japanese baseball. His first book for Nebraska was a biography of the Japanese-American pioneer Wally Yonamine.

Fitts spent five years researching and writing “Banzai Babe Ruth.”

“Baseball in Japan is a marginal topic in the United States,” Fitts said, “so you know going in that this isn’t about the money. My goal was to produce the best story I could, and Nebraska gave me that opportunity. They take their time and do it right.”

Schulian said, “The books I did with Nebraska were labors of love or labors of ego.”

Perhaps Nebraska’s biggest concern is the future: will the young generation of baseball fans, raised on a steady diet of video games and Facebook, want to read 300-page books about topics as esoteric as the 1897 pennant race and the demise of the Seattle Rainiers?

Taylor, for one, believes that interest for quality baseball literature will never die.

“Baseball is a vehicle to teach about American history,” he said. “It will continue to be a big part of our list.”

As Gates said, “As long as there are writers and publishers, there will be books about baseball.”


A version of this article appeared in print on April 3, 2012, on page B14 of the New York edition with the headline: Nebraska Is Keeping Place for Baseball.

[entropy]

http://bcove.me/azixz83k

TM interview

[entropy]

tom @tkflynn23

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@gerrydinardo Of the spring teams you have seen thus far which team would you say looks the most talented/athletic?






1 Apr Gerry DiNardo @gerrydinardo

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@tkflynn23 So far - Michigan Nebraska

In reply to tom Hide conversation







5:14 PM - 1 Apr 12 via web ? Details

[SeanB]

Tattoo this to the forehead of every spartan fan.

And Dave Brandon's, too, please.

You know it's coming....he'll do it.

[entropy]

By Adam Rittenberg

LINCOLN, Neb. -- As of 2:15 p.m. Tuesday, the door to Tom Osborne's office hadn't been broken down.

That didn't mean Osborne, Nebraska's athletic director and former football coach, wasn't being bombarded with feedback on the team's decision to wear an alternate uniform, which Osborne described Monday as "futuristic," for one home game this coming season. While most Huskers players and adidas reps are thrilled, there's a portion of Big Red Nation that has a different view.

"A lot of people in this state are very traditional," Osborne told ESPN.com. "We're going to try it for one game. ... Some young people and some players and some recruits kind of like it. Probably most of our traditional fans aren't going to be too thrilled."



Tom Osborne and Nebraska have adjusted well to their first season in the Big Ten.
Nebraska is following the trend of alternate uniforms around college football. A new-age team, Oregon, is credited with launching the fad, but tradition-rich programs like Michigan and Ohio State have donned throwback unis in recent years. Michigan State wore a special uniform for its game against Michigan last year.

Nebraska's getup appears to be a nod to the future, but some will undoubtedly see it as a slight to its past.

I tend to agree with ace columnist Tom Shatel on this. It’s fine for one game, as long as Nebraska doesn't go too far (which it won't). Fans don't like to think their program has to follow a trend, but college sports are big business, and for Nebraska, adidas pays a lot of the bills and can call the shots.

While I had to ask Osborne about the unis, I was much more interested to chat with him about bigger-picture topics relating to Nebraska, the Big Ten and college football. The 75-year-old is as sharp as ever and had some interesting thoughts on the state of the game.

Here's some of what Dr. Tom had to say: •Nebraska's first full year in the Big Ten has gone well according to Osborne, who called commissioner Jim Delany's leadership style "very inclusive." He added, " There are always concerns about individual needs, but I see a difference in what we experienced before [in the Big 12] in that people are willing to give a little, sacrifice a little, for the welfare of the whole. That bodes well." He called the Big Ten Network a major asset, particularly for recruiting.
•Osborne likes the idea of playing playoff games either on campuses or in other regions than just the major bowl sites (Miami, New Orleans, Glendale and Pasadena). "It's something that would benefit your fans, and that helps the atmosphere," he said. "And it certainly would help the teams from the northern part of the country.”
•Osborne said the proposal to increase bowl eligibility from six wins to seven wins would be "a step toward trying to eliminate some of the less relevant games." But he added that any type of playoff system, even the current BCS structure, diminishes the bowl system to some degree. Asked about BCS bowl access and the increase of unattractive matchups, he talked about taking the top 10 teams and assigning them to the big bowls, regardless of conference affiliation. "When you tie in conference champions, sometimes you get a conference champion that doesn't have much national appeal and might not have a very good record," he said. "That can throw a team with one loss in with somebody that's got three or four losses. ... I'm in favor of protecting the top 10 ranked teams, irrespective of what conference you're from. That may not play real well with a lot of the conferences, but usually the major conferences are going to have at least one [top 10 team]."
•I asked Osborne about the Nebraska football brand, which was at its peak during his last years as coach in the mid-1990s, when the Huskers claimed three national titles (1994, 1995, 1997). Nebraska is still seen as one of four brand-name programs in the Big Ten -- Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State being the others -- but the team, while winning 38 games the past four seasons, hasn't appeared in a BCS bowl game since the 2001 season. "The thing that enhances [the brand] is winning," Osborne said. "It wouldn't hurt to have a national championship in football or one of our major sports, baseball. We're pretty good in a lot of things. We've won three Big Ten titles so far this year, have a chance to win two or three more this spring. But certainly a championship in football would help us." And how close is Nebraska in football? "They're pretty close," he said. "I think they'll have a good chance next year."
•Osborne is "a little bit" surprised the Big Ten hasn't won a national title in a decade. He talked about the locations of the national title game, all well outside the Big Ten footprint, and talked about how hard it was for Nebraska to beat Miami in the Orange Bowl, the Hurricanes' home stadium (Nebraska went 1-3 in those games). He also talked about how the Big Ten has been stricter than some leagues about oversigning. Asked about the SEC and other conferences trying to rein in oversigning, Osborne said, "There's concern about it. But if you say you can't sign more than 25 but midyear signees don't count, you're still leaving the door open."
•Osborne likes the Big Ten's new partnership with the Pac-12, billed as a brand-strengthening alternative to expansion. He also thinks realignment fever will die down for a bit. "The time where major disruption can occur is when you have television contracts are up for renewal," he said. "That's when people can start looking toward greener pastures sometimes. So we'll see how things turn out over the next two, three, four years."
•Osborne also weighed in on Nebraska coach Bo Pelini and his development in the role. Pelini is 39-16 at Nebraska. "Sometimes people point out a specific event on the sideline or something, but he has matured in terms of his sideline demeanor," Osborne said. "He's always been well-respected by the players. They seem to like to play for him. Of course he's an excellent defensive coach. He understands offense from the standpoint of defense, which is a good way to understand it."

[entropy]

Randy York

More than likely, Rich Fisher will survey the crowd and talk mostly about his players when Nebraska’s second-year wide receivers coach addresses the monthly Huskers Athletics Fund Luncheon Friday at Lincoln’s Downtown Embassy Suites Hotel.

Whatever Fisher communicates will be insightful, but it probably won’t cover his life story, and that’s unfortunate. To appreciate how a one-time Colorado Buffalo linebacker, whose team won one national championship and came close to another, ended up at Nebraska, we go all the way back to Fisher growing up on a small farm near Williamsburg, Kansas.

“When you look at where I started and where I am now, I have to say I had a pretty unique childhood growing up,” Fisher said. “I was the product of a divorced family, and I was in rural Kansas until I was about 10 years old.”

He remembers getting up early and doing farm chores before catching the bus to school. “I was feeding the pigs, giving hay to the horses and getting eggs out of the chicken coop,” Fisher recalled. “It’s kind of funny. I was with my mom on the farm before going to live with my dad. He and his whole family come from a military background, so I went immediately from that rural environment to a very strict military environment. I got planted in Tulsa for a while and ended up in Houston.”

Going from the farm to living in America’s fourth largest city behind New York, LA and Chicago would be a tough transition for anyone, but looking back, Fisher sees how the experience helped him learn the value of hard work and accountability at a very young age – traits that were critical in Bo Pelini hiring him. “When you’re in charge of livestock, it teaches you a certain amount of discipline, even when you’re very young,” Fisher said. “I didn’t realize it at the time, but it laid the foundation for what I was to become.”

The Impact of Sports Was Chapter Two

After attending four elementary schools, Fisher was ready to write the next chapter in his life – immersing himself into the full-measure impact of sports. “Once I started playing organized sports, my background allowed me to be a good team player, and at the same time, use the values I had – hard work, teamwork, dedication, commitment ... all of those things kind of came naturally for me. Like most young kids, I fell in love with sports, but most kids my age hadn’t been exposed to the kind of experiences I had.”

When his dad kept a promise allowing him to spend all four years at the same high school, Fisher excelled enough to earn a scholarship at Colorado. He could not have arrived at a more opportune time, lettering in 1989-90-91-92. “My first two years there were arguably the best time in the history of the program,” Fisher said. “We went 22-1, won one national championship and two Big Eight titles.

“It is funny how people always talked about the Nebraska-Colorado rivalry,” Fisher said. “Rivalries happen because of the competitive nature of two programs and the way they go back and forth. At CU, we wanted to create a rivalry with Nebraska, but Nebraska didn’t look at us that way because Colorado never beat Nebraska. Once the tide started to turn there for a span, the series became a lot more critical and took on a lot more meaning than it had in previous years.

“There’s no doubt that Nebraska was the king of the class and the benchmark for what we wanted to become,” Fisher said. “Now that we’re in separate conferences, that rivalry is kind of broken apart. But I can tell you this. The Colorado family has always respected what the Huskers were about – the legacy and the winning tradition – because we wanted to become what the Huskers already were.”

Pelini almost hired Fisher as his linebacker coach when Bo became Frank Solich’s defensive coordinator in 2003. “Bo and I have known each other for 15 years,” Fisher said. “When he coached (ex-Buff) Ted Johnson with the New England Patriots, we immediately hit it off. He was a lifeline to call and talk football when I got out of coaching. Our families became close. We always talked about the opportunity to work together, but the timing was never right for whatever reason. I believe God has a plan for your mission in life. Fortunately, I was much more prepared to take this job in 2011 than I was in 2003.”

Nebraska Embraced Ex-Buff McBride

Fisher is well aware that Charlie McBride, another former Colorado football player, became a legendary coach at Nebraska, where he enjoyed a long and distinguished career as Tom Osborne’s defensive coordinator.

“It’s kind of ironic now being here on the inside and seeing and feeling all the support that comes with the Nebraska fan base. This really is a special place,” Fisher said. “When you see it on the outside like I did playing at Colorado and then coaching at Oklahoma State and Idaho, you know that there is no place – and I mean no place – like this place in terms of the backing the program gets, the expectations the program has and the support of the administration and all the fans. Once you get here and see everything on the inside, you know why this whole state rallies around this football program. This season will be 50 consecutive years of home-game sellouts ... unbelievable ... truly unbelievable.”

[Paul L]

Hey Ent-

There's a 'Speaker Entropy' on the Audioholics site (from KC); that you by chance?

[entropy]

Nope

[entropy]

LJS

A messy locker room greeted Tim Miles for Friday's 7 a.m. workout.

The new Nebraska men's basketball coach evidently prefers a tidy environment; hence, some wind sprints ensued.

And then some bickering.

Miles, sharing the story with about 300 people at Friday's Husker Athletic Fund luncheon in Lincoln, didn't hear the exact words of one player's complaint.

But he heard enough.

"I just said, ‘How old are you?' I said I've been a head coach, this is going to be my 18th year, and you're 21? So your mom was changing your diaper when I started head coaching," Miles said.

"Just remember that. Don't tell me how to coach, don't come up with any good ideas because I've already been there. If you want some Wet Ones, we'll get you over there in the corner."

The crowd laughed.

"He quit talking," Miles said.

Hey, nobody said the transition phase to a new coach would be seamless.

Miles called it the vetting process.

"I want guys who are committed to Nebraska," said Miles, who was hired two weeks ago. "I want guys that when they walk into the locker room, they're connected to their teammates, they're connected to our fan base, they're connected to our coaching staff and they really want to be here.

"I want them to bleed red. Not everybody does that. Not everybody can warm up to that. Not everybody can warm up to me that way."

Miles has already granted Jorge Brian Diaz and Josiah Moore their requests for a scholarship release. He freed two junior college recruits from their signed letters of intent. And he won't rule out more attrition.

"If we have a little more, that's going to be fine," Miles said. "But we're going to get the right kind of guys. It's going to be a process for us, but I think you'll see immediate change."

Miles will be on the road recruiting this weekend. He'll have at least four and possibly as many as six scholarship openings for next season. The spring signing period begins Wednesday.

Miles said he's looking for assertive, self-starters "who want to be something," and who can be held academically accountable.

"When I go out to recruit a player, I simply say, ‘Can I sit down and have dinner with them and have a reasonable conversation?' Is this a guy I want to deal with? It starts that simply," Miles said.

"I want guys that are commendable citizens who are held to a higher standard. Guys who want to be leaders. I don't want a guy who's an exception to the rule the entire time. I don't want a guy who needs something. Needy doesn't work for me."

Briefly

*Miles said 6-foot-11 senior Andre Almeida, who redshirted last season while recovering from knee surgery, is "as slender as he's ever been at Nebraska." Almeida weighs 330 pounds, and wants to be at 310. He's weighed as much as 360.

"His heart's in the right place," Miles said. "He's trying. He cares. They don't all care, but he does."

*Nebraska recruit Benny Parker was the recipient Thursday night of the DiRenna Award, presented annually to the top basketball players in the Kansas City metro area. Parker, a point guard at Sumner Academy, averaged 24.8 points, 6.2 assists and 3.9 steals this season.

Miles also recruited Parker at Colorado State.

"I like him. He's small," Miles said. "I mean, he's small — 5-8, 5-9. He's going to list out at something that he's not. But he's fast. I like him. He's got a great personality, and he's really excited to be here."

Fellow Husker signee Shavon Shields of Olathe Northwest was also a finalist for the DiRenna Award.

*Miles said he needs "to do more thinking" about completing the upcoming season's nonconference schedule, which already has Oregon, USC, Creighton and an opponent to be named in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge.

"I may soften up the schedule for a season," he said. "You may not like it, but deal with it now."

In the future, Miles said he wants a nonconference schedule that will put Nebraska in position for an at-large NCAA Tournament berth.

[entropy]

Nebraskas baseball team is on a slide... Just too many errors leading to runs. UNL is losing theses games, they are handing them away.

[lineygoblue]

Michigan baseball is overall 14-16, with a 1-3 conference record. But they did beat MSU last night in Ann Arbor 4-0.

[entropy]

Against NW UNL had 8 errors in on game... I think the saturday game. The poor hitting hasn't allowed them to overcome the problems, but giving away unearned runs that end up wining games is not a good sign. Three BIG games in a row that has happened...

[entropy]

In the loss to Iowa Friday night, UNL had a 3-0 lead, then gave up a four run inning... Only 1 of which was earned. The rest were on errors. The infield errors have been bad.

[entropy]

Another Saturday brought with it another scrimmage.

It was apparently time well spent. The scrimmage lasted a little more than 100 plays and earned the seal of approval from Bo Pelini.

"It was a good go today," the Husker coach said.

His players apparently thought so.

"Blackshirts looked good today," tweeted defensive end Cameron Meredith.

"If today's practice was any indication of what's to come, the spring game is gonna be quite the show," tweeted wide receiver Kenny Bell.

Nebraska spent the first hour of practice going through drills before spending roughly the next 90 minutes scrimmaging.

The scrimmage featured a lot of "mixing and matching" of players, Pelini said, with no defined depth chart at this point in the spring.

"It's not about having 1s and 2s and 3s and all that. We're trying to get guys reps and get guys better individually. Obviously it's a team game, we're trying to work together, but sometimes it's hard to evaluate where you are as a unit is concerned because we're not really playing that way right now."

That said, the guy who figures to be the No. 1 quarterback was said to have another good day, according to Pelini. The coach highlighted Taylor Martinez's first drive of the scrimmage as an example.

"He's been sharp," Pelini said. "He's throwing the football well. I think he has a lot better understanding of how to use the system, so that's where we're heading. I think he's playing good football for us now."

Resting Rex: One guy who didn't see much action for the second straight Saturday scrimmage was senior Rex Burkhead, though the running back did get his work in during the first hour of the practice.

Coaches figure they know what Burkhead can do at this point and continue to be careful to not put too many extra miles on the running back this spring, given that he's coming off a season in which he carried 284 times.

That was 193 more carries than Ameer Abdullah, Aaron Green and Braylon Heard (now a cornerback) had combined as true freshmen last season.

Both Bo Pelini and Tim Beck have talked about the want to lessen the workload on Burkhead this year, especially as Abdullah and Green show growth at the position.

"With Rex it's hard because he wants to be out there all the time," Pelini said. "But we had two true freshmen backing him up last year, but now those guys have developed and are a lot further along than they were. So I think we're going to be able to obviously take a significant amount off his shoulders."

No draft: Pelini said Nebraska probably won't use a player draft to pick the teams for next Saturday's Red-White Scrimmage. In recent years, Pelini has had a few selected players help choose the sides for the scrimmage.

Pelini said he'd like to have a draft, but "we got to see where we're at numbers-wise," he said. "It's going to be a little bit hairy at a couple spots because of lack of depth, especially up front."

The coach said he'd probably formulate his plan for teams mid-week.

"We want to put on a good show for the fans and all that, and that's important to us," Pelini said. "We're probably going to have to have a couple of guys in a few spots who are going to have to wear some vests and play on both teams. For the most part we're in pretty good shape, just a couple of positions. But you deal with that every year."

No exhibitions, please: Clemson coach Dabo Swinney has said he likes the idea of being able to scrimmage an opposing team during the spring.

When asked about the idea, Pelini said he hasn't really thought or heard anything about the idea.

"But off the top of my head, no, that isn't something I'd be real fond of," he said. "There's a lot of risk involved in that."

Finding the right ratio: Nebraska ran the football on 67 percent of its plays last season, but Pelini expects the Huskers to work its way closer to a 50-50 balance in 2012.

"There's a lot of different facets to it," he said. "But we went back and looked at it in the offseason. I think Tim (Beck) at times maybe wasn't as aggressive in the passing game as he would have liked to. Sometimes you get stubborn or whatever, or what the situation of a game dictates. That's something we talked about and evaluated in the offseason. You evaluate it and hopefully you grow from it."

Still, even when running it 67 percent of the time, Pelini felt the offense kept defenses guessing for the most part.

"That's one thing this offense isn't, is predictable," he said.

Uniform talk: About the alternate uniforms, Pelini said, "You know, there's been discussion about that. I don't think anything's been decided there — when it's going to happen, how it's going to be, all that. I think time will tell on that."

Center of attention: About the battle at center between Cole Pensick, Justin Jackson and Mark Pelini, Bo said Pensick has the advantage in what's been a good competition.

"But like I said going in, we have three pretty good centers who are playing good football right now," he said. "All three guys can play winning football for us and we feel real good about it."