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About those Huskers
Mar. 21st, 2008 06:03 pmAs a response to my post on the anti-comfort zone meme, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cassandra_e asked "How about those Huskers?"
Since non-Nebraskans will probably not get the reference, 'those Huskers' are the Nebraska Cornhuskers, the (American) football team of the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and the Pride of Nebraskans Everywhere. (Not so much for me, I'll admit, but I'll get to that in a moment.) Nebraska has no professional baseball, football or basketball teams (the Omaha Royals, who are the farm team for the Kansas City Royals is as close as it comes), and since UNL is a state university lots of people have a feeling of connection to it, and so the Huskers are a Big Thing in Nebraska. Huskermania isn't a religion--it's far more ubiquitous than that. Last fall the University's Athletic Director was fired by UNL's Board of Regents (ostensibly because of concerns over his 'management style', but mostly because the Huskers were losing really, really badly) and the Lincoln Journal-Star had a 4-inch banner headline about it in next morning's paper. As did the Omaha World-Herald. I'm pretty sure the declaration of war on Iraq got a smaller typeface.
I don't follow the Huskers myself, for no earth-shaking reasons. I grew up in a football-loving household, and I read the sports page (along with everything else) on Sunday morning, but I fell out of it. Part of it is probably resistance to change--at some point the Big 8, the conference the Huskers played in, turned into the Big R (where R is some Rediculosly big integer), and I started to not care. I'm not anti-Husker, but an-Husker, if you will.
But I still live here, which means I still have the background radiation of Husker information in my brain. Hence the humor ofcassandra_e's question, because I can generate an answer to it without having any conscious information available. And she knows it, because she too is a Nebraskan.
cassandra_e asked "How about those Huskers?"Since non-Nebraskans will probably not get the reference, 'those Huskers' are the Nebraska Cornhuskers, the (American) football team of the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and the Pride of Nebraskans Everywhere. (Not so much for me, I'll admit, but I'll get to that in a moment.) Nebraska has no professional baseball, football or basketball teams (the Omaha Royals, who are the farm team for the Kansas City Royals is as close as it comes), and since UNL is a state university lots of people have a feeling of connection to it, and so the Huskers are a Big Thing in Nebraska. Huskermania isn't a religion--it's far more ubiquitous than that. Last fall the University's Athletic Director was fired by UNL's Board of Regents (ostensibly because of concerns over his 'management style', but mostly because the Huskers were losing really, really badly) and the Lincoln Journal-Star had a 4-inch banner headline about it in next morning's paper. As did the Omaha World-Herald. I'm pretty sure the declaration of war on Iraq got a smaller typeface.
I don't follow the Huskers myself, for no earth-shaking reasons. I grew up in a football-loving household, and I read the sports page (along with everything else) on Sunday morning, but I fell out of it. Part of it is probably resistance to change--at some point the Big 8, the conference the Huskers played in, turned into the Big R (where R is some Rediculosly big integer), and I started to not care. I'm not anti-Husker, but an-Husker, if you will.
But I still live here, which means I still have the background radiation of Husker information in my brain. Hence the humor of
cassandra_e's question, because I can generate an answer to it without having any conscious information available. And she knows it, because she too is a Nebraskan. 
