Andre Agassi shocked the world in 1992 when he won his first Grand Slam title at Wimbledon on the grass surface he hated and wasn’t built for, dressed all in white. Andre, after all, lived by the creed of “Image is everything” according to his commercials and lifestyle. In the years following he hit rock bottom, at one point playing the challenger circuit ranked 141 in the world, and was out of shape. His career was over as far as fans and media were concerned, that is until one day in 1994, out of nowhere, an unranked Agassi fought back and won the US Open. From 1994 through 2002 Andre won six Grand Slam titles, reached number one in the world rankings, including the Olympic gold medal in 1996 and achieved the elusive Career Grand Slam, winning all four major titles. What changed? He took on Brad Gilbert as his coach who taught Andre how to be patient and grind out matches, not focusing on style points, in fact Gilbert’s book is titled, “Winning Ugly”. Brad wasn’t the country club style player himself or coach but he found ways to win, regardless of how it made him look.
Nebraska won ugly on Saturday against a gritty Northwestern team that basically wrote the Big Ten book on how to do it. At times it was pretty, like when Kenneth Williams took the opening kickoff of the second half in for 6, but for the most part, it wasn’t a fan’s dream of a dominant game. In fact, it was frustrating thinking we might be watching the same movie play out like in years past. Northwestern clawed back to tie the game until Dylan Raiola led an incredible drive to take the lead in the 4th quarter. This year the Huskers keep finding ways, in spite of the situation in close games, hell even Michigan wasn’t supposed to be as close as it was, but the guys stayed in it until the end, giving themselves a chance. Chalk the Minnesota game off as a wake up call.
As a fan, watching Agassi all those years ago, he had moments in every match that frustrated me so much, thinking he was going to choke again, but point after point, he kept playing his game and finding a way. That’s what the Huskers did today, they stuck with their game plan and used their grittiest player, Emmett Johnson, to keep moving the chains and leading by example. Leading up to this game, I mentioned how we need to find an identity and maybe, right now our identity is finding ways to discover who we are. One week it’s Raiola, the next Nyziah Hunter, and then it’s a dose of Kenneth Williams and Emmett. That’s the world we live in right now as Husker fans and maybe AD Troy Dannen was right when he said that as fans we see 15 years or terrible football, while the current coaching staff is still teaching toughness and how to find ways through adversity. After all, if we would have been told that Nebraska would start the season 6-2 heading into the USC game, we would probably have been thrilled.
There’s not really a feeling of “Will we or won’t we?” with a tough Trojan team coming to Lincoln this week. It’s more of a “Wait and see how it plays out”. That’s where we need to be right now after the nightmare of Mike Riley and Scott Frost coaching tenures. This staff knows what they’re doing and the players will put it together as they go along. It’s tough having to let go of the past and give this team its chance, but it’ll be worth it, knowing how they took their steps and made mistakes, all while rebuilding a once dominant program. The alternative of putting together a quick fix team that scorches for a few years and falls again isn’t our style. We live for the grind it out games that eventually wear our opponents into submission. Go back and watch the games from the 95 team. Even though they were dominant, they still had games where they took awhile to get going against mediocre teams.
Looking good while winning is great and all, but it pales in comparison to demoralizing an opponent that prides itself on looking sexy. Remember 94 Miami, and Colorado last year? Good teams that couldn’t pass the test when it came to facing adversity. This week we’ll cuss at our tv’s and call for coaches to be fired because we do care and want to get over this mountain. I’d love to smoke the Trojans, but that probably won’t happen because it’s not who we are and not who we need to be right now…
We’re young, we’re fast, and we are learning how to win ugly!
- Joel
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