Last Time

by Mike Babcock

Will Compton can laugh about it now. But when it happened, it was no laughing matter. “I was like a deer in the headlights,” he said. “I was nervous. I was caught off-guard.”

Compton was a freshman on coach Bo Pelini’s first team at Nebraska in 2008. The Huskers were playing Virginia Tech at Memorial Stadium, and the way Compton remembers it, a linebacker (it might have been Phillip Dillard, a junior) “blew a (pass) coverage.”

The game was the fourth of the season, and as with most of those in his recruiting class, Compton had yet to see action, the intention being that he would redshirt.

At that instant, however, the redshirt was about to…

Mistaken Identity

by Mike Babcock

Yep, Justin Blatchford looks a little bit like Taylor Martinez, enough so that Nebraska football fans have even mistaken him, on occasion, for his Husker teammate.

“I’ve gotten that a couple of times from fans, asking me for my autograph, and they’re kind of surprised when they get it,” said Blatchford.

As the starting quarterback, Martinez is the better known player, of course. Blatchford, a senior from Ponca, Neb., is listed as a safety, though he’s been playing the hybrid “dime” defensive back position as well as contributing on special teams – as he has done throughout his career.

Probably his most notable play came on special teams as a redshirted freshman in 2009, in fact,…

Final Four or Bust!

by Jason Krivanek

Go ahead and take a drink. Don’t just stop with a sip, drink deep. For Creighton basketball fans, the blue Kool-aid is flowing and its never tasted sweeter as what promises to be a season like no other sets to tip off.

As preseason practice began in October, Head Coach Greg McDermott set the bar high, publicly stating the team’s goal of reaching the Sweet 16. But why stop there? If you’re going to drink the Kool-aid, you might as well chug the whole damn cooler. You read it here first. This is the year the Jays break through and cut a rug through the Big Dance, capturing the hearts of college basketball fans from coast to coast…

Blackshirts Back

by Mike Babcock

These practice jerseys are a far cry from those distributed in 1964, when Nebraska’s Blackshirt tradition began, as near as anybody can remember, anyway.

Accounts differ on exactly when the originals were purchased and distributed.

And the jerseys were actually not jerseys but rather mesh vests, black ones, pulled over practice jerseys to provide color contrast, in this case the defense from the offense.

Originally, the pullovers were handed out each day before practice and turned in after. Sometimes during practice, a player would be told to take off the vest and give it to someone else.

In any case, the black practice jerseys are just that now, with a Blackshirt skull-and-crossbones logo on the…

Game-Changer or Not

by Mike Babcock

Put it this way, when Taylor Martinez is good, he’s very, very good. And when Nebraska’s junior quarterback is bad . . . remember those three interceptions against Ohio State?

But the three interceptions, and a lost fumble when the game had been decided, reflected issues shared by his teammates on both sides of the ball. The 63-38 loss couldn’t be laid solely on his shoulders.

“I think if we can keep him clean, he’s going to make his reads and he’s pretty dang good,” junior offensive tackle Jeremiah Sirles said of Martinez. The Huskers’ 29-28 victory at Northwestern was a case in point, specifically the final 8 minutes and 31 seconds.

Martinez was pretty dang…

They’re Back

by Brandon Vogel

As it usually does in soccer, Creighton’s 2011 men’s soccer season came down to inches. The Jays were one game away, a few penalty kicks actually, from playing for a national title in coach Elmar Bolowich’s first season when Charlotte crashed the party. The 49ers outlasted Creighton, robbing college soccer fans of the match-up everybody waned to see. Bolowich didn’t get to face North Carolina, the powerhouse program he somewhat surprisingly left behind to come to Omaha. The Tarheels went on to win the national title. Creighton went home.

The Jays lost seven starters off that 21-2-1 team, including perhaps the most potent combo in the country in midfielder Ethan Finlay and goalkeeper Brian Holt. With so many…

The Return of Baseball

by Brandon Vogel

Pauli’s isn’t Pauli’s anymore. The old bar on an old stretch of Leavenworth Street used to be a hub of activity during the College World Series. Sometime in the early-1980s the ESPN talking heads made it their home base following telecasts and with that the crowds came. It never made much sense. The bar wasn’t anywhere near Rosenblatt Stadium but people kept coming, swayed by the chance to rub shoulders and bend elbows with the likes of Harold Reynolds or Dan Patrick.

Like Omaha itself, Pauli’s was a little rough around the edges and far from conventionally beautiful but it was friendly. It was the CWS distilled down to what could be the tournament’s log line: Big-time baseball,…