You can’t believe you can win until you understand how important it is TO win. I literally do not believe that Mike Riley placed any value whatsoever on winning, nor any consequences on losing.
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Toughness
- Thread starter Husker Country Doc
- Start date
You can’t believe you can win until you understand how important it is TO win. I literally do not believe that Mike Riley placed any value whatsoever on winning, nor any consequences on losing.
I agree. I don't see MR as a bad guy but just misguided in his approach to coaching. The whole positivity thing after a loss I believe made the team weaker as a whole. Frost will have a stronger team than he inherited and than last year. Those who don't want to get strong and compete will be gone IMO.
Agree - winning feeds itself (I think they've even shown studies where winning gives the winner a testosterone spike!). That is part of what made the Akron cancellation such a big deal for us. This was a fragile team coming off a horrible 2017 and they needed a solid, winnable game up front like that one.
On the other hand, maybe the losses were what was required to weed out some of those who didn't belong at Nebraska. Some of the cancer that needed to be cut out from the team. And look at Lamar Jackson. From being benched to learning the work that is required to be one of the best of the BIG.
I agree. That cancellation put us behind the 8 ball.
Its the offseason, and I'll play devil's advocate, here.
2018 Nebraska was a weak team mentally, before and after Akron cancellation. A win would not likely have taught the team anything valuable, as little would have been changed to their mental approach to the game.
They had to endure the crucible of the 0-6 start, to get an "edge" to themselves.
Adversity is the best learning tool.
I can not disagree more with this statement. Winning attitude is often like flipping a switch. Look at the early to mid 90s as an example. The 95 season was actually a much tougher schedule than 94. So why did we have so many closer games in 94 than 95. It could be argued that once we got over the Miami hump the team believed they were unbeatable. So a great team became an unbeatable force in 95. Playing the same teams the next year they blew them out.
Now lets look at last year. Up until we won that first one we kept beating our self. Once we beat Minny we started to really come one including almost upsetting tOSU and IA.
A win over Akron would have simply been a glimmer of false hope. This team had not reached the point where the players decided enough was enough and that team culture had to change. I can make the argument that a win against a crappy Akron team would have potentially prolonged the process of weeding out the undesirables and those who aren't willing to work. I agree with country doc that this team needed to go through the crucible to reach the point they did in the second half of the year and to achieve what they did in the final six weeks of the season
you could try to make that argument but you would definitely be going against conventional wisdom. On multiple fronts.
1. Scientific studies have shown that once you start winning you will continue to do so. https://www.businessinsider.com/the-science-of-why-winners-keep-winning-2015-9 So maybe winning the first game gets us mentally over the next few close games and then it continues.
2. Also you could argue that the fact that we did not win early is part of the reason some folks did not buy in quicker.
3. Last the fact that we missed our first game means that we did not have the first to second game bump most teams experience. The Puffs did not have that same delay. So they had film of themselves to go look at and improve prior to playing us.
True story.
What's interesting is that I don't think Osborne talked a lot about winning games. I think the key is winning individual battles, doing your job better than the opponent. You set other goals (avg yards per carry, turnovers, pancakes), and then find that winning the battles and achieving your smaller goals results in wins.
But the competition absolutely has to matter. There must be performance expectations. There will be days when you face an opponent that's just better than you, and that's ok... as long as you use it as a learning experience to get better. Losing to inferior opponents, and losing ugly to ANY opponent, needs to become a rarity. That's an attitude an culture thing, and our head coach gets it.
I'm really excited about the upcoming season. I don't know if the culture has been changed completely, but I think we're close. We should challenge for the West, and then anything can happen in a conference championship game...
I said from the beginning that Mike Riley loved football more than he loved winning.
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While Tom never said it... winning was always a motivator for him. Perhaps he was winning to survive... but the greatest motivator has always been "proving someone wrong"!!!
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“It looked like football out there.”
While in general I agree with you that winning feeds on itself, I don't buy your example here. The simple answer to the question you ask in RED is "What is blood clots for Tommie Frazier, Alex." In 93, we were screwed out of the MNC...the 94 team already knew they were unbeatable.
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