If you really want to dig into where Nebraska has come up short, help me look at the "should-have-been" Husker players from the 500-mile radius who went elsewhere. If someone from St. Louis goes to Ohio State or Missouri, that's one thing, but when kids from western Iowa, the Dakotas, northern Kansas, southwest Minnesota, eastern Wyoming, northeast Colorado, northwest Missouri, and Nebraska(!) go somewhere else and end up in the NFL, that, to me, was/is a major red flag. It's been an issue for a long time. Say what you will about Callahan, but he had Riley Reiff from Parkston, SD, verbally committed to Nebraska, but Bo's staff couldn't be bothered to call him or even return his calls (true story!!!) after they took over, so he went to Iowa before going to the NFL, and now his little brother followed in his footsteps and will be a major contributor this fall for the Iowa D-line. The Reiff family
were Nebraska fans, by the way. (I'm friends with several members of the extended family.)
If the Nebraska staff recruited them but just couldn't get them, that's one thing, but when they aren't even recruited? I almost solely know the northwest quadrant of that 500-mile radius area, so I'll throw those out here:
- We start with Noah Fant because he's obvious.
- What about Andrew Van Ginkel from Rock Valley, Iowa? He went to USD then Iowa Western when the USD head coach retired, then JUCO transferred to Wisconsin. His athletic index numbers were/are awesome. If you don't know where Rock Valley, IA, is it's on the SD/IA border, roughly halfway between Larchwood, IA (home to Kyle Vanden Bosch, remember him?) and Sioux Falls, SD (home to Nate Gerry and the Farniok brothers, as well as Larry Jacobsen, if you're old school, like me). Iowa Western? That would be that JUCO that we didn't want to acknowledge until about a year+ ago.
- It's expecting a lot if we thought that they should find Trey Pipkins in Apple Valley, MN, since neither UofM nor any of the Minnesota D2 schools (or SDSU or NDSU or UND or USD) found him, so let's just list him in case you want to count someone else as a mulligan.
- But what about Easton Stick? He got drafted, and he had a great FCS career, but maybe that was due to NDSU's success, you say, but ... how did UNL do with identifying QBs at that time? If you want to get ornery, I'd point out that I think that Taryn Christion makes the better NFL prospect of the two, and he was not recruited by Nebraska in 2014, even though he was in the process of leading Sioux Falls Roosevelt to yet another state championship. Pshaw, you say? His OT went to Ohio State (more on that some other time) and eventually made his way back to SDSU, where he'll be a 5th year senior this fall, and where his size and athleticism will still make him an NFL prospect. (Also, not heavily recruited by UNL.)
I'm working on an idea of going back and further and digging in deeper into all of these nearby students that have been ignored for a couple of decades, but it's overwhelming (and a little depressing) when I start digging into it. I'm NOT saying that Nebraska could build a championship program by
solely recruiting these areas; what I am saying is that by ignoring them for two decades, we've allowed NFL talent to consistently go elsewhere when we could have had it just by paying attention and putting in minimal effort to continue ongoing relationships with local coaching staffs. If you can get 10-12 kids every year from the places that I mentioned (again, I'm leaving out the urban areas outside of NE), you're halfway towards filling your class every year, and you can focus more closely on the bigger recruits without having to worry as much about rounding out the whole roster.
