I can't even answer the question. The answer is "all of the above" or, as BuffSurveyor said, "the next team on the schedule."
So are we saying it would be OK to go 1-11 this year? I'm like TO, I can't comprehend the mindset of "if we could just beat Oklahoma, it doesn't matter if we lose all the rest."
Focusing (or obsessing) on one or two opponents that we "have to beat" is what gets you in trouble. See Texas 2010.
Just win the next play. After that play is over, forget about it and win the next play. Repeat that process until the season is complete.
If you've read what I've written elsewhere in this thread, I'm not asking this as a coach or even as a fan; I'm asking it more as a way of understanding how we think about things like opponents. I don't really care who ultimately gets the most votes, and I definitely don't care if everybody else disagrees. I'm pretty sure that nobody here would be okay with finishing 1-11 either. If I'm trying to find out which team(s) our fans most want to beat and why, I had to phrase the question in such a way as to remove as many variables as possible. Fwiw, I absolutely agree with you about the focus should be on the next play, but that's how (good) teams think. Even to the players, some games will always matter more than others. When they asked Tommie Frazier sometime during the '95 season who he would like to play in a bowl game, he said Washington because he was still annoyed that they had beaten Nebraska when he was a freshman. I thought that it was interesting at the time that that loss bothered him more than the two losses to Florida State, especially considering how the last one had been controversial.
When this survey has run its course, I think that I might do something similar from the other end of the spectrum, such as this: "If Nebraska were to finish 9-3 in the regular season, who would you choose to be the three teams that beat us?" I've been thinking about that specific question a lot because I think that that's a likely outcome for our season based on the number of games that we'll be playing against teams that could beat us unless we play close to perfect, and then figuring out the likelihood that they'll play close to perfect. I actually think that we will beat Ohio State, yet lose to a couple of teams that (right now) none of our fans expect to beat us. I can't really even guess which ones, but as a coach I know the patterns for how teams gain and lose focus. For example, if we're looking good but still making too many mental mistakes, losing to Illinois the week before we play Ohio State would greatly increase our chances of beating OSU. As a fan (or hypothetically, as a coach) would I make that trade? I've decided that, yes, I would. Again, if we beat Ohio State--and especially if we would be undefeated--I think that it would greatly increase our chances of losing to Northwestern the following week. I think that this happened to Purdue last year.
You mentioned the 2010 Texas game, which is exactly the sort of scenario that I expect to happen this year because this year's team and the 2010 team are somewhat similar in that neither had gotten over the hump yet as far as mental preparation for games, big and small, and so they lost to Texas, who was clearly worse, yet whipped Missouri, who was probably better. We whipped Washington during the year, then looked like trash when we played them again in the bowl game. This is what happens in football when teams aren't properly focused, ready to play every week.
You mentioned Osborne and his lack of caring about rivalries, and, again, that's (mostly) how I see things, but even to this day most Husker fans don't grasp how much he focused his efforts as a coach on remaining focused on the next play, and the next play only. Some articles were written about him and that focus in the late 80s/early 90s when most of the country still thought that he couldn't win the big games, so most people ignored what he had to say. As a Nebraska fan in college, I ate it up and never forgot it. He believed and taught that the opponent doesn't matter (to the players, anyway; the opponent's tendencies matter very much to the coaches), and that everything should be focused on the steps of execution for the next play. He taught the players to evaluate what had just happened on the last play as they walked to the huddle, but the moment that the QB or defensive captain made the call for the next play, the last play needed to be wiped from the mind, and all that mattered was focusing on the steps of execution for the next play as you lined up. You weren't thinking about the opponent. You weren't thinking about the moment. You weren't thinking about the score. As a Guard, for example, all that you were thinking is "My first step is forward and to the right while I shoot my hands to the left pectoral of the D-lineman to my right, etc." As a high school player, nobody had ever stressed that enough to me ... except when it came to shooting free-throws in basketball. I was very good at that, and I knew that it was because it was all routine, repetition, and focus. I knew that that was the way to teach and coach everything else in life. I've had successes and failures in doing that as a football coach at different age levels and with players with very different abilities. My alma mater has dominated football in our small-school conference for this century, yet was never able to win a championship before that. Why? Focus and execution. I've coached for them and against them, including with teams that had more talent, but they're tough to beat because they almost never make mistakes. Why? Focus and execution. To my knowledge, they don't have a playbook, but every player knows almost every play that they'll run in high school before they finish 7th grade, so for their next 5 years, it's all about more focus and better execution. It works.
On the other hand there was Barry Switzer. Barry could
always get Oklahoma to play at their peak against Nebraska, whether Nebraska was clearly superior, clearly inferior, or roughly equal. His teams also had a habit of laying an egg against terrible teams, like Kansas. Barry's philosophy of coaching wasn't that different from Osborne's in a lot of ways when it came to the X's and O's, recruiting, and coaching the details of execution, but he was never able to get his teams to stay as consistently focused, so he had to have superior talent to make up for these lapses. They usually had it, and it usually did make up for it.
So, how do we choose the games that matter most to us? Players typically take the fans' passions with them, but then they also usually have personal connections with some of the players on some of the other teams, and they also have experiences of having played most teams on their schedules. I think that that one dirty play by Colorado last year did as much to doom their chances this year as almost anything else because the Nebraska players are NOT going to forget that it happened, and as long as that's channeled properly, it will lead to better focus, which should lead to better execution. It also should lead to both an expectation of winning and probably a lack of a let-up when/if Nebraska gets ahead. Fans love to hear that. If Nebraska drills Colorado, which I think that they are going to do, it opens them up for a let-down the following week against Northern Illinois, which right now nobody expects to be capable of playing with us.
This is the stuff that I think about in the off-season when I'm lying awake in bed at night, whether it's focused on the guys that I'm coaching or Nebraska or whoever. That's why I asked the question, and that's why I phrased it that way.
That doesn't mean I want to lose to them ever again, though.
