Dynasty dashed

Iowa State puts an end to Nebraska's Big 12 dominance

Saturday afternoon in Ames, Iowa, they held a football game.

Saturday night, they could very easily have held a wake.

For it is there that it will forever be remembered as the official, final resting place of Nebraska’s long-standing football dynasty.

Sure, the Cornhuskers’ slow, painful demise began many months ago in Boulder, Colo., and continued in such locales as Pasadena, Calif., and State College, Pa. But before Saturday, there was still considerable hope back in Lincoln the thing could be revived.

After all, that’s what good football teams do. In the face of adversity, they buckle up the chinstraps, put on an extra layer of eye-black, hit the field running and take care of business.

Problem is, Nebraska, as it showed Saturday against Iowa State, is not a very good football team.

How strange does that sound?

So strange that despite the writing on the wall, we refused to fully believe it until Nebraska got hammered 36-14 by a team to which it usually administers the hammering. The Huskers subsequently will fall from the polls for the first time in 21 years.

This was hardly a case of Iowa State being on its “A” game, mind you. This was not the same Seneca Wallace who decimated cross-state darling Iowa two weeks ago. These were not the same Cyclones who came within one yard of sending Florida State to overtime in their opener.

No, Nebraska’s much-maligned Blackshirt defense is hardly to blame for this one. Not when the offense manages four first downs in three quarters. Not when your 1,300-yard rusher of a year ago carries 10 times for 30 yards.

Not when you block a punt, force three turnovers, put the ball in the hands of the nation’s historically most-dominant offense and get one offensive touchdown out of it.

“We’ve got to get the whole thing better,” embattled coach Frank Solich said afterward. “We’ve got to give ourselves a chance to win football games.”

This is why the Huskers, much more than Florida State, Penn State, or any other powerhouse that’s seen some slippage lately, are in much, much deeper trouble.

This did not happen because of an off-year recruiting, or youth, or a couple bad injuries. No, Nebraska’s problems reach to the deepest fibers of its program.

The old-fashioned, option-based system that’s been their signature for so many years is now, in this age of wide-open offenses and complex defensive schemes, the source of their undoing. It’s probably been the case for longer than Nebraska loyalists would like to admit, but Eric Crouch and his supreme athleticism were able to mask it.

In the past, defenses were so consumed with stopping Crouch that otherwise ordinary runners like Dahrran Diedrick were able to pile up yards. Now, the Huskers have a QB, Jammal Lord, who can seemingly neither run nor throw, and suddenly Diedrick, the offensive line and everyone else involved look decidedly average.

“I don’t want to try to put this on Jammal’s shoulders,” said Solich. “There’s no way we played well enough in the other phases of the game to get things done. The rushing game was inept, and when that is a major problem for us, we have problems.”

By all indications, the Huskers could be headed to their worst season in a generation, after which there may be wholesale changes. That’s harder to pull off at Nebraska than almost any other institution.

The first target of supporters’ angst will obviously be Solich, but are they willing to possibly scrap over 30 years of tradition by bringing in a hot-shot outsider who may run an entirely different system?

If not, there are those within the family, like QB coach Turner Gill, who could carry on the Tom Osborne legacy, but then you’re gambling that the same type of offense can still be successful in college football.

In the meantime, there’s at least eight games remaining before anything can happen, during which time Solich faces an even more daunting task than stopping Zack Mills or Wallace. He has to keep a team normally accustomed to playing for the national championship interested in the far-less glamorous task of simply saving face.

“We’ll either splinter apart or we’ll come together,” said Solich. “There’s probably no middle ground on that.”

Stewart Mandel covers college football for CNNSI.com.

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