Cornhusker Knights
Endings are rough.
Always have been and always will be.
The end of a relationship. A marriage. A friendship. Any employment. And, of course, a life. The end always comes with so many things we just don’t feel prepared for. Especially the one thing so many of us never do feel prepared for. Change.
We always hope that we can nail the landing, the ending. We hope to go out on a high note. Especially when it comes to sports. As fans we’ll even root for teams we would never root for if we respect somebody associated with the team who is soon to be gone from the world of said sport.
As someone who fancies themselves a screenwriter, a filmmaker, heck, just a writer in general, there is one ending in particular in the world of film that I’ve always been in love with. That is the ending of the film The Dark Knight.
Spoilers for The Dark Knight…
In the aftermath of Scott Frost being fired from the head coaching job at Nebraska the final scene of The Dark Knight has once again become an odd obsession in my mind.
Through the course of events in The Dark Knight the character Harvey Dent gets broken down in body and spirit by the Joker and eventually succumbs to a darker side within him. In his death both Batman and Commissioner Gordon recognize the incredible defeat that the Joker has handed them by “bringing [Harvey] down to [everybody’s] level.” To have done that to Gotham City’s ‘White Night’ is such a blow to the moral of the city.
And so it seems with Scott Frost’s tenure, and ending, as the Nebraska Cornhusker’s head coach. As with Harvey Dent it wasn’t all his fault, but, as Harvey’s fall could’ve been to Gotham City, this seems to have been the straw that broke the camels back.
The Problem
For years Nebraska has, mostly, been in a pursuit of bringing back the glory years of old. There was the terrible decision of naming Bill Callahan head coach and changing to a degree nobody in the state could accept. After which the constant seemed to be trying to find some way to both move forward to something better for the program while still clutching on to what we had been previously.
There was the return of the savior Tom Osborne as Athletic Director at Nebraska. Along with what seemed the surrogate son of the Frank Solich era, Bo Pelini. That seemed promising for a while. We had our chances at the time against Texas and Oklahoma in back to back Big 12 Championship games. Then, along with Bo’s attitude, we began to notice the conundrum of we faced when it came to big games under his tenure. It wasn’t just that we would lose them it was that we would get blown the heck out of the water.
So we fired Bo Pelini as he acted out.
Then we tried the ‘subtle’ yet obvious change of going to a coach that was the ‘nice guy.’ Mike Riley. Which, well…
I think you know about that burning dumpster-fire of a tenure.
Scott Frost’s Tenure
Thus we came improbably to Scott Frost’s time as head coach.
A tenure that quite literally began before Scott had even finished his tenure as head coach of the University of Central Florida. In fact I remember sitting in my apartment with my sister and her then boyfriend, now husband, excitedly watching as UCF won its Conference Championship game. Suddenly the news scrolled below the game as our phones notified us of the same thing, Scott Frost was going to be the new Nebraska Cornhusker head coach.
The idea was so exciting. The fabled son of Nebraska who left home came back and won a championship for the Cornhuskers in 1997 returning to save the day. What heaven on earth luck did we have to be able to hire the most touted head coach talent away from everybody else and for him to be one of us.
The recruiting immediately improved. We were relevant in a way we hadn’t been for a while and we were going to be back. Soon.
Then the first season didn’t go so well. Adrian Martinez, our highly touted quarterback recruit, got hurt the first game we played. (Which is a whole other ordeal that should have been a sign in the first game of the season being cancelled). We played well down the stretch in a sense, but we had expected more…
Which seems like it could be the title of a book about Nebraska’s search for a connection to our glory years that included ‘becoming great again.’ Expectations of More… The Nebraska Cornhuskers Story.
Slowly but surely we began to realize that Scott Frost wasn’t going to succeed at Nebraska, yet we couldn’t help but hope. There had to be some left. If the fabled son returning didn’t do the trick for our beloved program, what would?
As Commissioner Gordon says at the end of The Dark Knight, “people will lose hope.”
Change
In the past couple days while I’ve been a bit demoralized about the firing of Scott Frost and this obsession along with his metaphorical connection to Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight I noticed something else. The connection I was making between the final moments of that film and Scott Frost being fired wasn’t merely out of dismay. No, there was more to this. Of course something within my own history watching The Dark Knight Trilogy had some relation to all of this.
In fact, my favorite experience viewing a film in the theater was in 2012. My sister and I made plans to go to a screening of Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, and The Dark Knight Rises the night Rises came out. We sat and watched, enthralled, through the first two films in the trilogy.
That first viewing of The Dark Knight Rises was an incredible experience. What sticks out in connection with Scott Frost and the current state of the Nebraska Cornhusker football team though is a specific scene. A specific line by none other than the figure we all need in our lives, Bruce Wayne’s butler Alfred…
“Maybe it’s time we all stop trying to outsmart the truth, and let it have it’s day”
-Alfred, Michael Caine
Change can be a rough thing to go through. For anybody. Let alone many who wish to see what was remain as the constant. Trying to maintain the idea the past, as great as it may have been, is the path through which we may we be great again just doesn’t work. Change means facing the truth.
The truth is the glory years of Nebraska football in the way we remember them are gone. That is not to say glory cannot return, but it does mean we need to move on from this idea that we must cling to our tradition as if it is our saving grace. If such a thing were to have saved us it would’ve done so by now.
Does this mean we stop the sellout streak? Denouncing the team and staff? Making a hullabaloo about who we need to hire as our next head coach? No.
Why does it have to?
We achieved heights most programs in college football never will in our glory years. Sadly, we may never see them again. Thats just a fact that must be dealt with. Yet…
Achieving such heights in the time of parity? To do so when no one believes you can do such a thing anymore? Now that’s something!
To achieve heights anywhere near what Nebraska reached before different avenues must be taken than before. As the pioneers of old the Nebraska football program, presumably those who associate with Nebraska football as a whole, must forge their own path once again.
“The night is darkest just before the dawn”
- Harvey Dent, Aaron Eckhart
Something Like Hope…
As I think about who should be Nebraska Cornhusker football’s next head coach I go back to my viewing experience of The Dark Knight Trilogy back in 2012.
You see there really is nothing quite like a full theater silently wrapped in the story being told 24 frames per second. So was the experience inside that theater my sister and I were in back when The Dark Knight Rises came out. While I may not remember much of those first two films in The Dark Knight Trilogy I do specifically remember the end of The Dark Knight.
While I listened to Commissioner Gordon speak to his child in that last scene of the film goosebumps began to appear on my arm. Very quickly chills began to run down my spine. This happens every time I watch The Dark Knight now, but only since I had that viewing experience back in 2012.
The lights in the theater came back on in the theater while the projection of The Dark Knight Rises was being set up and my sister and I sat awaiting, hoping, expecting. While I still love a Christopher Nolan film (director of The Dark Knight Trilogy) today the anticipation of one back in 2012 was something else. We knew we were in for a great experience while watching the third film in that trilogy. I didn’t just hope The Dark Knight Rises would be good I had faith in what the quality of that film would be.
And you know what?
“Sometimes people deserve to have their faith rewarded.”
-Batman, The Dark Knight
I’ve already made the comparison of Scott Frost to Harvey Dent. Which is an apt comparison. Both were the ‘White Knight’ that seemed destined to be the hero. Yet the truth of the matter is that, as Batman, Scott Frost needed to be the ‘symbol.’ The representation of Nebraska as a whole.
So, while many understandably yearn for the end of the season and the search for a new coach it seems interesting that, for a program needing to forge a new path, Nebraska’s interim head football coach is Mickey Joseph. A coach who happens to be African-American. In fact, Mickey is the first head coach in Nebraska football’s storied history to be African-American.
It almost seems fated to me that in a time of change, a time that we hope represents something better for minority communities, that Mickey Joseph be the Nebraska head football coach. Someone helping Nebraska to forge a new path. The two seem to go hand in hand.
No matter who the head football coach is at Nebraska we will root for they and the team. What matters to the Cornhusker fanbase is winning of course, but also the representation of our community. Such is part of the reason we have continued the sellout streak for as long as we have. Representing Nebraska football and so much in the first game as head coach against our traditional, fated, rival, Oklahoma. That’s interesting.
As interesting as each incarnation of Batman that comes out now.
Each director and team that produces a film about ‘The Bat’ nowadays has a unique twist of style or story to show the audience. Yet they are all still making a movie about Batman none-the-less. The caped crusader has to win the day. As both Harvey Dent and Batman have said…
“You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”
-Batman, The Dark Knight
With each incarnation of Batman put to screen a new favorite for somebody is born. Although Christian Bale in The Dark Knight Trilogy is mine I look to the future and I hope I see a Batman that blows my current favorite out of the water. So it goes with each new head football coach of the Nebraska Cornhuskers.
We put our faith in you. We can be rough. We can judge what we shouldn’t because we’re ‘armchair quarterbacks.’ At times it will seem impossible to please a fanbase as passionate as any in college football.
Us Nebraska Cornhusker fans should put our faith in Mickey Joseph. The Joker cannot win. Chaos cannot reign forever in Lincoln, Nebraska, or anywhere else in the state.
The Cornhuskers need a guardian.
A watchful protector.
Nebraska needs another…
Dark Knight
One last time for good measure.
