1-on-1 with DP – 93.7 The Ticket KNTK - Should Nebraska of today be compared to historical success? - July 27th, 2026 - 12:00pm

Episode Date: July 27, 2026

Should Nebraska of today be compared to historical success? Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

It's time to go one-on-one with D.P. Sponsored by the Downtown Lincoln Foundation on 93-7 the ticket. Part number two of one-on-one today. Adam Kierker out this week, but you'll be back next week. And I know around the corner at some point we've got plans to announce our new lineup. Harrison, you know when that will be official? I will say that I want to say by Friday. By Friday.

Okay. Yeah, without giving any spoilers. I don't know what I can all say right now, but I'll say this much. It's pretty good. Oh, it is. It's pretty good. I'm excited for it. And I think the listener should be too.

Yeah, yeah. And don't worry. It's not like half the current lineup is going to be gone or anything like that. It's just, there's going to be, it's going to be good. Yeah, yeah. Just like you said, I don't want to speak out through in here. But it is going to be an incredible lineup. And so it's going to be a lot of fun.

Again, we've got some goings on that I want to let you guys know about Of course, the big thing this week is Big Ten Media Days. And we spent much of the first hour talking about some of the polls surrounding that. But tomorrow we actually get into into the business, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Thursday, this year in Nebraska specific, their day. Remember, it said split up with 18 teams, six teams per day. Nebraska must be one of the headliners, right? We're waiting back for Thursday for the Oscars. And we're sending.

Who are the other teams on that Thursday? Oh, boy. I have to pull that up. There's some other headliners. As much as I want to say, where the headliners, I think we might get buried a little bit on that Thursday. Husker fans,

we'll heat it up. Yeah. We always do. As far as the rest of the college football world, I think there's some heavy hitters on that day. Yeah. And it's, you know,

obviously you're fortunate enough to be able to kind of split that up as much as you need to. With, with the big name. So here's the, here's the rundown there. And you're right. There's some big ones there. You know what?

day Tuesday I would say as the least punch but you're starting not I mean you started off and so you're you're excited but a surprise that they don't have like one of their top five teams every day Tuesday is Illinois Iowa which is tomorrow by the way Illinois Iowa Penn State Rutgers USC and Wisconsin. Okay. I mean Iowa did you know for the sake of for our envy would be interesting and then I think Penn State there's some there's some interesting ones you said Illinois to Illinois. Illinois would be good. I'm just a big Brett fan. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Bias. I'll be interested to see what he has to say. And Luke fickle is just, I mean, that is interesting just to ask him how he still have his job. He had like fire Luke fickle chance.

I'll go through some details later too. I'll see how he's aging right now. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's a stressful gig up there in Wisconsin with everything going on. Well, then they got Sean I course. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm proud about that whole piece. So that would be interesting. Yeah. Lincoln Riley, who he mentioned is not on the hot seat, but feels like he gets. be getting warmer if they don't eventually cross this kind of threshold that they've been stuck at. But anyway, Wednesday will be Michigan State, of course, with Pat Fitzgerald in there, PJ Fleck will row the boat with Minnesota, Ohio State and Oregon on the same day. So there's there's some heavy hitters. And then Purdue and UCLA as well on that day. So Bob Chesney

will be welcome to the conference. And Barry Hotton, head coach still down there for Purdue. Yeah, yeah, rough first go at it. Well, the only returning guy he has the running back was like Maccabee. That's right. He didn't have a lot of chips last year. So I, you know, I always got to root for Purdue because they just don't ever have a lot of ammunition out there. So like, hopefully Barry Oldham seems like a good enough guy. High praise from some of the guys that I've talked to.

But we'll see if Purdue can really just not be the bottom of the big then. I think that's like where they're at right now. I was like, can we just show any improvement? When it's interesting too, because, you know, he failed, so to speak, I suppose, or didn't get enough done at Missouri. which since then has been a pretty darn good program and then kind of revitalized his career down there at UNLV, which we're seeing too, like now, Dan Mullen, you know, kind of doing. UNLV is like a great spot to go if you're coming off a firing and it could lead to another

future job. So we'll see. Quick side note. You know, you could be like a owner. I did see that. UNLV basketball. When I say owner, it's a big donation. Yeah. The big donation will kind of treat you like you own the basketball program, but $10 million, it's like you'd get, I think like private jet flights and all this kind of crazy stuff. I don't know why there's just probably mind with UNLV, but it was, it didn't look good on their part to be marking it that way. I get it. It's just a big donation. But yeah, if you saw that, no, they're not selling the team for $10 million. They're kind of treating you like you're part owner, though. If you do donate $10 million to UNLV basketball. I saw that and I'm so interested in what, what does that mean, right? Because

If you donate that and they are telling you you're an owner, then you should have a lot of say. Everything that goes on in the program. And I saw it was Josh Paster, of course, who's the coach there. And man, at one time, he was like the next big thing in college basketball. Never quite kind of got to, got that done, kind of, you know, looks really good early on at Memphis and then kind of fizzled out there. And then the Georgia Tech run didn't go as well.

But, you know, now they're at UNLV. If there's one school to do that, I wouldn't be surprised, you know, starting there in Las Vegas. But, yeah, that's a $10 million for a team in Vegas. He's an idea. And his whole thing was like, yeah, you don't need to, because they're talking about bringing an NBA team to Vegas. Like, you don't need billions of dollars. You just need $10 million to have you and LV. It's like, well, that's certainly not the same thing.

There's a history of success at UNLV basketball. Don't get me wrong, but an NBA franchise. And it hasn't really been anything that I can think of, you know, since the night. it's just bizarre. Like it's just, I'm kind of getting used to it, but I'm like, dang,

that's what college sports are. Yeah. $10 million and like, you can be a fake owner essentially. Yeah. Like you get the perks, like some of the perks, but,

you know, if you try to run the ship, they're not going to let you steer it. I wouldn't think so. You're just a big time booster. Yeah. That's basically what it is. The way they worded it,

I don't know who created the graphic, but they might, they might have some questions this morning about that post because it did not go well over with the public. I'll at least put my name on something, right? If I'm the owner, I at least name my name on a building or something down there in Vegas. But, yeah, I'll worry about how I spend my $10 to $12 million once I did it. Thursday, by the way, Nebraska, we mentioned Nebraska's day.

So they will be competing with the defending champ. Indiana is maybe the headliner in reality that day. Michigan will be there as well, always a big brand. Washington, another big brand. Minnesota in Northwestern, or excuse me, Maryland in Northwestern will also be. there on Thursday. So run it back again. Tuesday, Illinois, Iowa, Penn State, Rutgers, USC, Wisconsin, Wednesday, Michigan State, Minnesota, Ohio State, Oregon, Purdue, UCLA, Thursday, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Nebraska, Northwestern, and Washington. Once again, we'll have the guys out there. Austin Orman, DP, Jake Sorenson will make his way out there and Jay Foreman for all our coverage out there. So listen to us all day. The next three days is one of my favorite times of the year because it means college football shows. right around the corner. We get interviews obviously with the players, coaches, broadcasters out there.

That'll be a lot of fun. Thanks to our sponsors, Sandhills, Global Gear, Michael Closiers, Warhurst Casino and Ben Bliker, a professional realtor group of Berkshire Hathaway. Also, once again, old school this today will be live from U-Stop over there by Warhorse Casino at 200 West Aramance Lane

from 3 to 6. Nebraska football's Luke Lindemeyer will be there from 3 to 430, taking pictures and doing autographs, and he's doing that for free too. So even in the era of NIL, well, Luke Linda Meyer has found it in his heart to do that for free. Free hot dogs and Dr. Pepper as well. So Husker football, hot dogs, Dr. Pepper, all for free.

Pick it. I'll be charging $5 for my autograph. Yeah, you will. Oh, you will. Yeah. No, it's for free. I was the pleasure of shaking my head. Yeah, I won't charge it for that.

I was thinking, too, while I'm out there, I think I'm going to fill up. I'm going to get some gas. I mean, you stop, you know, when in Rome, it might as well. So I think that'll be part of the plan. as well. But again, we're here on one-on-one, Jake Fawken-Harrison, R&CDP, headed into Chicago for Big Ten Media Days. So that's been a big part of our discussion. I want to hit the text line real quick before we get into my headline for today is Decorri Barney, Nebraska's biggest threat on offense, just to get to your guys' response real quick. We're talking about how last season kind of

fell apart for Nebraska and what the expectations are coming in this season. Again, Nebraska picked 11th in the Big Ten media poll from Cleveland.com. Bill and Bennett says, I'm thinking this is an eight-win season or bust for a rule unless some major improvements are shown on the field. Seven wins, obviously, you would feel stuck. Again, a lot of it's all, you know, how does it play out? Seven wins counting a bowl game win or is a regular season?

Yeah. In your mind, like if we're talking seven in the regular season, I think we feel pretty good. Well, they had seven last year in the regular season, but this is a more difficult schedule. Oh, yeah, you're right. We did get one more in the regular season. But of course, the bowl game got blown out. Yeah. But okay, yeah, you're right.

So I think a lot of it depends on what it looks like. And as we always say, and part of that is not to be blown out. That's what Big Ties goes, says you're going to see three or more blowouts this year, which Nebraska obviously needs to avoid that. And that's what's going to be interesting, too, is the schedule's tough enough. I like to remind people, I don't know what Washington or Illinois. I mean, they're coming off nine-win seasons, but, you know, college football can fluctuate. Is Iowa going to be as steady as they always are?

So sometimes the schedule could get a little bit lighter than maybe what it looks now, but it is pretty loaded as we look at it right now. Again, how does it look? Can you, would you trade? You know, maybe you don't beat Washington or Illinois, but you do get an upset against one of those top three teams. I think there's different ways to measure progress. And one would just be, and I don't even know if it would measure progress,

but it'd be like, my gun, God, thank God, there's one day where we have a big giant victory. Of course, Nebraska's been chasing that for years. So if they win seven but beat Ohio State or Indiana or Oregon, that's a success. If you win seven and don't do any of that, get blown out in those games, don't beat Iowa. You know, you can start to see why that might, you know, so I think a lot of it just is depending on what it looks like. Yeah, and that's what it looks like you have to win, like one of those big games. Because like, for whatever reason, we play Ohio State pretty well.

we have at times like we've come pretty close to beating them uh one time under frost it actually went pretty well now got away at the end there and then obviously with mat rule was that last year at the shoe where we pushed them was that two years ago might have been two years ago but uh there's a couple times where you know it really came down to that last series two years ago where we almost took down Ohio state and boy if you just win one of those games how does the season continue after you know yeah like momentum we're talking you know difference between pro and just college off air there and like why I'm a big college fan is there's chaos but momentum in college sports is huge like NBA it's kind of rinse repeat it's all business you got 82 games in the

regular season in the NFL yeah like 17 games so it gets a little bit more business like but in college like if Nebraska could just get one of those wins whether it's Ohio state if it's Indiana even better because that means what I put is like six and oh I think it's like game six on the schedule or game five yeah it just gives you so much hope and then say you do have a hiccup. And it's like, oh, man, somehow we lost to, you know, Ohio State or we lost to a good Washington team. Well, you know you beat Ohio State or say Indiana early in the year. Like, you can kind of still feed off that like, okay, we know we didn't play our best today because we're able to take down the defending champions or we're able to take down a powerhouse year and year out that is Ohio State. We just don't ever have momentum come November. And that's like the hardest part for this Nebraska football team is like when it, it starts to. break down, it is hard for this team to find that momentum. When there's no big games, they can look back on, they can look back. It's like, okay, we beat Rutgers, Northwestern, Maryland, we beat Purdue.

Who have we beat that's, that proves that we're, we're about our business this year. That we're one of the better teams of the Big Ten. And we just, again, that, that crucial win. So I think that's a, it does matter. Like seven wins is great. What are those seven wins? Like, did you beat a powerhouse? Yeah.

Because until Nebraska beats powerhouse, that's the tangible thing that I go full circle down those. talking about earlier, how if you want to get Husker fans to totally avoid apathy and buy in, you got to have one of those big wins. And just for the players confidence, like again, it's, I know they get paid now, but 18, 19, 20, 21, I mean, they're still young. Those wins are, you don't know how they're always going to carry over, but more often than not, they carry over in great ways. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it'll be interesting to see what they can do there. Because I think we're all, you know, you don't play college football a lot of us, but you have at least play,

games like a pickup game where you know this other team's better, right? They've just got more athleticism. They're just better. But you can win it, right? Like you, and sometimes you do. And maybe you even say, well, we would have played a game to 80. We would have lost, but we played to 11 and we won, right? And so sometimes even in football, it can be kind of a similar thing of like, we're not going to win 10 out 11 games when we play them. Sorry, 10 out of 11 is a bad example because I was beat Nebraska 10 of 11 times, but 14 out of 15 games we play them.

but maybe we can do it today. And then like if you, if you do like surpass that, then all of a sudden maybe the next time you match up, right, then you're not thinking, oh, this is a mismatch. You're thinking, we've done this before.

We can do it again. And then you kind of, like you said, kind of slowly build that up until the point that you're the team that other teams are looking at and say, well, let's see if we can get them on this day. Well, even basketball.

Like I wonder how much that carried over. Was it BYU? Yeah, yeah. I think there were eight ranked eight at the time. I mean, there's a top 10 team. Nebraska was projected to finish like third last depending on what poll you're looking at in the Big Ten standings.

And then like while everyone is still in preseason, though it's like some people are looking like, the Nebraska just beat number eight. And now that advantage is now number one overall draft pick for the Washington Wizards. Like they just take those guys down. They did and it wasn't a fluke. Like I think some of those elements of that game, the guys were hot, which helped. But then they went on.

It was like a what, a 20 game winning streak? Like that stuff carries over in major ways in college. Like I think that just winning that big game. completely changed. Like I believe, I'm sure the guys believe that they're going to have a good season, but to have the payoff, like now they fully believe it.

Now they're like, okay, we just took down a top 10th team in the country. Like even if we don't have the quote-unquote talent and everybody else, we can ride that momentum. And we have the full belief that we can beat anyone. And when you haven't beat a ranked opponent since 2016,

that belief's left the room. You have to create that belief again. And again, it's going to come down. Oregon, Indiana, maybe Washington, Illinois gets ranked. Ohio State for sure, but like until we get one of those ranked wins, you're, it's going to be really hard to not only get the fan base,

but I think to get the guys in the locker room to believe like, okay, we're part of the Matt Rule program that we're building into something greater. When I do, I think that's been a problem for Nebraska for years. Obviously, we saw it under Scott Frost. I mean, they'd buckle every time there was, they're about to win a game. But it was, you know, I think from the outside in, and as Nebraska fans and all the attention,

that we get on it, you know, and I've said this for years, is that we'd like to think, well, there should be a winning culture in that locker room. I mean, they're at a great place to get everything, spoon fed to them, whatever. Now you get to pay everything. I mean, everything's great for them. But to have a winning culture, you have to have proof of wins. And when you've gone 10 years now, or on 10 years of not being a ranked team, and for what it's worth, they did a couple years ago beat a Colorado team that finished ranked. But at the time, a ranked team is that you don't have a winning culture. And that was bigger,

and I would always say that before Nebraska got into the bowl games, right? It was like, we like to think Nebraska, and we hold Nebraska up to this top, one of the top programs of all time. So if you're in that locker room, you should be respected in fear. But then when you go and actually think about it from like a 19-year-old's perspective,

especially a 21-year-old's perspective that's been there for three or four years, and you haven't won those games, you don't have a winning culture and it's not because you're looking down on yourself and you're sad. I'm saying you literally at that time did not win more games than you lost.

And so you can't have a winning culture when you're a losing program. Well, then you, this is the hard part too. When it goes 10 years, let me call my boy you graduated. I don't know, man. We didn't either. Right.

Yeah. It's gone on through classes now. And this is where programs really start to slip. as you go through class after class after class and I'm not here to ever say the guys aren't trying. The guys probably want it more than I do. They're out there actually putting in the practice and everything.

Although money maybe changes the want to a little bit. You know, some of that you do have to have true things that you can believe in, people that you can talk to about how it's done in the past. And I know people get tired of like the 90s. No one's saying you have to be the 90s. But I think people are just saying, hey,

mentality wise. Like, is there anything you can tap into that? because I hate to say that's the last time Nebraska was great. Even if you want to go to the Bo Pliny or maybe there's some areas there that you can talk about some of those guys like David Sue, try to tap into that. But again, when you're going through class after class after class and thank goodness we're going bowling now because it was insane that a program of Blue Blood like Nebraska hadn't even got bowling. I think it was. I was also 2016. Yeah.

Yeah. And then obviously we broke that one. The last two seasons we've gone to a bowl game. So you just want to keep building off that because, you know, six. six, seven wins. Like we've gone bowling, but not by a lot. So we've got to continue to build that up. And then eventually have the turnover to where the class built off the last class.

And again, I think that's why this year four feels a little bit scary is you're looking at the NFL draft. You're wondering how are we developing guys the way that we should be. Is the coaching staff turnover going to work with all these new transfers? And he just kind of got a hodgepodge of questions again. So I said a lot to not say anything there. but all the say is Husker football has an immense amount of questions right now and they don't have a ton of experience to lean on to when you go beyond just bowl game

conversations of what is it going to take to get over that hump and start beating ranked opponents. Well, and again, you go back to kind of that 90s example and I think that's interesting because, you know, in the early 2000s and I don't remember exactly what you were born, but in the early 2000s. 99 made the cut. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so you remember this. You're a four-year-old when I was talking about.

In the early 2000s, I remember because it was like, you know, you'd look up at the National Champions at Memorial Stadium in 97 and things were going quite the same. You're thinking, okay, what's different about the program now compared to under Osborne? You can go through your list and you, now if you look at it and you compare it to the teams of the 90s, it's like, what's similar? Is there anything similar about this team? And that's why, like, sometimes when I talk to like Terrell, it's like,

I want to be able to relate it, right? So you're coming off a blow at last. Well, what guys, what was it like when you had a blowout? Oh, never mind. That didn't happen. So, you know, there are some things that just aren't all that, all that similar. And then, you know, I mean, the defensive line alone, and that's, you know, we have a lot of 90s Huskers on the station.

So no way am I trying to bring it away. Because I always say, why would you want to forget about the best time of your program? Like, that's ridiculous. And yes, you should always be working toward that. But at the same time, there's just not a whole lot of similarities now. And so when you have a guy that, or when you hear, you. know, guys from that area and talk about, you know, what they did in practice and maybe the little things. And you hope that that can still be translatable today. But then I go back and say,

well, you had six to seven future like eight year pros on the defensive line. What you're talking about is more similar to Georgia or Ohio State of today. You know, and for anybody that came in in the 90s, because it already had been built to be that program through the 60s, 70s and 80s. So, you know, again, they're just so far away from that that there's so many, you know, steps that have to be in between it and you just hope that that you can kind of get back into that conversation but i don't maybe we should reframe it and like think about it what we do in the 70s and 80s yeah because again like i went from divani to osmore you know like and then that's it goes back to like the classes building off of each other and like terrell j foreman those guys will tell you like when

they showed up to nebraska football and it's different i get at the portal nil poaching but they showed up a new oh my lord i'm going to have to do something in order to do something in order to play here. Yeah. And it didn't, it wasn't always like that, but it was because of the 80s. It was because the things kept compiling on top of one another. And maybe that's what, you know, Nebraska needs to do. And again, I'm not saying get the playbook from the 80s or 70s. I'm saying what, like, how did they find the advantages? Like, what were the things they were doing? And the advantages aren't always the same. But for Nebraska football, like, that's question one is, okay, we don't have the talent of Ohio State or Michigan. Where can we find set advantage?

Facilities. Got it. Training table. got it. There's something we're missing. Like, what did what did Kurt Signetti find that nobody else has yet to find? You know, it's college football is always changing. Coaches are always countering each other. And for Matt Rule, again, like just the mindset of the 70s, 80s, I think maybe that's where we should look because we're, I think you nailed it. We're not the 90s.

You can't compare anything to today about the 90s teams. It's schematically different. Culturally, it's different. You know, just the turnover, the steadiness that you to be there is completely eradicated and gone. And I think Troy Dan is doing a great job as athletic director, but for Matt Rule alone, specifically, in football, you have to figure out what did these programs do to pull themselves out of the depths.

Because I don't even know if I ever thought about that way. Like, you just truly can't compare Nebraska football to the 90s outside of the colors. And a big part of it, too, is like, well, why can't you get those athletes? And that's because they're going to Georgia, Ohio State, right? That's what I can't list everybody, but I'm sure this is a long, long list. And I've talked to Terrell Farley and I've asked Ralph Brown about it before. I think even Jay, where it's like, would you commit to a modern day Nebraska program and where they are as like athletes coming in, right? Where, you know, four star, five star, whatever.

Well, no, because you're talking. Chuck Foreman wouldn't be looking at Nebraska the same way. No. Because they wanted to commit to somewhere that was going to play for a national championship. And at the time they did, you know, if you commit to Nebraska now and that, again, that's, again, that's why. why I think those 90s Oscar teams are a lot more comparable to Ohio State or Jordan of the day of the day than certainly Nebraska of today. But there are still obviously some similarities. We're still in Lincoln.

So at least there's maybe some bits you can still pick out there and work toward to bring this current team up. But let's go ahead and take a break when we come back. I keep teasing it so we better get to it. I'll just say this time. Cory Party is the Nebraska's biggest threat on offense. And we're going to look at it a little bit through a special team's angle, because again, the USA Today, all Big Ten team came out. There was one Husker on it.

It was Jacori Barney as a returner. We'll talk about him offensively and specifically in the special teams game coming up next.