Happy New Year's Eve!

From our stories about some notable New Year's Eve moments in our lives to talk about everything from Obamacare to the Big Red (including Ritchie in Papillion), here's our final show of 2025.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Jim, I have a question for you. You can think
about it, or if you have a knee jerk reaction,
then hit me right between the eyes with it.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
So it's ready.

Speaker 1 (00:07):
It's midnight, people are shouting Happy New Year, and you're
having one of the best nights of your life. Where
are you? What year is it, how old are you?
What's going on? Do you have a knee jerk reaction
to that?

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Um? Do you want to think about it for? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (00:21):
Yeah, because I mean there's been so many. All right,
I've got one. I have a few. Here's one I
will share. The year is It's New Year's Eve from
nineteen ninety It's spent a lot of time in the nineties. Yeah,
I like the nineties. You like mister nineteen eighty five?
It said so in my yearbook, Oh did you graduate? No,

(00:41):
I graduated in nineteen ninety five. There was a picture
of me dressed in a retro outfit and it said
Scott Vhees, mister nineteen eighty five. It was not intended
to be a compliment. I loved it. So it's From
nineteen ninety eight to nineteen ninety nine, Chris Baker was
on the radio in Kansas City, and he was taking

(01:01):
the time off there in that week between Christmas and
New Year's and he wanted me to come work with him.
Now he had gone to Kansas City. I had stayed
in Nebraska. I tried a few different things here, decided
to go back to college. So I'm sitting there, Carney,
and suddenly the radio guys in Kansas City call me
and say, hey, you're not doing anything constructive the week
between Christmas and New year is how about come down

(01:21):
here to Kansas City. Will put you up in a hotel.
I was twenty one twenty two years I was twenty
two years old. We'll put you up in a hotel
and you can host the afternoon show on seven to
ten KCMO radio the entire week. And I said, absolutely,
tell me where to be, what time, and what to wear.
And so I went down there and did radio that

(01:41):
entire week and absolutely loved it. And this is at
a time when I had left radio. I was very young,
but I'd done it for a while.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
There.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
I was doing a morning sports radio show on a
very small radio station here in town. Actually had my
name on a billboard. Twenty one years old, name on
a billboard, do you have a picture now, because I
didn't take any pictures of it, but trust me, it happened.
And I decided, you know, I'm not enamored by radio
what I'm doing right now, I'm gonna go back to

(02:14):
college and explore other options. They in Kansas City offered
me a radio job to be Chris's producer, fill in host,
and do my own Saturday morning four hour radio show.
Yeah he's your dad. Yeah, well he's older brother. No,
he's who I act like his older brother a lot
of the time.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
And I listened to that show that you had on
Saturday mornings from time to time. That was, yeah, seven
to ten k cmos.

Speaker 1 (02:36):
Yeah, the Saturday morning open phones where my producer, Bruce,
I'd be sitting there and it'd be like ten minutes
past the hour. We're supposed to go on at five
or six past the hour, but Bruce had put a
bunch of commercials in there as filler so he could
be out on the back dock smoking longer.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
And I'm yelling at him, Hey, Bruce, let's go. We
got radio to do.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
It's like, why do you care it's six o'clock on
Saturday morning. I took it very seriously had a so
they offered me the job.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
I took it.

Speaker 1 (03:03):
I pulled out of all my classes right at the
last second. There at Carney, they're calling attendance. Just a
few weeks later and they're like, where's Varheez. Everyone thought
I died. And I took the job in Kansas City
and decided this is my career. So New Year's Eve
I finished that New Year's Eve show, no show. On
New Year's Day, I drive back. My friends are gathered

(03:24):
at Midland in Fremont. A bunch of people are living
in this house at twelfth and D in Fremont. They
rented this house after what happened at New Year's Eve
that night. They did not get their security deposit back.
At midnight, my buddy Tony and a bunch of other
idiots are spraying. They're shaking up bottles of champagne and

(03:46):
spraying it all over the ceilings we're inside. Champagne is
dripping from the ceiling. Champagne is soaking what passes for
the bear carpet in this place. We are trashing the
place and ourselves, laughing and smiling, and girls are looking
at us like, you guys are the biggest bunch of
idiots I have ever seen, and we were having a

(04:07):
great time. And I'll never forget that image by Bunny
Tony just spraying. He never looked so happy in his life.
He's spraying champagne over the house that he's paying rent to,
over the security deposit he is bound to lose. I'm
sure that property, if it hasn't been condemned, still has
the faint smell of really really bad champagne from that night.

(04:29):
And that's when I decided, Yep, this is going to
be my future. That is one of the greatest New
Year's Eves I ever had.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
That's a good one. That's that's hard to that's hard
to top that one. You got one. Well, it was
y two k down in Phoenix for the Fiesta Bowl.
We played Tennessee and you know, things are going fine
and we kicked them around pretty well and finished up
the season with only one loss and number two in
the polls. And I was at a New Year's Eve
party at a very very nice home at Astancia. And

(04:58):
for you people who are familiar with the Eyes and
area Phoenix, you know about Astancia. Yeah, Well, the guy
who owned the house is a friend of mine named
Dale Jensen passed away this year, Nebraska business, big guy.
And we looked out over the valley, you know, and uh,
this is y two K and we're coming to the
end of the millennium, right, And we looked out over

(05:18):
the entire beautiful valley with his spectacular view is Infinity
Pool and all this other good stuff. Wow. And I
asked him, you know this has to be pretty cool, Dale,
how did you do this? And he replied, I have
three three keys to life, and it has to do
with whether it flies, whether it floats, or whether it

(05:41):
succumbs to coitus. And he said, if you if you
want to get rich in this world, Jimbo, for those
three things, you know, if it flies, if it and
it floats, rent it. Wow.

Speaker 1 (05:54):
That's surprisingly good advice. He's been through several divorces.

Speaker 2 (05:59):
He is you up listening to this? I didn't say it.
I thought I'd leave this to your imagination. But that's
the most memorable thing I remember on New Year's Ease,
because for most of my twenties and thirties, New Year's
Eves are a blur to men.

Speaker 3 (06:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:12):
Yeah, we stayed out late.

Speaker 1 (06:13):
Yeah, so it's it's y two K. Remember everyone thought
the world was going to end right. All the computers
were going to shut down, and the planes were going
to come crashing into the ocean or slimming into each other,
and nothing would work and all of our money would
be gone. People were running on the banks and extracting
all of their funds. I don't know if it's all

(06:34):
going to be there. As so happens. Nothing happened. Can
you name any one thing that happened twenty what would
now be twenty six years ago? With that, turning to
the calendar page from nineteen ninety nine to two thousand
that resonates at all, nothing it was, I started calling

(06:54):
it new Coke two K all hype. Absolutely nothing happened, big, big, nothing.
But I was up late watching it because Y two
K new Year's Eve from ninety nine to two thousand
was a Friday night. As I mentioned a moment ago,
I did the Saturday morning radio show and it was
New Year's Day, and I made the afore mentioned laziest
producer in radio, Bruce God love him, get up early

(07:17):
on New Year's Day because we were going to be
on to survey the damage, you know, the score. I
was wondering, like, am I going to be able to
get to work with all the riots going on and
there'll be police barricades. I had a whole plan in place,
like what if I can't get in?

Speaker 2 (07:32):
What if? What if the roads collapse? I don't know.
I suddenly all of the bridges, bridges will come down,
just because it's Y two K, right.

Speaker 1 (07:38):
So I'm watching Dick Clark New Year's Rock and Eve
from I'm still doing it then, and just a moment
or so before midnight New York time, because there were
a lot of people concerned about terrorism and Times Square
that night with the big Y two K, and there
were people packed in Times Square, but they were nervous,

(08:01):
and so there was suddenly a stretch where you saw
everyone there on Times Square, the cameras showing the entire
crowd there on was.

Speaker 2 (08:08):
I guess ABC is what Nick Clark was on.

Speaker 1 (08:11):
And suddenly everyone in the crowd whipped their heads around
with a look almost to panic, and you could hear huh,
you know, go across the crowd, and I thought, here
we go, what's going on? Well, what was going on
was the big Price Waterhouse ball on top of the
Times Square tower. There had started to light up and
begin its descent, and for a second there I thought, Oh,

(08:33):
here we go. Nothing happened other than it was New
Year's Day and I had nothing to talk about that morning.

Speaker 2 (08:40):
No, nothing happened. I think that the one of the
things you should learn about New Year's is trying not
to have to go to work the next day, because
in nineteen eighty nine I was working in Wichita on
television and I got absolutely wrecked on New Year's Eve forgetting,
of course that the following day I had to do
a coach's TV show. Yeah in the morning at the

(09:00):
Wista State coach basketball coach, and I'm going, I don't
know how I'm gonna pull this one off. I'm gonna
need at least an inch of makeup for this one, right,
And I think the coach looked at me and said,
you look like ten miles of bad road. Thank goodness
there was no high death back then. I see.

Speaker 1 (09:18):
That's when you decide I need to get into radio.
You certainly accelerated it. No one can see me in radio.
We're wearing ties this morning, Wednesday morning. If you don't
know what day it is, you are not alone. He's
talking to my dad yesterday afternoon, and he left us
by saying, all right, guys, have a good weekend. My

(09:39):
wife said, it's Tuesday. Well it kind of has that
feeling though, right. Great to have you with us here
six thirty six on this New Year's Eve morning, I
am Scott Vorhees here with Craig Evans and Jim Rose
Sean Callahan live from Vegas in about ten twelve minutes
so here on Big Red Radio. This isra Is Morning News.

(10:01):
In addition to talking about all of the stuff and
things we're doing both this morning, also taking your emails
to Scott at kfab dot com in the Zonker's Custom
woods inbox for your New Year's Eve stories that you
feel comfortable in sharing with us. You can use a
fake name. Shannon is listening to us via iHeartRadio down

(10:22):
in textas this morning, email Scott at kfab dot com
about Y two K and says I remember having to
set old computer dates to like one nine eight zero
to prevent crashes. It was like Clark Griswold lighting his
Christmas lights. Those little lights they're not twinkling, that's right,
artin thanks for noticing.

Speaker 2 (10:42):
So we'll take your your New Year's Eve stories.

Speaker 1 (10:45):
So the setup is it's midnight, people are screaming, Happy
New Year?

Speaker 2 (10:49):
Where are you? What are you doing?

Speaker 1 (10:50):
How old are you? Give me that story? Scott at
kfab dot com. We might be about the only ones
working in town this morning. We're not the only ones unhappy.
We're actually not unhappy. I'm not on half because ever,
at the stroke.

Speaker 2 (11:06):
Of midnight tonight, about seven million Americans are going to
have their Obamacare subsidies skyrocket. Now, there are a couple
of things about this, Scott borehees, that has been lost
on the national media narrative, which shouldn't surprise anybody, and
that is there is a significant number of people on
these subsidies who ought not beyond them. And this is

(11:29):
where fraud, waste, and abuse comes in.

Speaker 1 (11:31):
And you're talking about illegal immigrants, are you talking about
those able bodied workers who are supposed to be off
and working by now, but choose not to because they
don't have that and the fraud through the system. You
may not know this, but one applicant to Obamacare used well,
I should say, I'm sorry, one social Security number applicant

(11:53):
for Obamacare subsidies was used one hundred and twenty two times.

Speaker 2 (11:58):
Okay, hey boy, have been really sick. This is the
issue we're talking about. And when the Republicans who are
accused of being evil, mean spirited pushing grandma in the
wheelchair off the cliff after feeding her cat food, this
is what they talked about in the big Beautiful Bill.
They said, what we're trying to do is preserve the
system for people who truly need it. And when you

(12:20):
have one Social Security number used one hundred and twenty
times to collect Obamacare subsidies, that's the first category. The
second category is those who can't afford it, but who
have been through the composition of the system able to
get it. This is going to drive them off of it,
and then those who shouldn't be receiving government benefits in
the first place. So it's not a big number of

(12:43):
people now in a country of three hundred and thirty
million people, it's not. To the people who are affected,
it is a big deal. But a largest number ain't
there of those who are going to be impacted by this,
Regardless of what you are told by the national media narrative,
which is that there are thousands and thousands of families
all over the country millions of families, if you will,

(13:04):
who will not be able to afford health insurance on
the stroke of midnight because of this dreadful, dreadful behavior
by the Republicans, not allowing unfettered, unreformed just continue the
system for the next three years, even though not one
Republican voted for Obamacare back in two thousand and nine,
and not one Republican voted for the subsidies that were

(13:26):
enhanced during COVID, completely unnecessary that was designed to garner
votes in the midterms of twenty twenty two by those
people who were in charge at the time, which had
a D next to their names. But this is the
larger arching arguments God, which is, we have to reform
this system to preserve it for people who truly need it,

(13:49):
and that's what this should do.

Speaker 1 (13:51):
People on the right will often point out, like everyone
is defrauding the Obamacare and the Medicare system, Medicaid system.
These are people who, like the example of Jim just gave.
Everyone on the left will say, these are hard working
people who've never made a mistake in their lives, and
suddenly their Obamacare affordable healthcare is going to go from

(14:11):
like twenty two dollars a month to three hundred and
fifty dollars a month at midnight tonight. I don't think
that wild swing has to happen. There's gotta be some
reformation though, for a situation that happens all the time.
And you've probably heard this from friends of yours who
run businesses. They have an employee, they hire them, they
start off minimum wage, They quickly work their way up

(14:32):
to like assistant manager, and then the person says, you
know what you're doing great here, I'd love to give
you more hours, more salary, more responsibilities. That like, to
make you full time, make your manager. Now it's not
a ton of money. We're working retail or restaurant or whatever,
but let's keep you moving up the ladder. And they
start doing the math and say, well, wait a second,
then i'll make too much to get the subsidies, and

(14:54):
so they don't take the job because it works out
better for them to have more kids who are paid
for by the taxpayers than when people say, like, well,
these are government subsidies. The government doesn't have the Nancy
Pelosi bikini car wash, the Chuck Schumer bikini car wash.
They don't raise money that way. It's your tax dollars.

Speaker 2 (15:14):
I'm gonna need a minute now that visual is which way,
you know what, that's your business, but Nasi Pelosi bikini
car wash.

Speaker 1 (15:23):
So we unless you would feel comfortable going up and
down your street knocking on doors and saying, hey, my
healthcare is about to go up. Can I get a
few of your dollars to help subsidizement, because that's what's happening.
What's happening when people's taxes go up, our premiums are
going up if we're not on Obamacare. And this is
kind of the way people have been taking it in
the shorts. Meanwhile, people over here who have been disincentivized

(15:46):
to get that salary job with benefits suddenly or now
in a position where, hey, there is a right way
of doing things, and this ain't it.

Speaker 2 (15:54):
And the reason that they aren't gaining or taking the benefits,
one of the reasons is because everybody's private health insurance
premiums have skyrocketed. Two, that's not part of the national narrative. Oh,
these poor folks on the Obamacare subsidies, and some of
them truly deserve it, Okay, some of them really truly
are in need and they deserve it. There is a
population of Boo Radley's out there that we need to

(16:17):
take care of, but most of them aren't. Many of
them aren't. And here's the issue. Everybody pays. Because the
government took over one sixth of the economy in two
thousand and nine by essentially changing health insurance in this country,
our premiums are up ninety percent in ten years. Ninety percent. Okay,

(16:37):
healthcare costs are higher because insurance is higher because of
the government reimbursement. Now, it's a highly complex system. It's
not just that simple. But when you remove market forces
from the economy that is driven by market competition, this
is what happens, and we have to change it. We
can't keep doing this regardless of the politics. And twenty

(16:59):
twenty six is a political year. It's the midterm year.
You've got to say, are we going to double down
on the crap sandwich we've been eating for the last
fifteen years or are we going to do something different?
That has to be the message.

Speaker 1 (17:11):
And in case you're keeping a toteboard, that is the
first Boo Radley reference in the post Saddlemeyer era. Here
on news radio eleven t KFAB special good morning, and
thanks for listening to anyone hanging out at the airport
this morning, whether you're trying to get to Vegas in
the nicked time for this game today or as was
the case this morning, I go and pick up my

(17:34):
sister and her daughter's stepsister and her daughters and take
them to the airport. And so they're piling into the
car at holy cow o clock this morning and getting
in and they said, thanks so much for taking us
to the airport. They have an early flight, and I said, absolutely,
no problem. And they said, especially since our flight's been delayed.

(17:55):
It's been changed like oh win as had been delayed
to nine, Like, why am I taking you to the
airport by five for a nine o'clock flight? Well, they
might change it back, So I said, you can come
to the radio station and hang out.

Speaker 2 (18:12):
Sure, she's absolutely not. We got a coffee bar and everything. Yeah,
we got a coffee bar. There's no coffee. We had
a coffee. Coffee. We have a bar. We a goold
have coffee. We have a place with coffee, with the
potential for a coffee. I'm probably gonna have to donate
my Carrig machine for this thing. Right now. We have
a currig machine over here. I don't know. I don't
drink coffee, so that's up to you guys. I'll work

(18:34):
on that. Yeah. Now, did you hear about the jackass
I'm sorry, the mentally disturbed guy that was on the
airplane Sunday night heading from DC to Salt Lake City
and they had to land in Omaha because he punched
out a flight attendant.

Speaker 1 (18:45):
Is that what happened? I just heard disturbance landed in Omaha.
There were a couple here surrounding Omaha just over the
last few days.

Speaker 2 (18:53):
So apparently this guy air rage. Yeah. Apparently this guy
was really losing it, and he was running up and
down the aisle and he was waving his arms like
one of those inflatable wacky waving inflatable tube man, yeah,
tube men. And they said, this is all a simulation.
This is all a simulation. Great, and people are going, okay,

(19:14):
sit down, be calm. So he stormed up and down
the aisle and then finally sat down. He took the
red pill and then got up again, and the flight
attendant said, sir, we need for you to sit down
and stop acting this way. Uh, and he stepped on
the foot of a flight attendant, which is borderline assault,
which was minimal compared to the following episode when he

(19:37):
literally punched one in the face. And that's when four passengers,
God love him, he said all right, we're sick of this.
So they pretty much manhandled the guy good uh, and
then stuffed him in a seat in the back of
the plane. And they have handcuffs, just so you know,
in case you're thinking of doing this yourself, they have
handcuffs on the plane that the flight attendants are trained
to use. So they cuffed this dude in in the seat.

(20:00):
Now I would have stuffed, you know, a sock in
his mouth too, because he was probably whaling the whole
rest of the way one of his own socks. But
at this point, that's when the pilot said, okay, now
it wasn't an emergency landing. That's a big difference. It
was a flight we're gonna we're gonna drop this guy off.
It was a flight alteration landing. And so they landed
at Eppley Airfield. Cops grabbed him, locked him up, and

(20:23):
he's gonna stay locked up. The judge said, now you're
not going anywhere. You're gonna sit in jail until your trial.
I wonder if that's part of the simulation. It might be.
But this dude, twenty five year old guy, you might say,
mental illness is the least of his problems.

Speaker 1 (20:38):
What in the world would trigger that suddenly? Like, where's
he going? I want to know what his day was
like before he got on the plane. Does he have
a job, does he have a family? Where was he
Where was he going? What was he gonna do when
he got there to Utah? Because I can't imagine that there. Well,
maybe he's going with the utes down to the football

(20:58):
game today.

Speaker 2 (20:59):
I don't I don't know. I should have dropped them
off in Grand Island and taken a NonStop from Grand
Island to Vegas.

Speaker 1 (21:05):
I don't think anyone goes through the TSA no problems.
It gets an overpriced snack and a magazine at the
Hudson News or whatever, and it gets on the plane
and then suddenly something that the wire gets frayed in
the old Medulla Oblong Gatta and he's like, ep, this
is time. I got to let people know right now
that this is a simulation.

Speaker 2 (21:24):
Just again, just so you know, in case you're thinking
of doing this once. Thank you I am all here. Yeah,
well you have that there's that strain in your DNA
that it could snap at any moment. If you are
in this place, ever, you will be on a no
fly list for the rest of your life and the
lives of your children if you have them. So it's

(21:47):
not something you want to screw around with. This isn't
a scene out of Animal House. You will literally be
banned from airports for the rest of your life. And
if you don't think that's a big deal, it is.
Here's what I'm thinking. A lot of people have it
started taking a lot of recreational drugs. Add that to

(22:08):
a lot of people also decide, if I'm getting on
a plane, I'm going across the country. This is from
where to wear a DC tosaulid. It's a long flight.
I'm just gonna, you know, pop a little. I don't
know if it's ambient or whatever, and I'm gonna go
night night here this morning. And you mix that with
the maybe some booze on the in the airport before
he took off. And you've heard some stories about people

(22:30):
getting on the ambient and mixing that with drugs and
they don't know. Stuff from page five at that point,
So maybe that maybe the guy will cal him down,
come to and be like I did what? Yeah, So
I'm just glad he didn't take off his clothes, cause
sometimes they do that too. They just stripped down and decide,
I'm gonna be me. What would you do?

Speaker 1 (22:50):
You're on the plane, this guy is flaming up and
down the aisle, punching flight attendants.

Speaker 2 (22:55):
What do you do? Well? Since I don't have my
nine milimeter with him, I can't shoot him. Since I
don't have that with me, I can't see him. I
probably would have won to fire a gun in a plane, No,
especially thirty five thousand feet. Now, I probably would have
been one of the four who said, okay, dude, you're finished.
And you would have been the fourth though you would
have made sure that he was well restrained.

Speaker 1 (23:15):
Then you go up there and you give him a kick.
Now I would have asked you. I'd have been the
second leg of the relay. Yeah, you would wouldn't have darted.

Speaker 2 (23:22):
No, I wouldn't be the first one, but i'd probably
be the second one. I wouldn't be the anchorman, but
I would probably be the second. Okay, and i'd i'd
give this guy. The bums rush down in a coach,
blop that guy down and say you're finished.

Speaker 1 (23:36):
Only emails Scott at kfab dot com, and the Zonker's
custom was inboxes. Can you request the handcuffs for the
Mile High Club? Asking for a friend? I figured every
flight had an air marshal like in Bridesmaids. Richie and Papillion,
our official Husker fan, joins us next here on Nebraska's
Morning News. All right, we're doing a special Wednesday edition

(23:57):
of this because the Huskers are playing a special game today.
This nothing more special than a bowl game.

Speaker 2 (24:02):
Right, Well, that's what it used to be.

Speaker 1 (24:05):
We'll see what our official Husker fan here on Nebraska's
Morning News thinks about that. That's Jim Rose. I'm Scott Voorhees.
We now welcome in from a town near La Vista,
just down the road from Ralston. It is Richie and Papilion.
Good morning, Richie.

Speaker 3 (24:21):
Good morning, guys. How are we doing good?

Speaker 2 (24:23):
I want to ask you this question here?

Speaker 3 (24:25):
Can I say something real quick? Please forget no happy
anniversary to my wife.

Speaker 2 (24:30):
Thirty nine? Wow, Oh my god. That's going to make
the Rosies Tournament of Rosies. At about eight to fifty
this morning. You guys got married on New Year's Eve? Yes,
we wow. Tell me about that.

Speaker 3 (24:42):
Tell me about that nineteen eighty six.

Speaker 1 (24:45):
Yeah, what what made you guys decide to get married
on New Year's Eve?

Speaker 3 (24:50):
I can't forget to date. I guess to me, at.

Speaker 1 (24:52):
Least guessing we'd uh guessing we were playing in the
Orange Bowl the following day.

Speaker 3 (24:57):
We were playing, and Giants are playing in Super A
couple of weeks later. We had to get a lot
of stuff fit in.

Speaker 2 (25:02):
Ye oh, okay, all right.

Speaker 1 (25:04):
There are Huskers out there like Latowski who say, hey,
this is a chance. You know, we were three and
nine my first season. Says uh Latowski, and I have
a chance now to play in a second straight Bowl
game for this team. Now, for us here, this collective
here this morning, that's not real special. But for these
guys who in their early twenties have never seen a

(25:27):
quality Nebraska program, a sustained quality Nebraska program, that's a
big deal for them. So what do you think about them?
And that's mindset going into today's game, I hope so.

Speaker 3 (25:39):
But for what I'm reading over the last week or so,
we've been down there partying. I mean, our coach is
ziplining over the Las Vegas and I'm a little concerned.
I don't hear anything about practicing and stuff like that.
I'm sure they were, but I hope so this might
be only a couple of players saying this. Maybe the
younger ones aren't saying this. I don't know. Bowl games

(26:00):
are crazy. Anything can happen. I would to me, this
is the start of next year, the twenty sixth season.
If we can pull this game out, it's going to
like the recruiting and portal and all of that stuff.
I mean, this can be a real especially with a
fourteen point spread. Utah's got a lot of people that
are out, so do we. But this is an opportunity

(26:22):
for us. But this ziplining and partying that I'm hearing
about is very concerning. So we'll see.

Speaker 2 (26:27):
Well, uh, I think this is a legitimate concern, Richie,
on the part of a lot of Husker fans who
have gone from being skeptical to cynical after that Iowa
game and bowl games around here for all those years
were very, very important. In some cases. Coach Osman said,
if I didn't win the bowl game, I wasn't going
to keep my job. So we always treated this bowl

(26:49):
game very seriously, regardless of what the bowl was and
who we were playing. I don't know that that's the
case anymore. And if that's the case, you're going to
see sloppy play and who knows what else.

Speaker 3 (27:01):
It's not the case anymore because of the play. Weff
nobody cares about ball games anymore. Let's be honest, we
care about it a little more right now because we're
back in ball games, which we weren't for a while.
So basically, the country doesn't care about ball games. They
care about the playoff games, and that's really got to
be the goal. So we'll see what happens. This is
a very anyway. What's a youth? You got youth? What's

(27:24):
a youth?

Speaker 2 (27:26):
It's a Joe Pesci term meaning youth.

Speaker 3 (27:29):
Then you get that.

Speaker 2 (27:30):
There you go.

Speaker 3 (27:31):
They're very good foot they're very good football team. So
you know, we can match up in certain things. You know,
we got to win these trenches tonight this afternoon, and
they're good. But you know, there's a lot of things
that can go our way, especially with the young running backs,
and they don't stop the run very well. Their secondary

(27:51):
is very good, so we're not going to throw a lot.
I think our quarterback is going to be a key
for our offense if he's healthy and we can run
those RPOs. That's that's gonna be huge. And their coach
didn't That coach just like leave him, which is I
got a big problem with that also.

Speaker 1 (28:04):
Well it sounds like he might be leaving him for no,
he is leaving him from Michigan.

Speaker 2 (28:09):
But he had gone. Yeah he's gone, but he had
he had declared his resignation after the bowl game. They'd
already has signed the head coach, permanent.

Speaker 3 (28:17):
Head coach walk out on your team?

Speaker 2 (28:19):
Well is he not? Is he not coaching today? I
don't know if he's going to be there. But the
staff had been established before he took the job in Michigan,
so there's a minimal disruption.

Speaker 3 (28:28):
That's just wrong. It's no leadership, you know. I just
don't understand what's going on with coaches and even players,
you know, just leaving after they got to do something
with this, because it's ruined in college football, it really is.

Speaker 2 (28:40):
Yeah, Chie, and.

Speaker 3 (28:41):
Kind of contracts with something. Something's got to be changed.

Speaker 2 (28:44):
Ritchie, I had to check myself.

Speaker 1 (28:45):
I thought, you know what I think after you got
married nineteen eighty six and that next day Nebraska was
playing in the Sugar Bowl where we beat LSU.

Speaker 2 (28:54):
But that was before you were a Husker fan.

Speaker 3 (28:56):
You weren't really a hust wasn't My first Husky game
was game when we won the national championship. Oh, the
first game I remember watching.

Speaker 1 (29:04):
All Right, Well, it's not a national championship, not a
national championship today, But go big Red, Reggie, have a
happy New Year. We'll talk to you in twenty twenty six.
Who's your local person of the year for twenty twenty five.
It's a tough one. Even if you look at the
national Bud, Yeah, Bud Crawford.

Speaker 2 (29:23):
Good.

Speaker 1 (29:23):
I mean, they can also be a good and bad thing, Terrence.
Bud Crawford dominated the headlines for his domination in the ring,
and then dominated the headlines for his misssteps out of
the ring. Most of the guys around him, but he's
ultimately the man had a parade in his honor. Hard
not to honor Bud Crawford as the local person of

(29:46):
the year. He's the local person of the year.

Speaker 2 (29:48):
To me, I think you also got the triumvirant of
big retirements here in town there with John Nicely, Gary
Sadelemeyer and Rob McCartney in that order, from when they
started retiring.

Speaker 1 (29:59):
With those people are in importantly unimportant. On the other hand,
that's what makes them so great. They feel that way
about themselves. But I love those guys.

Speaker 2 (30:08):
You know you're talking about between those three guys, you're
talking almost one hundred and fifty years of broadcasting experience
just in Omaha. So you know, they're very familiar dudes,
and they don't get replaced tomorrow. I don't know. I
don't know. Gary's going to be around. He'll be on
the air from time to time. He hears a voice
on the commercial.

Speaker 1 (30:27):
It's been texting us all morning, so he can pop
in anytime he wants, and I wish he would.

Speaker 2 (30:32):
I said, if you're going to be up, make yourself
useful and get me a bagel. So he hasn't done
that yet. But you know, John Niceley's probably drifted more
into retirement than most of them. I think he's spending
a lot of his time in Texas now around family,
which is fine. And we'll see about McCartney. See if
we pick him up on skid row here in about
two or three months because he's going to be looking

(30:53):
for something to do.

Speaker 1 (30:54):
Rob McCartney is going to be on skid row Where
is Omaha's skid row.

Speaker 2 (30:59):
He'll have a a bottle of muscatel on a brown
bag hasn't shaved in a couple of hours.

Speaker 1 (31:04):
You know, all of that just north of coming downtown.
That's where it all used to be. Is That's that's
where you'll find Rob mccarton.

Speaker 3 (31:12):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (31:13):
The national story of the year. AI is the national
story of the year. It's not a person, but nothing
dominated the news. I mean even Trump to Taylor Swift's
engagement to an NFL player, Oh that was huge. But
AI is the ultimate now House guest was this was
this was sitting at the dinner table every night. It

(31:35):
follows you to work. It has a tremendous, tremendous pull
on on venture capital right now. I mean trillions of
dollars have been spent, both public and private on AI infrastructure,
meaning building data centers, building transmission lines, energy sources for
these things. Where does it go? You better embrace it.

(31:55):
It's a little bit like the dot com internet craze
of the nineteen nineties. It's not going away, not how
do you manage it and how do you find your
opportunity in it?

Speaker 1 (32:05):
Yeah, it can. I think AI is useful for some
busy tasks. O sure that I don't want to do.
I told the story recently here on the radio that
a couple of weeks ago, I had a corporate task.
I had to fill some stuff out in a spreadsheet.
I've done this a million times, but for some reason
this time, it wouldn't let me advance until I wrote
five hundred words on this subject that only I thought

(32:26):
and previously required two sentences. So okay, AI, give me
five hundred words on this topic.

Speaker 2 (32:34):
Here you go.

Speaker 1 (32:35):
And I looked at it and said, this is fantastic
copy paste. Move on with my life done. I like that.
I don't like the idea of AI coming for a
lot of people's jobs. But I don't know that AI
is the biggest story of the year. I think the
biggest story of the year is Trump, an absolute juggernaut.
Every day, there was like nineteen different things from stuff

(32:59):
that he was doing. By the way, these are the
things he campaigned and said, you elect me, this is
what I'll do. Then he actually went out and started
doing those things. People got all mad. Yeah, he's deporting
bad guys. He's blowing up Narco terrorists. He says, I
want Greenland. He negotiated peace in the Middle East.

Speaker 2 (33:14):
He's gone, my be he's gone to a budget like
buckshot through a Christmas goose yee.

Speaker 1 (33:19):
Elon Muska is in the White House with a chainsaw,
and they're trying to get all that stuff out here there.
We might finally be dismantling Obamacare. When people realize as
of midnight tonight, wow, I can't afford this. This was
a bad deal. I didn't realize there was taxpayer subsidies
so much. He blew up half of Iran. Yeah, then
he'd go on truth social and started early in the
morning and just start lighting up social media day and night.

(33:42):
I mean, people, you you could have your head on
a swivel and still not keep up with everything this
guy does. And that's only like Tuesday before ten am.
How is the juggernaut of Trump.

Speaker 2 (33:55):
Not the story of the year. Well, it's it's maybe
not necessarily try itself. It's what Trump has been doing.
Because we're all pretty familiar with the president. He's been
in our he's been in pretty much our field of vision.
For ten years now and he hasn't even attempted to
go away from it. You gotta admit, we've never had

(34:15):
a president that does his job like he's double parked
like this guy. There are about five balls in the
air every minute of every day, and from the Middle
East all the way to fraud in Minnesota, and he
doesn't care what people think, and he's not politically correct.
When he said we need to send every Somali back
to Somalia, that was a sweeping generalization of an entire

(34:40):
class of immigrants, many of whom are productive people in
this country. That wasn't even the most infuriating thing he
said that that hour. Probably so, but he's he's redefined
the presidency, especially for Republicans. And now you wonder will
the Republican Party in twenty twenty six be able to
convince the American people that were on the right track.
Even if you're not feeling it now, I think a

(35:02):
lot of Americans will feel it before election day. I
think the Big Beautiful Bill is going to have a
really large impact, especially on business, because there are some
provisions in that build and it was so big that
there was no way to illuminate all of them. There
are some provisions in that bill that will be very
favorable to business. When you talk about the individual personal
exemption and some of the other components of this bill

(35:25):
that will have an impact on American families directly. I
think they'll start to say, hey, we like the sound
of this. I think they like the fact that when
you put more cops on the street, people are safer,
and that wasn't happening before. The narrative has been and
will continue to be by the left and the Democrat
Party it's about Donald Trump. He's the problem. We represent

(35:47):
Rosie O'Donnell's view of how to run the country, and
that is just get rid of this guy. Well, the
American people are going no, no, no, hold on. There's more
to it than that. What about the fraud? This fraud
and abuse stuff is good for Democrats because they're the
ones that wanted to expand it. They're the ones that
didn't want to touch it. They're the ones that shut
down the government over it. But when you see twenty

(36:10):
billion dollars and that's just in one state disappear, we
haven't even talked about California, New York, Illinois or some
of these other big blue states that have just hemorrhaged
federal social money for a long time. Where is that?
If you did a performance audit of the state of California,

(36:31):
you don't want to know how many billions of dollars
have been lost in California over their medicaid, their medicare.
They have the thing called Calcare there, which is state
funded medicare. Essentially, let's talk about all of the support
for illegals in California, to say nothing of the supertrain
between Los Angeles and San Francisco, for which there's yet

(36:52):
to be one mile of track used.

Speaker 1 (36:54):
I love your assessment, Jim, of Trump doing business like
he's double parts. Yeah, it's hard not to have a
ticking clock in your head when you only got so
long until the midterms. You might lose power people in
your own party like Marjorie Taylor Green and Thomas Massy
Year deciding to switch their votes, and you've got everyone,
including the Nation of Iran, trying to assassinate you. Jim,

(37:16):
I'm not looking to argue with your assessment that AI
is the biggest story of the year. I think the
biggest story of the year, though, is Trump. The entire
Trump sphere which is just like it's fire hose coming
at you from seventeen different angles every moment of the day.
Whether that's a good or a bad thing, it's hard
not to say everything revolves around everything that guy does
and says. Story one A for this past year, I

(37:40):
think has yet to have the full ramifications felt. This
is going to be something that builds like a snowball
rolling downhill for years to come. And that's the assassination
of Charlie Kirk in the impact it had on young people.
There are a lot of people who loved watching Charlie
Kirk's videos or came to those videos after the assassination

(38:02):
like all right, why was this guy so bad? And
they found him not only to be the kind of
person and maybe the only person who would have asked
that shooter to come down off that perch and say
grab a microphone. You've got the entire audience here and
a group of people watching online, let's talk, let's share ideas,
and for that he got killed and they're watching these

(38:23):
things going not only do I think this guy's kind
of funny, he's also on point with a lot of
these things.

Speaker 2 (38:29):
He's saying.

Speaker 1 (38:30):
The young people who watched that the most this past year.
They're not voting age yet. This is something here that
I think is really going to see a big impact
in twenty twenty eight. So that Charlie Kirk, I think
of story one to A for the past year.

Speaker 2 (38:44):
Well, to steal a line from the assassination of Martin
Luther King, you can kill the dreamer, but you can't
kill the dream And his dream was that we would
have an intelligent generation of people who would stop for
just a second looking at social media, actually challenge their
own views and engage in a conversation. He won about

(39:05):
every argument that Turning Point USA allowed him to have
over the last ten or fifteen years as he built
the organization because he used conservative logic and biblical foundations
for his belief system, and you can't argue with those,
or you just say I don't believe in God, so
you're full of But I do think it has had

(39:27):
an impact on this and that is a dramatic revival
of spirituality and actually religious practice by Generation Z. There
are countless examples of how their parents it up for them,
everything from no fault divorce to the credit card to

(39:47):
everything else. But they've overcome that, and I think turning
Point USA and Charlie Kirk's capacity to reach young people
not just on college campuses, but virally through his YouTube channel,
you know, his podcasts is really truly making a difference.
And that to me is the most hopeful sign of
twenty twenty five. Yeah, that we are seeing young people

(40:09):
realize it's not about themselves. It's not about the credit card,
and it's not about all of these very very synthetic,
completely unimportant components of their life. It's about, hey, I
gotta have somebody leading me the way.

Speaker 1 (40:24):
There were also a bunch of young people who saw,
in some cases parents or family members and teachers say
some really hideous, ugly things after Charlie Kirk was assassinated,
and those kids were watching and they were not impressed.

Speaker 2 (40:36):
Exactly.

Speaker 1 (40:36):
Biggest non story the past year, Epstein, No question, nobody
cares by far. And that's all I think I need
to say. Here's some news that I'm sure will impact
your holidays and weekend. You know that President Trump has said,
all right, travel ban for anyone coming from these countries.
Well two of these countries have said, oh yeah, oh yeah,
we're going to have a reciprocal travel ban. We don't

(40:58):
want anyone from America here. And those countries are the
South bardon me, West African nations of Mali and Burkina Fasso.
I thought Burkina Fasso was a Star Wars character. Wasn't
that one of the guys in Jab of the huts
Layer pretty or maybe in that that uh Cantina. I
so Mali and Burkina Fasso yesterday said fine, we're going

(41:23):
to ban US citizens from entering our countries. I don't
know how many US citizens were like, oh man, now
want a I gonna tell my kids. We still got
a few days a holiday before they go back to college.
We were going to spend some time in Burkina Fasso
in West Africa. But if that impacts your travel plants

(41:44):
this week now, I'll just do a staycation. Beautiful weather
here for the days ahead. President Trump shared an image
on truth social yesterday of a dead bird beneath a
wind turbine and said, windmills are killing all of our
beautiful ball eagles.

Speaker 2 (42:01):
They were bald eagles.

Speaker 1 (42:02):
No, a couple of problems with this. It wasn't a
bald eagle. It was a falcon, and it wasn't in America.
It was in Israel, and so people are making fun
of the President for that. But even you know, the
newspapers have to admit that there are nature officials in America,
and since they posted this picture in Israel there who

(42:26):
say that these turbines do cause significant damage to.

Speaker 2 (42:29):
Birds and bats.

Speaker 1 (42:30):
Yeah, not just the turbines, but also those solar panels
as well. Cook up a bald eagle at you know,
five hundred feet flying over one of those things. It's
like flying through a microwave. So a bald eagle.

Speaker 2 (42:44):
Flying five hundred feet from a solar farm will be
cooked like Kentucky fried chicken.

Speaker 1 (42:49):
Basically, it's like putting a bald eagle through one of
those those fry cookers.

Speaker 2 (42:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:54):
I don't think it works that way, but I'm going
to say it does if you can't prove me wrong.
There is an immutable fact that the left really doesn't understand,
or refuses to embrace or simply exhibit, and that is
that if wind turbines really truly were an alternative source
of fuel, the oil companies would have them every five

(43:18):
feet in Texas. In Texas and Oklahoma they do well.

Speaker 2 (43:22):
Not you'd think so, but not as many, and the
only reason they're down there is to run the oil
pumps because in many cases those oil fields are not
on the grid, so you don't have any other power
to get to them, and they fail anytime toxtably gets chili. Yeah,
So the only reason we have these in certain parts
of the country is to run the oil rigs that

(43:43):
pull the stuff out of the ground. Because it wouldn't
you think that if these were truly a profitable, be
a long lasting and sustainable source of energy, the energy
companies would be investing in them. But they're not, and
that's because they aren't. When you consider how much oil
it takes to put one of those turbines up, and

(44:06):
you consider the environmental impact of what happens when we
retire one, it makes no sense to have them anywhere
in the world. And Europe, which used to put them
in the North Atlantic Ocean all the time, not anymore.
Everybody's going back to nuclear And to me, the AI
boom that's coming Scott probably over the next five to

(44:28):
ten years really ramping up because the cap X is
happening now, and then we'll build them and then we'll
see Yeah, all these data centers. Yeah, the best, and
I'm not a big fan of data centers unless they
have their own energy source they don't, which they don't.
But my hope is that the best thing that comes
from the explosion in AI and the need for us

(44:49):
to power these data centers and all of this new
technology is that we will a rebuild the electrical grid
because right now we don't have the capacity to send
it hardly anywhere. And two we will begin to develop
alternative energy sources. Now remember it's not clean energy, it's
alternative energy, but nuclear is clean energy. And these data

(45:10):
centers cannot use the electric grid that we have in
our country now and sustain it plus growth, whether it's
population growth, business growth, industrial growth, whatever it is, they
can't do it. They've got to have their own source.
So either we're going to come up with something else,
or we're really truly going to re embrace nuclear energy,
which is what has been happening in Asia and Europe.

(45:31):
This is the only part of the world that hasn't
gotten into bed with nuclear power in the last ten years,
and it's because of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. They're very expensive,
but once they're build and paid for, they are cash machines. Well,
and I don't mind the wind turbine farms if I'm

(45:51):
driving I do in some remote ahatum of like northwest Texas,
where there are a billion of them.

Speaker 1 (45:56):
We're going to do with them. But I don't live there,
so I don't care. But hey, but if I live,
If I lived, if I lived in Avoca, Iowa, where
these turbines have changed the landscape there, and there are
people who live within the vicinity of them, saying I
hear them drives me crazy, then I'd have very different
feelings about it.

Speaker 2 (46:18):
We forget number one, just how awful and dreadful these
are for the environment. Once we retire one, what do
you do with it? It's like an electric car battery.
What do you do with this? We have enough problems
with landfills now. But when you tear one of those
things down after ten or fifteen years, because that's the
lifespan of one of those gigantic wind turbines, it's about

(46:38):
ten years.

Speaker 1 (46:38):
Well, I hear that already, you do. You got to
stick them somewhere. I hear that argument. They can't be recycled,
you can't fix them up. How many of these state
of the art windmills from one hundred years ago. The
arrow motors they're still up. They're still up. So can't
these things last for a little longer than five to
ten years?

Speaker 2 (46:57):
I think we can agree that a windmill and hooker
counting that was put up by a pioneer in the
eighteen hundreds, which generates a little bit of water for
cattle that are grazing out there, that's a pastoral, bucolic
image of America, not one of these gigantic, white, ugly
rested out turbines that's sitting on a third of an acre,
killing birds and requiring more energy to put it up

(47:19):
than it creates.

Speaker 1 (47:20):
You put me on a golf course with an old
windmill somewhere on the golf course. I'm a happy god
Hills Club number eighteen there it is okay. Put me
on a golf course that I actually get invited to
and can play. I was thinking the wild horse in Gothenberg.

Speaker 2 (47:33):
It's another one. They've got one.

Speaker 1 (47:34):
It occurred to me that the West African nations of
Mali and Burkina fasso that sound like a drug and
a Star Wars character saying, well, if Trump's not going
to let any people from these nations come to our
countries and we're not going to let anyone from America
come to our countries. That's kind of the same thing

(47:54):
as me saying, look, I'm taking a stand. I am
not going to date Taylor Swift, not going to do it,
and you can't talk me into this, no, thank you.
So you know, it's pretty much I think the same
impact as the Burkina Fasso say we don't want anyone
from America either.

Speaker 2 (48:13):
How much of a circus is that wedding going to
be the Travis Kelcey Tater Swift wedding. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (48:18):
Beuh, it'll be a long list of celebrity guys. When
they say, does anyone here have.

Speaker 2 (48:24):
To be a stadium full of people raising their hand?

Speaker 1 (48:26):
That's gonna be fun. Does anyone hear have any reason
why these two should not win? You'll have all of
our celebrity boyfriends over the years say yeah, I want.
And then you'll have everyone in the NFL who knows
that this distraction caused the Chiefs and especially Travis Kelcey,
to be awful this pass goodyear. Kelsey did not every
time I turn on the TV, I saw I'm dropping football.

Speaker 2 (48:46):
He still caught a lot of passes. No, he didn't.
I don't think he caught a single pass this year.

Speaker 3 (48:51):
Now.

Speaker 1 (48:51):
Granted, all the other NFL teams, especially in the AFC West,
will say let them get married, this is great.

Speaker 2 (48:56):
Well, I know that people are gonna say, Rosie, get
your cataracts. I don't find her that physically attractive. I
find her to be an excellent singer songwriter. I don't
know that she has the world's greatest voice, but I
think her songs are terrific. I don't find her to
be that physically attractive. Now, maybe Travis Kelcey, who has
dated many attractive women down through the speaking of those

(49:17):
who may protest this wedding, yeah, how about his former girlfriends.
He may be looking for something entirely different. Perhaps money,
perhaps fame. Perhaps you know, here's my chance to be
the guy that gets to go home with Taylor Swift
every night. Right, But you know this, I don't I

(49:37):
saw this as a great romance because it was a
combination of celebrities, but marriage, you know, kids, dirty socks
putting up with it. I just don't know that Travis
Kelcey and Taylor Swift are the kind of personalities that
can live with the other one.

Speaker 1 (49:53):
Hey, I see a couple of crazy kids who are
taking steps towards marriage, and I wish them the best. Least,
you know, for two people's influential as them, they are,
at least they're not just having babies going we don't
care about marriage. Taylor Swift just gave out a bunch
of cash bonuses to the concession stand workers and other
workers at Arrowhead Stadium who had to be down there

(50:14):
on Christmas Day so the Chiefs could barely play against
the Broncos in that game. She's given out cash bonuses.
They talked to some woman on the news down there
who got the equivalent of like two months paychecks in
cash from Taylor Swift.

Speaker 2 (50:27):
So I like her. I think she's one of the
truly great musicians of her time.

Speaker 1 (50:33):
But if you're gonna say, like I don't find her attractive,
then I'm going to have to find out. You know what,
our barometery here is, who do you find physically attracted.

Speaker 2 (50:43):
As a celebrity? Sure, someone we know hmm. Elizabeth Hurley,
Elizabeth Hurley now or Elizabeth Hurley Austin Powers, Elizabeth Hurley before, during,
and after.

Speaker 1 (50:56):
Okay, okay, yeah, baby, that's an example, all right, just
throw that out there, all right, just making sure as
a celebrity. Yeah, the Tony the Tiger Bowl, Tony the
Tiger's Sun Bowl. I don't know if I can watch
that one. I'll be watching the Frankenberry Bowl that's on
right after the Snap Crackle and Pop Bowl, but before
the two Can Sam Bowl.

Speaker 2 (51:15):
Did you see the pop Tart Bowl? The pop tared
Bowl is the fun one because the winning team gets
to eat the mascot. Yeah, the mascot is running around
and he's got a real pop tart on, and so
the winning team just grabs onto him and just starts
ripping him limb from limb and stuffing it in. Even
though we know that the pop tart might be the

(51:35):
greatest junk food ever invented, do we have a favorite
pop tart? Because there is hands down cinnamon brown sugar.

Speaker 1 (51:41):
Yes, cinnamon cinnamon brown sugar is the best pop tart
of all time. Other ones are fine, Yeah, s'mores has
jumped up, maybe better than strawberry, but cinnamon brown sugar popped.
You know, there are some people eat pop tarts without
the frosting on top.

Speaker 2 (51:54):
But what kind of communist. Are they Why why that
person is should be jailed? Why would you do that?
Jim Rose?

Speaker 1 (52:01):
What grade would you give Nebraska's football season here on
this game day? C?

Speaker 2 (52:06):
Minus? Yeah? To me, it was not a season of progression.

Speaker 1 (52:11):
Does the fact that our starting quarterback getting injured for
the last part of the year does that change anything
in your mind?

Speaker 2 (52:18):
It doesn't, because I mean I felt like Penn State
was going to be a tough game to win anyway,
and Iowa was going to be tough for Nebraska regardless
of who the quarterback was, because we had trouble stop
in the run and that was going to be hard,
especially on a rough winter day, which it was. This
to me, and I know a lot of people think

(52:39):
this was progress when you've got thirty plus bowl games,
I don't think making a bowl game has nearly the
significance it once did. Yeah, but not making it has
a bunch of significance. But when you're talking about a
minimum of six wins to qualify, and in some cases
teams with losing records got in because others opted out,
like Kansas State and Iowa State. And now you know why,

(53:00):
because Ia States down to like eight players on the
roster I'll play. I'm not sure that going to a
bowl game. I think it's great for the kids because
it's a reward for the kids. They get to have
a good time. There's additional per diem in addition to
a lot of uh swag from the various hosts cities.
So for the kids, it's great to go. But I

(53:21):
don't know that you measure progress anymore by going to
a bowl game. That's Jim Rose's opinion. This was the
easiest schedule in decades, and I mean decades. They go
seven and five with a very good chance of going
seven and six. To me, that's not progress. But I
don't get to decide. I get to decide for me
nobody else.

Speaker 1 (53:41):
We had Richie and Papilion, our official Husker fan on
here in the last hour, and if you missed any
of that, or actually any of the show, we'll post
it in podcast form on the morning News podcast link
at kfab dot com. He was making a big deal
out of you know rules out there, you know, doing
the zip line and players are all gooping around. Now
you got to do some of that with the bowl season.

Speaker 2 (54:02):
Now.

Speaker 1 (54:03):
I don't remember coach Osburn writing I don't say Frank Zipline,
Frank Davanney or Osbourne getting on a zip line with
the Superman theme flying over. You know, Matt rules a
different personality, and I know a lot of Husker fans
are a little bit skeptical about this. They're going, wait
a minute, you know this this program isn't making the
progress that we were promised. And if you recalled in

(54:25):
August the direct quote from this head coach, we are
a damn good football team. They did not play like
a damn good football team, so obviously it's not the
player's fault.

Speaker 2 (54:37):
I think you're welcome to ride ziplines when you're in
the playoffs. I think you're welcome to ride ziplines when
you beat ranked teams. I think you're, you know, allowed
to ride ziplines without any skepticism when the performance on
the field is better. He got really chippy when they
said this is a reset. Well, you've you're going to
overhaul your roster again and you fired three coaches. I'm

(54:58):
not sure what you're define of a reset is, but
to the average Nebraska and that sounds a lot like
a reset, which means what's been going on for the
last three years. I get all of the vagaries of
the game today completely different from what they were even
ten years ago. But it's not a money problem at Nebraska,
and it wasn't a schedule problem this year. And I

(55:20):
really don't even think it was much of an injury problem.
We didn't have a lot of guys. You know, the
quarterback was out for the last fourth of the season.
We didn't have a lot of guys. Key guys miss
this year. Everybody plays hurt if you're not. If you're
not sore or hurt in the month of November, it's
because you aren't playing. But this twenty twenty six is
going to be a more challenging schedule, and there's going

(55:43):
to be a lot of onus placed on now closing
out deals against good teams. And the four big ten
wins Nebraska got came against teams that finished the year
two for their last twenty seven.

Speaker 1 (55:57):
I talked to Eric Crouch fears ago. We were honoring
the nineteen ninety seven national championship team, and I wanted
to get his perspective because he wasn't even playing.

Speaker 2 (56:08):
He was on the team.

Speaker 1 (56:09):
He was he was the heir apparent, you know, coming
up through the pipelines correct, and I don't know that anyone,
you know, pegged him to be a Heisman Trophy winner
in a few years.

Speaker 2 (56:18):
At that point, I thought of he had a shot
at it. And I watched him play quarterback at Millard North,
which is a very similar offense.

Speaker 1 (56:26):
I got a real good look at Watchington play for
Millard North. We played him in Ralston, never tackle him. Well,
we're looking at him, you know, going behind this quarterback,
this sophomore is supposed to be a big deal. And
then we couldn't catch him all day and I realized, oh,
so he's pretty good.

Speaker 2 (56:42):
Also more I more physically tough than people think I taught.

Speaker 3 (56:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (56:46):
I talked to Crouch about his recollection of that year,
watching it from perspective. He did, and he said, my
biggest memory of that season was it's the night before
the bowl game. We're playing Tennessee and I'm the next day,
I'm not suiting up, I'm not playing, and so I
was out having fun.

Speaker 2 (57:04):
He was red shirt.

Speaker 1 (57:05):
Yeah, I was out having fun and I snuck into
the hotel after curfew. Coach Osburn found out about it,
and he sat me down and he lit me up,
like I was the starting quarterback for the game that day, saying, look,
and Osburn was retiring his way out, he wasn't even
gonna be there. But he said, you know, the leadership

(57:26):
that you showed today is going to take you through
the next few years here with this football program. And
this is an expectation of you. And you've really disappointed me.
And he said Coach Osburn made him feel like he
was about a half inch tall, and he thought, wow,
I didn't even know Coach Osburn really knew who I
was at that point, and it should have been the
last thing on his mind before playing Tennessee for the

(57:48):
National championship. Screw Michigan. But you know, Eric Crouch said,
I'll never forget that, and it set the tone for
the rest of his life.

Speaker 2 (57:56):
It did, and that's because that was the culture of
expectation here. But in the year twenty twenty five, when
the players are referring to the head coach by the
name Matt, I don't think they did that with bo.
I haven't heard him do that. Yeah. No, we had
the defensive line, guys, because he took over coaching the
defensive line for the bowl game. Because he doesn't have
a defensive line coach. Yet and you twisted his cap

(58:18):
around and got down in there, and they referred to
him as Matt now in Jim Rose world, and again,
I'm a dinosaur. I probably need cataracts. Same. An eighteen
year old referring to your head coach of a college
program by his first name is out of bounds. And
if that is allowed, Okay, if that is allowed, that's
a cultural problem. That means these guys don't understand exactly

(58:43):
what it takes to win. Now, when you get to
be in the NFL or the NBA or Major League
Baseball and you've been in professional sports for five or
ten years, that's a different construct between the manager, the
head coach, and the player. But in college, you're talking
about teenagers, and I don't care how much they're paying them.
A teenager in twenty twenty five is not any different

(59:05):
than a teenager in nineteen twenty five, not.

Speaker 1 (59:08):
If you accept those expectators exactly, which no one does.
But he does anymore. I still I see old coaches,
not that they're old, you know, I see former coaches
from decades ago.

Speaker 2 (59:17):
I still call him coach. Yeah, I would not. Not
many of the coaches that I was around, are still there.
I didn't start referring to Frank Solis as Frank until
I was in my forties. He was always coach solige
to me. Yeah, well he wasn't your coach. Well he
was my high school. He was in high school. I
mean he was just hetruct driver's ed teacher, which is
the same thing. I mean, he coached drivers ed like

(59:39):
he coached football. But I know what you're saying. We
grew up with this expectation that he's the boss that
you know, he's wiser, more experienced and underseen, has seen
the world I haven't. So I'm going to defer to
him when it comes to instructions. I'm not going to
pick and choose which instructions, and I'm not going to
pick and choose how I practice. I'm going to practice

(01:00:01):
like it's Game seven of the World Series every day,
or I'm not going to be on the team to
your Eric Crouch story. But as Jim Rows noted, we
are very, very old, absolute dinosaurs. If anyone needs us
the rest of the day, we will be busy decomposing
and watching football for the next few days.