The Reason for the Treason

PYB bides its time this rainy, soggy Christmas Eve, counting the minutes until we deem it appropriate to crack the first cocktail of the afternoon. The sleep-inducing Popeye's Bahamas Bowl isn't sparking a festive mood -- the lone highlight being play-by-play announcer Steve Levy joking that Dr. Lou and Mark May shared a hotel room during their Bahamian adventure. In the meantime, we'll wrap up a few loose ends before wrapping up a few final gifts:

--Regrettably, we failed to bring this up when it happened a couple weeks back....BUT, did anyone else find it fitting/humorous/ironic that Queen James hosted the future Queen of England at an NBA game during her United States visit? Did anyone else find it embarrassing that the three most important people that USA had to offer as hosts were James, Jay-Z and Beyonce? Editors addition: Did anyone else find it humorous that the yellow-toothed Brits seethed at the fact that James didn't show proper respect and actually touched the queen-in-waiting? 

Note to England: You lost the Revolutionary War. Monarchies are no longer legitimate governments. Slavery is no longer legal.

--Tiger Woods has turned over a new leaf. In addition to former champion golfer, Navy SEAL and coulda-been NFL cornerback, he is now elevating friends to professional golf success. Hopefully, Arjun Atwal is close enough to Woods to get a popsicle offer.

Anyway, PYB sees this story as a diversion to the fact that he went T-Last in a fabricated PGA Tour event at his home course. In true drama queen fashion, Woods faked sickness after an opening-round 77 so everyone could laud his warrior status for breaking 80 the next three days straight. Hank Haney followed this up oozing praise....surely, Major success will follow in 2015...

--Tim Miles' Nebraska basketball team continues to scuffle through December, losing in a predictable host-team ambush in Hawaii before fending off Loyola Marymount by scoring 50 points in an overtime game last night. Hey, last season was a great run for a team that got hot. But, for a team without a legitimate 35-minute-a-game point guard and absolutely no inside offensive presence, ups and downs (and more downs) are inevitable -- especially when the element of surprise is no longer in play.

And, when your worthless walk-on dunks in pregame warmups and gets a technical foul, it may just be a sign that it's not going to be your season. PYB is not sure how that can happen.

A 'down' year may be for the best, as Miles builds depth with a highly acclaimed recruiting class. If Terran Petteway stays another year (the NBA draft is only two rounds), and some current big men develop and/or get healthy, 2015-16 may be a more realistic breakthrough season. You know, just like every season in the Taylor Martinez/Bo Pinelli Era was supposed to be.

--"If he wasn't such a jackass, he might have had a chance." PYB heard these words at a small-town Nebraska fitness center less than an hour after Pinelli got axed. Sometimes, the simplest of phrases in the simplest of places bring the most clarity to a supposedly complex situation.

Nebraskans were always smart enough to know that their beloved team would never be perfect. They were also smart enough stakeholders to know that Pinelli, their CEO, had no plan to pull off the road to nowhere and merge on to the highway to success. They expected the state's most highly paid employee to have such goals and a strategy to achieve them . For that, he resented them. For that, he disrespected the very assets that would have made him a king in Nebraska. He was a jackass.

Still, there were Nebraskans that supported him to the fullest. Loyal to a fault, ready to accept whatever was thrown on their doorstep. These are the same Nebraskans who buy the same shitty couch that every Midwestern furniture store peddles to them for $999 year after year. Hard as a rock, but it must be fucking awesome because it's in my basement AND is has a flip-down armrest with a drink holder in the console. Critical thinking be damned, roll with the status quo as the pages on the calendar change and results stay the same.

While we're stuck using analogies, we'll toss out another bad marriage comparison. NU and its fans were stuck in a joyless union for at least the last four years. The game against Iowa was the last hurrah, like a doomed couple trying to spice things up with a special night out. Instead, they got into a fight on the way to dinner (first half and early second half). Then, after a couple cocktails, all was forgotten, good times were remembered, and they fucked each others' brains out (late second half). She even gave him a second round of pussy and kick-started it with a blow job. (Punt return TD & OT win.)

After waking up that morning, the hate returned. The pussy (Eichorst) faxed the divorce papers, and the husband (Bo Mark) told everyone that the pussy was being a cunt as he tried to curry favor with his friends (players) one last time. They laughed, like good friends do, regardless of how little they may have cared. All in all, a pathetic, wasteful exercise that embarrassed a proud fan base, a proud state and a proud tradition yet again.

Pinelli acted as if making $3 million a year was his birthright and that no modicum of respect toward his constituents was required. He overestimated his own value and pretended to have no idea that his tenure in Lincoln further diluted Nebraska football's brand. But the venom he spewed at anyone with the gall to question his faulted methods told us he knew better. He knew he couldn't cut it as a head coach and forced his boss's hand. Then, one last time, he played the "Poor Me" routine

Too many expectations. Too few private jets.  The excuses kept flowing. Those that mattered quit caring.

Thanks for reading and Merry Christmas....

PYB

The Motherfuckin' Product

PYB wishes Happy Holidays to all you cunts and pussies out there -- especially you cunts and pussies who have more education than an Ohio factory worker. We realize that a lot has happened since our last installment, as soap operas run daily. Our desire to let the dust settle on the Private Mark Pinelli era, along with a busy year's end at work, is the latest bad excuse we'll use for falling behind. Either way, we're here now, so let's get to it. Many of our favorite targets have given us new reasons to take shots at them.

--Private Pinelli, in a lesson of irony, called his boss a pencil-pushing cunt, then whined to his former players for 30-minutes about how tough he had it at NU. Too much pressure at my $3 million-a-year job, in a state where the average salary is $42,000. Too much pressure to not get destroyed by any better-than-terrible team when something was on the line. And we use the term 'something' very loosely, as it means staying in the running for winning half of the worst conference in major college football.

It wasn't my fault, he said. It wasn't YOUR fault he told the players, for allowing 408 yards to a back who gained fewer than 50 yards against Western Illinois. It was a pussy lawyer's fault because he didn't come to see you at practice enough and was too busy running a $75-million-dollar business to consistently tell the coach how great he was for winning nine games a year when any coach in America (and probably many bus drivers) could get seven wins with the combination of NU's facilities and pathetic list of opponents. Don't believe us? Then rely on this complex mathematical formula for proof: FAU + McNeese + Fresno + Illinois + Purdue + Rutgers = 6.

Don't blame Pinelli, dear readers. This was his destiny in just another fatalistic meathead saga. The same one we all saw when Back to the Future came out in 1985. Meathead in charge at the beginning, when brute force worked. At the end, when brains, tact and savvy were required. meathead waxed the car. Obviously, our friends at Cardinal Mooney didn't teach evolution. Adapt or die.....or run home to the only place where high school bullies are relevant 28 years after graduation.

It wasn't Private Mark's fault for a litany of other reasons, as you listen to him fake concern for his players' well being. Let me tell you motherfuckers that I care about you, but nobody else does. At the same time, let me provide you all a life lesson that will serve you well after graduation -- fuck authority and fuck anyone with more education than you. Considering Pelini put fewer and fewer players into the NFL as Bill Callahan's pipeline dried up, that's a bad lesson.

These kids will need to know how to thrive using intelligence and soft skills, at a real workplace and not a locker room. Excuses don't work. Instead, they're the battered spouses who somehow convince themselves they still love their husband and that he's a good man. The 40-point losses are the bruises that tell the rest of the world otherwise. A drastic comparison, yes. But, manipulating 20-year-old college kids to serve a personal agenda is another form of abuse with serious consequences. Mindfucking them to think that one blowhard bully is more righteous and more important than a 135-year-old university with a long track record of class is pathetic.

Perhaps Pinelli did believe his smoke-and-mirrors, four-loss product was good enough for Nebraska.
After all, he learned it as a player at Ohio State. During his diatribe, he played the victim card once more and told NU players how he toughed it out and stayed in Columbus after Earl Bruce was fired following a 6-4-1 season. What a warrior, Mark was! Considering that he was a white safety for a bad team in a bad conference, his other Division I options were likely limited.

Pinelli's persistence paid off, as his final three seasons in Columbus went: 5-6-1, 8-4, and 7-4-1. Given the fact that these were considered successful seasons for the Buckeyes for 25 years, it's not Bo Mark's fault that he took that losing attitude with him.

As NU fans, it's time to take some blame ourselves. We didn't heed the warning signs in 2007. Private Pinelli accosting Bill Snyder for having the nerve to dismantle his shitty defense wasn't 'fire in the belly.' In fact, it's fitting that this 45-second clip shows his defense being blown off the ball, missing tackles and blowing coverages.

Pinelli melting down and berating an official against Michigan State wasn't competitiveness. These were both ineptitude surfacing like a rotten corpse in a stagnant pond. Nebraska, in the end, ignored those instances in a rush to fix a pathetic defensive team.

Tom Osborne misjudged the shifting college football landscape, and underestimated the need for a business leader as head coach. An executive who knew how to pull the right levers in hiring, motivation, and decision making. Considering the Frank Solich disaster, he made his second straight bad hire for his beloved football program. Seventeen years later, we're all stuck on this hamster wheel, scurrying away as the rest of college football goes on outside the cage.

Shawn Eichorst, it's now your turn. You made your play, the predictable 180-degree hire of Mike Riley -- whose aura strikes us somewhere between the teacher we read that he is and the overly friendly weirdo at church that nobody wants to talk to. It's your turn to prove that you're a silent-but-strong leader and not a recluse.

Your turn to fill the stands, to keep the faux riche coming to Lincoln in their North Face sweater vests to pump money through the program's veins -- one shitty toolshed (aka Champion's Club) beer at a time. It's not a football program, it's a brand. A product. A shitty product at this point. Starting next August, it's your motherfuckin' product....

And somewhere, in a dark Youngstown film room that is likely less-featured, but more comfortable to him than the one he had in Lincoln, Private Pinelli cues up one of his favorite movie scenes. He nods his head in agreement. Bo, it's not your fault. Bo it's not your fault. Bo, it's not your fault.......