B1G All-Decade Grades: Nebraska

While 2020 has come out the gates in relatively crummy fashion, the decade leading up to it were some of the Big Ten’s best. Huge TV deals, and overall success highlighted the 10 year span in the conference.

In an attempt to reflect upon the good times — the period of time from 2010 to 2019 — we at B5Q have set out to grade each football and basketball program over that time span.

Next, we take a peek under the hood of the Nebraska Cornhuskers.

Football grade: C+

Remember when Bo Pelini helped Nebraska win nine or 10 games each of his seven years at the helm? Consistently winning the bulk of their games was not enough for the Cornhuskers. They instead wanted to mix things up, and have only won nine games once since letting him go in 2014. In fact, in the past five seasons Nebraska has finished with a record below .500 four times.

Not great...

The vaunted Blackshirt defense of the past is just that, in the past. Nebraska has struggled since moving into the Big Ten in 2011. Take the Badgers for example. Wisconsin has had colossal rushing outputs against Nebraska, including 408 yards by Melvin Gordon in a single game, and a combined 539 rushing yards in the 2012 Big Ten Championship. The Cornhuskers have only beaten Wisconsin one time in the past nine seasons, a far cry from the historical success under Tom Osborne and Frank Solich that Nebraska fans have clung to.

With a 65 - 50 record while in the Big Ten, and only two bowl wins over the past nine years a C+ is potentially generous on my end given that most of the success came in the early portion of the decade for Nebraska under a coach that they were still paying as of last February after running him out of town.

Scott Frost has returned home in hopes of returning Nebraska back to glory, but some soul searching is needed in Lincoln after a decade that has not lived up to expectations for most die hard Huskers fans.

At least they have “sold out” all their games for a record number of years.

Photo by Joe Robbins/Getty Images

Basketball grade: D

I will preface this by noting that Nebraska basketball has never been great.

The Cornhuskers were able to make it to the NCAA Tournament in the 2013-2014 season under Tim Miles as an 11-seed for the first time since 1998, but outside of some formidable seasons in 2017 and 2018, the program has been substandard.

Nebraska has had three separate coaches over the past decade, each of which had a losing overall record. This past season under Fred Hoiberg could be labeled as the worst year in program history, as they won only seven games.

Overall, Nebraska finished the past nine years in the Big Ten with a 46.2% winning percentage, which is just not up to snuff.

That’s all I’ve got for this train wreck.