throwback

Good news, but I'm not counting it as confirmed until Ted Carter mentions it on a hot mic when he thinks no one is listening.

Especially with rapid testing now available - that almost completely eliminates the possibility of player to player transmission during games. If it isn't safe at this point, it may never be safe again. I saw UNO's hockey conference delayed its start to Nov. 20. (Wow. Imagine that. Voting to delay the start of a season and putting a date on it, so everyone is on the same page. Mind blown.) Hockey would've started practice in another 10-14 days, so they needed to make a decision. Sounds like hockey is receiving guidance from NCAA, so I'd imagine NCAA will push all winter sports back to late November. Should hear on that recommendation sometime next week. Hopefully the B1G presidents/commish won't decide to go their own way because of "safety" and try a summer basketball season or something similar. By the way, saw yesterday that one of the reasons Rutgers' president will be voting no on bringing back football is because of Nebraska's "out of control" covid cases. Wish someone would've clued me in. I missed the stretch where we were overwhelmed in the hospitals, etc. Kind of scary that people this uninformed are making these decisions. If we are out of control here, I guess NJ was in Armageddon this spring. Glad to see at least a few New Jersians survived.

And somehow, we'll still end up as a #6 NIT seed.

Do you think if NU takes its team down there, puts a quarter on the sidelines, and says, "We've got winner," the B1G would cave and let them play?

Geez. 2020 cannot end soon enough.

https://omaha.com/sports/college/uno/uno-a-d-trev-alberts-is-cautiously-optimistic-for-winter-sports-like-hockey-basketball/article_91bcb010-5233-5ade-a62d-a37b5082a368.html UNO's Trev thinks we'll have winter sports, but it'll be interesting to see how NCAA handles college hockey, which has its first games a full month before college basketball. NCAA/conferences need to make a decision soon on hockey, and it will kind of give some insight into the thought process for the winter sports. Now, hockey only has about a week of official practice before its first game, so they're only scheduled to start practice a couple of weeks before college basketball starts practice, but it's worth keeping an eye on. Will be interesting to see how the B1G handles hockey. I don't believe the B1G has put out a hockey schedule yet, but UNO starts Oct. 9-10. Hard to imagine if the B1G says it's not safe to start football in late September that it's OK to start hockey in early October, so I'd guess B1G will kick the can down the road and delay starting hockey till Jan. 1 at the earliest, unless the NCAA beats them to the punch. Although the way the league has handled the past few weeks, nothing would surprise me. I believe its the 100th anniversary season of Gopher hockey, so this season is an especially big deal for them. Minnesota and its fans didn't seem to have much appetite for playing football this fall & PJ was more than happy to toe the company line on cancelling, but if the B1G tries to take away Gopher hockey ...

B1G coaches seem to think they're starting hoops around Thanksgiving. Hope they've consulted with a certain B1G commissioner. If he sends out an updated schedule a week before official practice starts, though, we're screwed. https://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/college/ct-big-ten-basketball-season-20200820-7p5anoaxaba6diuarlonafjtdq-story.html

Based on that letter and the line about the inability to social distance in contact sports playing a role in the cancellation of football, basketball season is also in serious jeopardy, even a delayed start, unless a fail proof vaccine is in place by January 1. Not likely. Or unless Warren is fired/resigns.

2020 has officially reached the 6th level of hell, as B1G sports fans are forced to pin all their hopes on a guy with a random Twitter handle of Sir Yacht.

New statement from NU leadership - was inevitable once the lawyers told them this was the only way forward.

If we manage to start B1G sports around Jan. 1 -- hardly a given at this point -- it will have been roughly 300 days since an NU team had taken the field. In the interim, millions of middle and high school aged players will have participated in multiple club sports (traveling across state lines) and high school sports. Millions more college-aged students will have been thrown into the petri dish that is a college dorm/campus/frat party house. And other university athletic departments, with significantly fewer resources (financial and otherwise) than a B1G school may pull off some semblance of a college football/volleyball/soccer/cross country season. I hope 2021 is officially named the Year of Common Sense Returning.

To try to play football somewhere else, the lawyers would have to get involved heavily. There would be so many injunctions filed that NU would still be a member of the B1G until those unwound. Might take years. So we'd still be playing B1G hoops for the foreseeable future. And people think we receive the short end from B1G basketball refs now ... just wait.

Been 22 weeks tomorrow since NU-Indiana hoops in the B1G tourney. Had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that night, watching Fred looking so ill on the bench and facing a lot of unknowns with Covid. However, I never in a million years thought we'd be here 22 weeks later. Hard to believe the B1G essentially wasted those 22 weeks instead of coming up with a workable plan. Not going to solely blame Warren for this - it's been a helluva first 7 1/2 months for him. What a nightmare. But I wonder if the presidents would've been able to push this through if Delany was still in charge. Can't imagine Jim would've blinked first and let the SEC have any chance at gaining the upper hand. Just hoping now we get at least a B1G-only hoops season starting Jan. 1, but after this decision today, nothing would surprise me.

I see the reports that the NFL is watching what college football does with great interest ... not because they are looking for ideas with how to handle things during the pandemic, but because they are looking to grab soon-to-be-open Saturday TV slots. I'd guess if the NFL takes Saturdays in 2020, they won't give up those TV slots easily going forward. Best case scenario - all college sports, including football, resume somewhat in the spring, the majority of athletic departments have enough revenue to barely keep going, and 2021-22 is somewhat normal. Worst case scenario - college sports is basically over as we know it. My guess is there are more than a handful of major college presidents who would be OK with scenario #2.

Sounding pretty bleak for college football at this point with the Big Ten presidents leading the charge. Can't imagine volleyball has much of a chance of being played either. If they cancel football or say they're moving it to spring, there is basically zero chance an indoor sport like hoops starts on time and Jan. 1 would almost certainly be the best case scenario ... if they'd play at all. Brutal. The potential budget / sports cuts coming could be catastrophic with no football revenue, especially after losing March Madness last season. Wonder how many athletic departments even survive / stay in D-1 outside of the big boys.

https://omaha.com/sports/college/huskers/teams/mens-basketball/19-years-after-his-husker-career-ended-steffon-bradford-is-still-a-monster-on-basketball/article_e4569302-e9db-5650-8127-ccabc4806508.html Story on Steffon Bradford - he and Anton Gill will be playing in a high level 3 on 3 tournament next weekend in Omaha (different teams I think) By the way, Nyatawa wrote this story - doubtful that means anything regarding the future of the NU hoops beat at OWH - even with all the budget/staff cuts, I can't imagine they ask him to pull double duty with cu and NU during the season. If that's the route they want to go, it'd make way more sense to have him double up on cu and UNO and have someone else do NU. But it's a weird time in the newspaper industry, so who knows?

Not at Creighton - they make your family wealthy with a $100,000 job AND they award a scholarship to your kid.

Caught the DP & Stephens show on 93.7 today - Jaron Boone was a guest around 1 pm. Kind of a surreal conversation - certainly wasn't what I expected to hear from Jaron. Paraphrasing - He loved his time at NU, wouldn't have changed a thing, being elected to the Nebraska Basketball Hall of Fame would be one of the greatest honors of his life, Danny was tough on the guys but Jaron didn't feel Danny was too hard on him, he personally had nothing to do with the decision on the boycott as he was just going with the flow. etc. It was a 180 degree opposite of what I expected him to say on pretty much everything. I was around the team a bit in my job at that time, and my impression was Jaron was the center of the storm more often than not, that he was extremely unhappy here, didn't get along with Danny, etc. But based on his comments today, he clearly didn't remember it that way. Maybe it just seemed like he was the problem to outsiders, or maybe a few decades of time have given him a different perspective / memory of what was going on in those days. Says he still keeps in touch with quite a few players from those days. I believe they had his dad on last week & DP knew the Boones from his time in Utah, so this wasn't something where Jaron reached out to them; they reached out to him. In other words, he wasn't angling for being elected to the hall of fame. It was just one question out of the interview. Podcast is on this page - https://theticketfm.com/category/dp-and-stephens/ Someone smarter than me probably can embed it. It's worth listening to for anyone still haunted by how poorly those 95 & 96 teams played in relation to the talent on the team. Have to admit, I forgot Jaron is on NU's Top 10 all-time scoring list. A couple more NU hoops interviews are scheduled on the show this week - Tony Farmer Tuesday I believe & Strick maybe on Friday. Those should be great too.

https://omaha.com/sports/college/huskers/teams/mens-basketball/heady-reflections-of-two-years-and-much-change-covering-the-nebraska-basketball-team/article_b3335a45-8c81-5cb9-a281-e9121782114b.html Heady's good-bye piece, some interesting stuff and perspective.

At this point, after all of the conflicting reports, I'm not sure if even Shamiel knows whether he's here.

I'm calling my shot now - a #23 seed will take down a #10 seed.

Saw this from Teddy Greenstein, buried at the end of a college football "will they play" story

Next time my dog gets lost, I'm not calling the LJS and OWH beat reporters to help me find it. Figuring out "Where's Shamiel" has not been their strong suit this summer.

World Herald update today does not mention Stevenson at all; says only players not here are Yvan and Thor, so OWH seems to be on the same page as LJS now. Good to see. Also Hoiberg is optimistic Yvan & Thor will be back in U.S. soon. https://omaha.com/sports/college/huskers/teams/mens-basketball/huskers-stuck-overseas-amid-coronavirus-will-soon-be-able-to-join-team-for-workouts-hoiberg/article_e2aa91ac-b455-571f-a8b5-a6cac8a8c45b.html

Good question - especially when the first report said he was here, which clearly was incorrect, then he'll be here mid-July, now it's late July. If he's here in late July, Banton will have been here 3-ish weeks already, so it's strange. (I assume they were both in Toronto during the initial lockdown.) With even more limited access for beat reporters than usual, that info has to be coming directly from the program/coaches, so that adds to the oddity of the situation. Maybe it's nothing. Maybe he has family members he's worried about. It's definitely odd. It's also unfortunate, being they can start limited workouts with coaches next week.