Leave it to a rival to beat a team while it’s waaay down.
Under former starting quarterback Scott Frost, Nebraska and its very loyal fan base entered the 2018 season with sky-high expectations for the first year of the prodigal son’s ballyhooed return to Lincoln as head coach. Through four games -- a fifth, the opener, was canceled because of Mother Nature -- things couldn’t have possibly started off worse for the Cornhuskers as they stand at 0-4, the first time the storied program has lost the first four games of a season since the year World War II ended. Stretching back to last season, NU has lost eight in a row, the second-longest current losing streak in the country. It’s also the first time they’ve ever lost eight games in a row.
With that as a backdrop, enter the Iowa fan base. Or, more specifically, Barley’s Bar.
Earlier this past week, it was reported that the Council Bluffs, Iowa, drinking establishment had stocked a locked refrigerator full of Budweiser beer to be given away, free of charge, at the bar close to the Iowa-Nebraska border to Big Red fans when (if?) their beloved Cornhuskers finally claim their first win of the Frost Era.
My local watering hole @BarleysCB is offering to help our neighbors to the west during this difficult time. @marcmorehouse @ScottDochterman @hawkeyenation @ChadLeistikow @MarkEmmert @HawkeyeReport pic.twitter.com/lXHlorDp6k
— Chad Hannan (@ChadHannan) October 3, 2018
“As most great ideas come, they come after a few beers,” said Matt Johnson, the owner of Barley’s, told the Omaha World-Herald. “A bunch of Iowa fans were talking about how fun it would be to do a Cleveland Browns-style cooler. ...
“It’s just fun banter back and forth. We don’t get very many chances like this.”
Nebraska will get its next chance to gift its fans with both a win and free cold ones as they travel to Wisconsin later today to take on the No. 16 Badgers. With games against Northwestern (in Evanston) and at home against 3-1 Minnesota looming after the trip to Madison, Nebraska’s next best chance at win No. 1 might just be Oct. 27 against FCS Bethune-Cookman in Lincoln.
The worst start in the program’s nearly 130-year history, incidentally, was 0-5 way back in 1945.