King Cornhuskers

It's not like he could've had any other gesture, but I always liked to think that the original Herbie truly did think that everything was eternally "okay." 5-6? Okay. No more bowl streak? Okay. Rebuilding? Okay. There is still corn and it is still football.

This week it's even okay for Nebraska fans to read Stewart Mandel's mailbag, there's good news in there. In his mind, Nebraska is still a king when it comes to college football.

Now I don't think coming into this season any of us Good Life geniuses felt that this wasn't the case. Nebraska's recent bumps in the road of the past eight or nine years hadn't truly tarnished our reputation as one of the premier programs in college football. But to get an "unbiased" confirmation of that is not only refreshing it's also a pretty fascinating concept. Why doesn't someone do this yearly?

Mandel's task was to divide all 66 BCS teams into four categories: kings, barons, knights and peasants. The ranking came about after Mandel received his weekly does of hate mail--this time from Georgia--for saying the Dawgs were "not the sort of national power whose fans (were) entitled to expect national titles." Ouch, but which schools are?

Along with Nebraska, Alabama, Florida, Florida State, Miami, Michigan, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Penn State, Tennessee, Texas and USC. Can't really argue with that list. Stew gives the asterisk to Tennessee but I think Notre Dame is farther away currently then the Vols. Of course the Irish will never not be considered a national power. They'd have to lose nine straight bowl games or something crazy for that to happen.

The rest of the list is just as solid, but he did raise my eyebrows with just a few selections:

--Colorado is a Baron? I guess they have a national title to their name but does anybody, Coloradoans included, really care about Buff football?

--LSU gets the same ranking as Colorado? Mandel says LSU doesn't have the same history of success that the 13 kings do, but I would say the Tigers have a better "big-picture tradition" than Florida does. They've got a higher winning percentage all-time. The Gators' history basically begins with Steve Spurrier and I don't mean his playing career.

--Arizona is a peasant. This is what we call irony as it was Mandel's employer who picked the Wildcats as their preseason No. 1 in 1994. They finished 8-4 while a certain other school was busy being fitted for a crown.

None of this will have any impact on this season whatsoever but, still, it's good to be a king.