Affraid of Commitment

Dearest Simi,

It's a shame I never got to meet you, Simi Kuli. A few months ago in a period of vast darkness in Husker Nation, you provided a little bit of light. When the going got tough Blaine Gabbert (& Co.) left us for the front-running Missouri Tigers, but that's when you stepped in and said you wanted us more than anyone else.

When we were all trying to divine the fate of Bill Callahan and searching for clues as to who his successor would be, you seemed like a Pelini guy. After all, you'd flirted with LSU and then chose us. You were going to be our Glen Dorsey, but better. Ten times better. You were coming to Nebraska to play for the guy who could make you the junkyard doggiest DE you could be.

Now you're not coming and I'm not so sure you would've started anyway. Your coach even told us a month ago, "Everyone thinks he's going to decommit. It's just not going to happen." What about that? You can't just say these things. Words still have meaning, don't they?

Missing you already,

HiPlainsDrifter

I can't continue like this. As I've discussed numerous times before, I hold as dim a view of recruiting as anyone. The sites, the rankings, the rules in place, they're all crap and I do my best to ignore the whole thing. Still, when you tell me about man-crushing linebackers and fleet-footed receivers, I get excited. When they ultimately renege on their commitments I feel spurned at first, angry later.

I am not proud of this but I can't deny it either. It's all true. When you leave Nebraska you leave me and even Scarlett Johanssen can look pretty ugly after she's broken your heart.

That said, this is to be expected. The surprising thing is not that Blaine Gabbert BFF, Will Compton, decommitted, it's that he didn't decommit until yesterday. (I'm certain the two have discussed this via text message. LOL. TTYL.) We had hoped that Bo Pelini could come in and save a few of these guys, but that hasn't been the case thus far.

The one big knock against Bo was he's not a great recruiter but I'm not quite ready to jump to that conclusion yet. It's probably not even the loss of Callahan that's the heart of the problem, it's losing. Nebraska isn't the flavor of the month right now. They stunk. Where is Will Compton looking? Two current hotshots in Illinois and Missouri.

At least that's what I'll tell myself because I can't explain why guys are picking CU over NU. It's almost too much to comprehend at the moment. This is the Christmas season, a time for unrepentant joy and unabashed consumerism.

But now I even look at my tree with a great deal of skepticism. It already has a good number of gifts beneath it, but I fully believe they're going to take ALL of their visits.

I'm not taking anything for granted until Boxing Day.