The Holy Grail

What you see here is the single greatest piece of Nebraska memorabilia ever. It's true. This 1940's "Pep Sweater" elicited the f-word from uniform/design impresario Paul Lukas and if you want it you're probably going to have to fight him for it.

Despite the unmistakable presence of breasts in the photo above, this is a men's sweater according to the seller. If it weren't for this barrel chest of mine, I'd be right in the mix for this thing. (OK, it's pretty small.)

But for those of you who can squeeze into this, the ebay auction is open until Thursday. Get bidding and become the source of my eternal envy.

You Can't Stop What's Comin'

Remember that bit from last week about the cultural significance of overalls and our beloved mascot Herbie?

You can forget all that.

After seeing an item on Corn Nation about a poll EA Sports was running to determine which mascot would get the first ever Wii cover for the NCAA Football franchise--this was immensely important because the folks at EA were using the old, overalled Herbie rather than the new, phone-holster Herbie--I launched into a screed about the value of that distinction. It was impassioned, it was obsessive and, ultimately, it was all for naught.

If you go to the EA Sports website today and, using your little floating Wii remote, try to vote for Herbie you'll see that he has been updated (assimilated? gentrified?). Phone-holster Herbie is back, awaiting your vote, and Steve Pederson, from deep inside his palatial Pittsburgh estate, continues to haunt us.

Damn you, Steve, daaaammmmmnnnnn yooooooouuuuuu!

The good news is that the only reason I learned about this disgusting new development was because my father, inspired by this blog, was voting every day and noticed the change.

See? We're reaching people here...and thanks, Dad.

(Photo note: You might remember the gentleman in the above photo from the first overalls photo I posted. Apparently he always dresses like Herbie and I love him for it--in the manly, altruistic Greek sense of the word. It is now my mission to seek him out and interview him for this very blog.)

On the value and idealism of overalls.

Brilliant news courtesy of Corn Nation: the overalls might be back!

Based on an EA Sports screenshot from NCAA Football 2009 for the Wii, it looks like there might be a chance the old-overalled Herbie could be making a return. Past editions of the game have featured the new, phone-holster Herbie. (So named by me because he would look exactly like a modern farmer/rancher if he only had a cell phone clipped to his belt. Conveniently, for my purposes, phone holsters are admittedly handy but undeniably lame.)

But if this new development from EA Sports' game designers--they must have received a communique to change it from somewhere--has any truth behind it, we could be one step closer to cream-washing the memories of the Steve Pederson era from our collective minds.

That'll be enough for some, but it's of secondary importance to me. While Jon makes a valid point in his defense of phone-holster Herbie--it does better reflect the attire of a modern Nebraskan--I'm not really interested in realism or veracity. I want idealism.

As best I can remember, my maternal grandfather wore overalls every day of his life minus weddings and funerals. Nobody does that now but that's the point. Overalls are a functional garment. The opposite of fashion. They represent a disregard for things not directly related to work and, if I'm not mistaken, wasn't that the ideal that we used to define the great Cornhusker teams of the past?

It wasn't change itself that caused the Pederson Empire to crumble it was that the changes went all the way to the bedrock of Nebraska football. I'll admit that the new, forearmtastic Herbie was better than no Herbie at all but modern updates are a very difficult thing when you're dealing with a source of passion for so many people. Yes, phone-holster Herbie is a more-palatable, less-hokey edition of our beloved mascot and he achieves that without putting on airs. It's not like we put him in a three-piece suit.

But those overalls--and the ear of corn they carried--still have meaning. While a simple red shirt and jeans better represent the way Nebraskans look now, the overalls better represent the way we view ourselves as industrious, simple people.

There are some who like to poke fun at that notion but I say let them poke. At this point, using Simers-like disregard to fuel our collective identity is probably Nebraska's second favorite sport.

The first, of course, is football and in the end the addition of blonde hair or a corn cob isn't going to result in one more win out on the field, but it does make me feel a lot better about myself.

Is that such a bad thing?