Anything But Normal

"We can bet that this will be a pretty close game, but it will be anything but normal."
-- H-Bromo (10/20)

LIONS 31
Cowboys 30

Sometimes when something shocks, surprises, astounds, and excites you all at once, you reach a point where you're not necessarily in control of your actions anymore, so you do something strange. Watching the game by myself today, on a choppy computer stream that was almost as frustrating as the Lions turnover woes, I found myself in the midst of one of these strange reactions. When Matthew Stafford leaped over the pile to pull off one of the most shocking, surprising, astounding, and exciting finishes in team history, I suddenly started drinking a whole bunch of water in celebration. Don't ask why. Like many other things that happened in today's game, I don't have a sufficient explanation for it, nor do I offer any excuse or apology for it, but I downed a full 32 ounces of water in about fifteen seconds during the aftermath of Stafford's fake spike/QB sneak to cap off the frantic comeback in the final moments of the game.

Last Sunday evening, I kind of half-assed my way through my preview for the Dallas game because I was still seething about the last-second loss to Cincy, so I'm going to use some of my unpublished notes  to try to make sense of what happened at Ford Field today:

What to watch for against Dallas:
-We can bet that this will be a pretty close game, but it will be anything but normal.
- At some point in the game, Calvin will make the Cowboy defense look like weak, unathletic, helpless and malnourished little children.
- There will be a portion of the game where Tony Romo and the Cowboys offense look unstoppable.
- Tony Romo will make anywhere between 1 and 3 boneheaded turnovers to give the ball to the Lions.
- I will be pulling my hair out, trying not to alarm the neighbors, and chucking my mini basketball across the room at some point during this game. 

"Pretty close game"
Check. The DTLs take an early lead, trail 10-7 at half, trail 13-7 after three quarters, and then all hell breaks loose in a wild fourth quarter that features 7 different scoring plays.

"Anything but normal"
Check. You would need to search pretty hard to find a football game that was less normal than this one. From a statistically improbable standpoint, you have not one but two separate major statistical anomalies. First off is Calvin, with 329 receiving yards, which was 7 away from the NFL's all-time single game record, and then there's the turnover battle. Today the Bromothymols became only the 2nd team in NFL history to win a game despite being -4 in the turnover department. At one point during the final minute, the Fox analysts even pulled a "Dewey defeats Truman" by putting up a graphic stating that teams who went -4 in turnover margin were now 1-55 all-time (make that 2-54 now). Not only did the Lions lose the turnover battle 4-0, but they also committed 8 penalties to 2 for Dallas. However, in a nearly flawless effort from a penalty standpoint, one of these penalties happened at the worst possible time for Dallas, a holding call with just over a minute left that saved about 40 seconds to allow the DTLs one last decent chance to put a drive together. Adding to the bizarre, you have Dez Bryant going all Titus Young Sr. on the sidelines, but then coming back into the game and getting a huge 50 yard touchdown catch, then going all Titus Young Sr. for a second time during the final desperation drive.

As far as crazy finishes go, this ranks up there with a game of NCAA '06 that I played back in high school, where my created team "the Awesomes" erased a 38-17 deficit in the final five minutes to force overtime and then win against bitter rivals "the Woboots".

"At some point in the game, Calvin will make the Cowboy defense look like weak, unathletic, helpless and malnourished little children"

I was way off with this prediction. It wasn't "at some point", it was for pretty much the entire game. The truly mind-boggling part about Calvin's absurdly megatronic day was that (a) he actually made two pretty costly mistakes, and (b) he wasn't even playing at 100%. In the 2nd quarter, Calvin had a pretty bad dropped pass that fell directly into Sean Lee's hands for an interception, and then in the third, didn't protect the ball following a long catch and fumbled it back to the Cowboys. He also left two more receiving touchdowns on the table by not reaching the ball across the plane from inside the 1 yard line (possibly because he was worried about another fumble?).  However, without those two mistakes, he probably would have had just an ordinary day with 200 or so receiving yards, with a comfortable Lions win and no necessity to go into super-superhuman mode. Jim Schwartz joked after the game that Calvin still wasn't fully healthy (you know, despite 329 yards), but I think he was being serious; a healthy Calvin would never get ran down from behind by four Cowboys players, as he did during his 87 yard reception early in the game.

I thought Calvin the Amazing Great's dismantling of Oakland in 2011 would be the most sensational clutch receiving performance I was likely to ever see, but today he's outdone himself yet again. When I played NCAA '06, I would never let one of my players go for some crazy stat line like getting 300 receiving yards, because I was a major stickler for making things be realistic. That's the point Calvin reached today: he was so good, it wasn't even realistic.

"There will be a portion of the game where Tony Romo and the Cowboys offense look unstoppable"
Check. Right about the time where the Bromos stopped turning the ball over, Romo had a streak of long touchdowns on two consecutive passes, a 60 yarder to Terrance Williams and a 50 yarder to Dez Bryant (more on Dez in a bit). However, this brief spell was really the only thing Dallas got going on offense the entire day. Despite getting no turnovers for the second week in a row and failing to get a single sack either, I thought the defense did a great job of holding down the fort while the O was pissing all over themselves for the first three quarters.

Then there's Dez Bryant. I know the main story (and rightfully so) with Dez today will be his odd behavior on the sidelines. This is justified, because he had a nice tantrum that would rival mine the time I didn't finish my crappy dinner and therefore wasn't allowed to go mini-golfing with the rest of the family at Pirate's Cove. However, in the background of all that stuff, he actually had a really nice game. His acrobatic grab in the second quarter was probably one of the top ten catches of the year so far, and his 50 yard catch and sprint with about six minutes left in the game should have been a dagger. But because of Dez's bravado all week about being just as good as Calvin, that's all beside the point. If you're going to act like you're as good as Calvin, and tell the media that you're as good as Calvin, and act like a 6 year old on the sidelines to the point that noted good guy Jason Witten gets offended, then your version of a "fantastic game" can't be having 11 less catches and 250 less yards than Calvin in your big head-to-head matchup with him. Just ask Titus Young Sr.

"Tony Romo will make anywhere between 1 and 3 boneheaded turnovers"
Not today. Romo was shut down for the first three quarters and completed less than 50% of his passes, but I felt he played a pretty smart game, was elusive against the rush, and managed to not make any big mistakes. Add the two long TD passes in the fourth quarter, and this probably should have been enough to win it. Much to the chagrin of Cowboy fans, they can't blame this one on ol' TH.


"I will be pulling my hair out, trying not to alarm the neighbors, and chucking my mini basketball across the room at some point during this game"

I was fine when Calvin dropped a pass that turned into an interception to end a promising drive in Dallas territory. I was mildly displeased by the time Stafford hit Sean Lee right on the numbers for 74 yards to set up the Cowboys' first TD. I was annoyed when Reggie got lazy with the ball and coughed it up right in the middle of a 20+ yard run. I was, I dunno, perturbed when Calvin had a 20+ yard reception going and coughed it up. Dez Bryant finally getting Tony to throw it to him, and going 50 yards untouched...getting closer. Stafford takes a sack on first down on what was probably going to be the final drive of the game...closer still. Wormtail with a big drop on third down, followed by an incompletion on fourth...YAHTZEE! The game should have been done at this point, and I was all set to sulk for two weeks and rant about having the same record through 8 games as last year's train wreck. But no.

Moving Forward

Whatever doubts people still had about Matthew Stafford in late game situations can officially be put to death today. In the last 2 1/2 years, the DTLs have had so many of these situations that Stafford has had  plenty of opportunities both to succeed and fail, of which he's done both in healthy portions. Despite the times where he's come up short in these situations (which every QB in history has done multiple times), we now have more than a handful of these magical moments from Stafford (Cleveland '09, Minnesota, Dallas, Carolina, Oakland '11, St. Louis, Philly, Seattle '12) and he's still only 25 years old. The final QB sneak today was clearly not called by the coaches, and Staff had the guts to take it upon himself and fool everyone in the entire building by leaping over the pile instead of stopping the clock. That final drive is an instant classic. At 25, Stafford is only 286 yards away from passing the legendary Bobby Layne and becoming the DTLs' all-time leader in passing yardage, which could very well happen in his next game. To discredit his accomplishments because he has Calvin Johnson to throw it to is idiotic (who was Joe Montana throwing it to, his pet cat?), almost as much as discrediting his accomplishments because the Lions pass the ball so much (it's probably because he's a good passer). Since dropping the Buccaneers and becoming the NFC North in 2002, the Lions have never even finished closer than 5 games out of first place in the division. This is the futility that Staff came into, and he has embraced the challenge (with many bumps in the road along the way) and the DTLs have a real chance to close the gap and even compete for the division title this year. At 5-3, the team is right where they need to be at the midway point in the season, and they should win at least two of the next three games, with a hobbled Chicago, a weak Pittsburgh, and a pathetic Tampa Bay coming up to start the second half. They just may even win the next three and head into Thanksgiving at 8-3 with a chance to steal the division lead away from Green Bay.

The Lions may be off next week, but there are no bye weeks here at H-Bromo (the bye six months that I've been known to take from time to time don't count). In the next few weeks, I'll be putting out a comprehensive NFL midseason review, as well as a countdown of my all-time favorite Lions games. 

Until then, optimism abounds at Bromothymol.

Hobbes 27 Calvin 24

Bengals 27
LIONS 24

No matter how this entertaining mid-October tilt ended, it was clear that whoever lost was going to be haunted by missed opportunities, because each team had plenty. Unfortunately, Cincinnati had one fewer missed opportunity. After Mike "the Motor City Regular Man" Nugent sent his last-second 54 chord solo shot reverberating through the pipes at Ford Field, it's the Lions who will be seeing ghosts of chances past and as they gear up for Halloween, it's the appropriately colored Bengals who will be howling in celebration at the Harvest Moon.

There wasn't one play, series of plays, or even an overarching trend that killed the Bromos today. The shanked punt by Sam Martin certainly hurts, as does AJ Green's 82 yard catch to open up the game, but my overall analysis of this one is that two evenly-matched teams played pretty evenly the entire way, each making spectacular plays at times and barely missing out on more big play opportunities at others. Both offensive lines did a great job of protecting their QBs, but neither created much space for the running backs. Both kickers missed field goals, and both teams missed out on scoring chances due to untimely penalties. Neither committed a turnover either, though the Lions had another defensive score wiped off the board, this time thanks to a blatant off-sides by pretty much the entire defensive line. Calvin Johnson was incredible, with a 155 yd/2 td/2 awesome dunks over the goalpost stat line, but A.J. Green was pretty good too. Matthew Stafford passed for another 350 yards and 3 TDs and no turnovers (although his accuracy was off, Calvin bailed him out at least once, and he couldn't finish two late drives that could have potentially ended the game), Dom had a sack and probably won't even get any fines this week, so what was the problem? I need more time to think about this one.

Hooligans
As for my viewing experience here in Boston? I didn't feel like going anywhere with Sunday Ticket today, so I was stuck with a stream of the game broadcast in the United Kingdom. It still had the normal CBS crew for the play-by-play, but instead of the regular game breaks, they flipped it over to something called the Sky Sports Studio, where some British guys hilariously pretended to know about American Football (and still did a more convincing job of it than Terry Bradshaw and the rest of the hyenas from the Fox studio) and explain it to the 26 people in England who wanted to learn. My theory is that the Pittsburgh Steelers only agreed to play that game at Wembley Stadium a few weeks back because they thought they could pick up an easy win against the London Sillynannies.  I'm also about 95% sure that when the Sky Sports crew announced the Jay Cutler injury, they said that Cade McNown would be taking over at QB for the Bears.

The best part of this quite British telecast was that during commercial breaks, I got to see the previews for the straight-to-DVD release of "Green Street Hooligans 3". If ever there was a movie that really doesn't need two straight-to-DVD sequels with none of the original cast members, it is Green Street, a movie I'm all too familiar with as it's a personal favorite of my brother. In the original, Elijah Wood stars as an ordinary American college student, or at least what the writers imagine an ordinary American college student would be like if they ever met one (let's see, ordinary American college student--he must go to Harvard) and then gets himself mixed up in the violent world of hooliganism at West Ham matches (what is this soccer, er--football? See, I'm a typical American, who much prefers baseball, our national past-time). The highlight of the movie is when, in an uninspired baseball vs soccer argument, Elijah Wood brags to his new hooligan friend, "the Red Sox have a guy who can throw it 90 miles an hour!" So anyway, the third installment of this epic is being released today.

 I can't wait for the following scene to show up in the Entourage movie:
(Vince comes into Ari's office, frustrated by a major dry spell getting movie roles)
Vince: Ari, you said you'd find work for me.
Ari: Vinny, what does it look like I'm doing?? I have NOTHING FOR YOU! You want work? Here, this showed up on my desk today, an offer for the second lead in the straight-to-DVD release, of fuckin' Green Street Hooligans 3!!
Vince: Hey, Green Street! Is Elijah signed on?
Ari: Fuck You. Try Scott Adkins.
Vince: ...oh.
Drama: You know Ari, I've been, polishing up on my British accent. Ever since I did that guest spot on Downton Abbey.

Moving Forward
What can the DTLs do to avoid any more straight-to-loss-column sequels of today's heartbreaker for the rest of the season?  Dallas comes into Ford Field next week, and unfortunately they're playing really well of late, winning two in a row and putting up 48 on the Broncos the week before that. When the Lions and Cowboys have played each other of late, you can expect some general weirdness to take place. Whether it's Tony Romo throwing a baffling pick-12 while sitting on a 27-3 second half lead (2011), Jon Kitna throwing for 3 TDs and sprinting untouched for a 30 yard touchdown against his old team, despite not being good enough to start for their 0-16 outfit two years before (2010), or Paris Lenon kicking a game-ending fumble back to the Cowboys to help choke away a 13 point lead in the fourth quarter (2007), we can bet that this will be a pretty close game, but it will be anything but normal.

After the bye week, the Bromos travel to Chicago. I hate it when people celebrate the injuries of others, but it would be impossible to deny that the Jay Cutler injury (he's expected to be out 3-4 weeks) helps their chances of coming out of Soldier's Field with a win. If they can just find a way to at least get a split in these next two games, they'll be in great shape for the remainder of the season, as they'll play only one more game in the final seven against teams with a winning record (Green Bay at home).

Bedrock Approved

LIONS 31
@ Browns 17

I'll start this one off with a look back to the last time the Lions and Browns played each other. Fun fact, this is Nitch's least-favorite video on the entire internet...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ahVTorF2OI

The Browns came into yesterday's game seeking one of the more improbable four game winning streaks in recent memory (of course we all remember the similarly improbable one that the DTLs pulled off with Drew Stanton and Shaun Hill at the helm to close 2010), and after an uninspired 30 minutes from the Lions, it looked like they might get it. Trailing 17-7 at the half and kicking off to start the third quarter, they were up to the usual crap, jumping offsides on every single hard count, dropping passes, Calvin looked like his knee was at about 65%, and even Brandon Weeden was finding ways to carve through the secondary.

On the Lions' first drive of the second half, however, Reggie Bush took over, starting with a 39 yard dash on a handoff and capping it off with a 17 yard TD catch from Staff. Even more importantly, Reggie then immediately went over to the bench and started boysing it up with all of the defensive players, giving high fives and encouragement to all of them and pumping them up for the next drive. When some over-caffeinated assistant coach does this (which is often), it is usually met with awkwardness and eye rolling from the D; when Reggie does it, the boys responded with a dismantling of the Cleveland offense. That can be attributed to the fact that Reggie Bush is a good guy. I'd have to check, but I'm pretty sure the Browns never even crossed midfield again until their last minute desperation drive with the outcome already decided. As for the offense, Reggie's spark opened the door for Matthew Stafford to find other targets such as Kris Durham (who had his best game as a pro) and Joseph Fauria (who has emerged as a touchdown machine), and we even had a Worm Pettigrew sighting. The Lions built up a 24-17 lead midway through the fourth quarter. I'm now going to go off on a long-winded but significantly more interesting tangent before further summarizing the second half of the game.
**Spoiler alert: We won.

Galaxy Gear

Despite the general contempt that I hold for the field of advertising and marketing, the suits at Samsung really hit one out of the park with the commercial for their new wristwatch cellphone, the Galaxy Gear. They showed the commercial about 11 times during the DTLs game, and I'm being completely serious when I say that I want that thing, despite how disappointing the product itself probably is in reality. I haven't been this pumped about a watch since I saw the Casio wristwatch/calculator combo that my friend Buff had back in 6th grade, which I suspected him of using as a loophole during no calculators allowed math quizzes by pulling the old "Welp, guess I'll just check what time it is..." trick. I mean, that thing was water resistant too, so if you ever went scuba diving and some passing fish asked you to help balance their checkbook or something, you wouldn't miss a beat.

Back to the Samsung Galaxy Gear commercial. Buying the rights to the video clips must have cost them a fortune (unless of course it's the same conglomerate that actually owns all of that stuff to begin with, which I guess it could be), but the effect of the montage of all the old TV characters speaking into their futuristic watch/phones back before they actually existed was awesome. You've got the Star Treks of course, The Jetsons, Inspector Gadget, Power Rangers, and even Fred Flintstone proudly saying, "this is secret agent Rock Slab" into his device. Call me a geek, but I'd be delighted to know the context behind that particular scene. What ridiculous scenario allows for Flintstone to be a secret agent (and we all know that Rubble is probably in on it too), which pop culture icon is 'Rock Slab' supposed to be a pun for, and what prehistoric bird is operating inside of the device to make it work? Either way, I'm in. Awesome idea, awesome commercial. I bet it even has an app that lets you see the visual representation of the sound waves generated by your conversation, like on the George Jetson model. Christmas list.

Bedrock Approved

Speaking of Fred Flintstone, I find it worth mentioning that he set a prehistoric precedent that indirectly helped make the football career of one of the players in yesterday's game. To avoid getting fired at the Slate Rock & Gravel Co., Fred once went back to high school more than a decade later since he'd never graduated originally. During this time, he was somehow eligible to play football for Bedrock High, so being older and bigger than everyone else, he went out and completely dominated. After another year or two working in the quarry, Flintstone then ended up playing a brief stint of college ball for Prinstone University, while presumably in his late twenties. This has nothing to do with anything, but one of Fred's teammates at Prinstone was named King Kong Quagmire. Giggity. In the big game against league rival Shale, Flintstone had 2 rushing touchdowns, a key interception, and was kicked over the goalpost along with the football for the game winning extra point. Any of this sound familiar? By playing college football as a 28 year old grown-ass man, Fred Flintstone was basically the Stone Age version of Brandon Weeden, who did the same thing at Rocklahoma Slate before becoming the quarterback of the Cleveland Brownstones.

Coincidentally, my game recap left off right about where Brandon Weeden re-enters the picture. Ol' Rock Slab would not have been too happy about the ridiculous interception on the next drive that Weeden decided to shovel pass way up into the air and into the waiting arms of Deandre Levy, who was more than happy to scoop up the free gift. With just under 5 minutes to play at this point, Jim Schwartz could choose between two options: 1) sit on the lead, run predictable run plays up the middle, punt away, and hope the prevent defense holds against the Cleveland two minute drill, knowing full well that the prevent defense never holds against anyone's two minute drill, OR 2) Go for the win, put the game away, and leave no doubt. On Saturday night, Brady Hoke chose door #1 to calamitous results, like when Peter Griffin chose the mystery box instead of a new boat. Thankfully, Schwartz learned from the mistake and went with door #2. Stafford finds Fauria in the end zone again on a key third down, and the door is slammed shut for Cleveland.

Another impressive win puts Bromothymols at 4-2, with very winnable home games against Cincy and the Cowboys coming up next.

Walk Like The Packers

@ Packers 22
LIONS 9
As soon it was announced that Calvin wasn't playing last Sunday, this one was more or less a lost cause. You may win in Washington without Reggie Bush, but you're not taking down the Packers at Lambeau without Calvin Johnson. I'm not going to get into too much detail about the game itself, but for me there were two main takeaways from the latest in a long and well documened series of lambastings at Lambeau, the first of which involves an old pal from my days at Shay Elementary school. The second was the, kinda weird pre-game incident featuring my least favorite Lion, whom I'll nevertheless sort of be sticking up for on this occasion.

LB gets me yet again

In third grade, I had a friend named LB who was a big Packers fan. In fact, there is an annoying amount of people living in northern Michigan who are Packers fans. I'll excuse the yoopers, who kind of have a point since most of them do live closer to Green Bay than they do Detroit (but this does not excuse Bitts for that time that he made me and my brother listen to his dad's Da Yoopers cd in his garage for about 4 hours straight), but as for the lower peninsula Packers fans, I can only chalk it up as a case of regional bandwagonry. They want to cheer for the local team, but the local team isn't historically a winner, so they shamelessly choose the next closest winning team in the area. My limited sample size indicates that the type of people who pull crap like this are also likely to attend the non-denominational churches and play a lot of ultimate frisbee.

So what does this have to do with LB? Maybe nothing, but there was a period during the 1996 season where he started wearing this Brett Favre jersey to school quite a bit and talking a fair amount of trash. To discredit him, I once loudly pointed out that the name on the jersey was spelled wrong, and had a good laugh about it. F-A-V-R-E. Years later, to my great embarrassment, I found out that though pronounced 'Farve', LB's jersey was right along, and the true idiot was me. At least at the time, most of my classmates had enough trouble spelling their own names, so I never got called out on it. But I knew, and that was enough. LB and the Packers had won all along. I still can't believe it's actually spelled like that. This was the same guy who once took a big bite out of a brown crayon that was shaped like an animal, because he thought it was chocolate. This was the same guy who had once worn an Isiah Thomas Pistons jersey to school, told our teacher to call him "Isiah", and even wrote "Isa Toms" as his name on our homework assignment that day. If anyone was going to have jersey with a misspelled name, it was going to be LB.

In the cafeteria, LB used to do what he called "walking like the Packers" in the lunch line. This was a move where he would imitate the large high steps that some of the defensive players would do after a big play. After paying for his food, he would high step over to the trays and continue walking like the Packers all the way until he had his plate loaded up with some nice crunchy hot dogs. I preferred to walk like Barry Sanders; sprint 80 yards down the hallway, calmly hand your lunch money to the ref, and act like you've been there before.

Throughout the Fall of that school year, LB would frequently come in bragging about how the Packers were going to win the Super Bowl. I told him that he didn't know anything about football and probably didn't even know who the Packers were until his parents bought him that stupid 'Favor' jersey a month ago. In fact, he knew so little about football that he once tried to call back a recess interception that I took to the house, waving his arms in the incomplete pass signal and citing the rule of "Injury Before Touchdown" after one of his uncoordinated little buddies had tripped over their sambas trying to chase me down. So of course, the Packers went on to win the Super Bowl, led by the correctly-spelled Brett Favre. Shockingly, LB and the Packers had gotten me again, and have continued to get me at Lambeau Field every single year since. My sports knowledge had been outsmarted by fricking ISA TOMS. Every time I think we finally have them (i.e. coming off a big win against Chicago and facing a struggling Packers team), something happens to mess it up somehow (No Calvin, no chance). He did eat that brown crayon though--there's no getting around that one.

"The Dom is OUT ON THE FIELD!!"

It's no secret that Dominic Raiola does some rather questionable things at times. Like all those times that he's chased down a play, jumped onto the pile at the tail end, and got himself a late hit penalty. Or the time he got called for illegal procedure on a crucial 4th and 1 against the Bills because he was messing around with the ball, trying to fake the Bills D into thinking he was going to snap it. Well, the Dom on the offensive side of the ball was at it again before the game last Sunday, getting into some "verbal abuse" with some overly-sensitive tuba players from the Wisconsin band. Said Wisconsin tuba players then made a big deal about it and wah-wah-wah. I'm sure it was a completely unprovoked incident because I'm sure the Wisconsin tuba players would never in a million years taunt NFL players when they're at Lambeau Field.

Without either trying to justify of condemn Raiola's little tirade, I will point out a few more facts about the University of Wisconsin marching band and fanbase that may or may not offer a little more perspective this is incident that ended up on the front page of ESPN.com. I'd also be interested to see a direct quote of the comments that "called into question the sexuality" of the poor tuba player whose feelings got hurt, because if it was "blow me", that's actually a kind of a good one in this case.

-In 2006, the Wisconsin band got put on probation by the university following a road game at Michigan, where a bunch of them engaged in some lewd antics during the trip.
- In 2008, the Wisconsin band got suspended by the university for pretty much the same type of thing.
- During every home football game, the Wisconsin student section upholds a sacred tradition where
they all come together in unison to create a stunning effect throughout the stadium and show everyone just how they do things in Wisconsin. You may think I'm referring to their overrated "Jump Around" spectacle, but in reality I'm talking about their less famous chant of "EAT SHIT!/ FUCK YOU!" that all the students yell back and forth to each other.
- Nebraska, Dominic Raiola's alma mater, played their first ever Big Ten conference game at Wisconsin in 2011. Nebraska, it should be noted, has the general reputation of having a highly passionate yet also respectful fanbase. After that game, former Nebraska coach and athletic director Tom Osborne, had a few things to say regarding the general profanity and vulgarity shown by the Wisconsin fans.  All things considered, I think the Wisconsin tubas would probably be lying to themselves if they've never suggested that anyone else choose to dine on some feces.

With a track record as pure as this, I have to say, I really don't feel too sorry for the--let's see, I think  "fat bleeps" is how the USA Today describes them, in the Wisconsin tuba section. Sticks and stones may break your bones, but Doms will never hurt you.