I seem to remember Nebraska getting spanked in Austin and against Kansas State in 2003, his only year at Nebraska. Those two games preceded Steve Pederson’s infamous “I will not let Nebraska sink into mediocrity” speech.

Kentucky and Arkansas didn’t seem to impressed with him last season, either, despite both teams fielding inferior talent to LSU.

I think they’re gonna be running the spread in Lincoln this year, so we’ll see how they do.

Thanks for the nice words. I wasn’t really clear in my writing about Colt. I totally agree with you that the O line woes got into Colt’s head and impacted O production. Having said that, Colt is responsible for the interceptions that he threw and his fumbles. He has to know when to throw the ball out of bounds and when to go down. When running, he needs to keep two hands on the ball. He has to stop treating tipped balls as an act of God.

Colt, GD, and Mack all share blame for not taking a different approach when it became obvious that the O line was not giving Colt enough time to run the time consuming routes that Mack/GD/Colt favor. The horns should have had Colt roll out more. This would have made it much tougher on the D to blitz Colt and much easier for the O line to get good blocking angles. A lot more reverses would have kept the D more honest. Throwing the ball immediately makes it impossible for the D to get to the QB in time. Colt often passed up the open short man to throw longer, riskier passes.

Colt will throw fewer picks in 2008 and better decision making by Colt will be the big reason why.

I am curious to see how strong Colt’s arm is this season. My hope all along has been that as he filled out, his arm strength would improve a lot.

Conceded. But Mangino’s record at KU is 38-37. Mike Gundy’s record at OSU is 18-19. KU faced the 6th easiest schedule of any BCS conference team on their way to their magical season. While Mangino is on the short list, he’s not the “far and away” best that you claim. Not even close.

That “best coach” title stays between Stoops and/or Brown until Mangino wins a conference title. Why? Because for those who say “it’s easy to win all the time at OU or UT”, tell that to John Mackovic or John Blake.

“Tell you what, Chris. Let’s revisit this discussion AFTER KU plays their first tough Big 12 schedule with the Orange Bowl champion tag on their backs. Anything better than 8-4, and I might be willing to agree with you. But I see KU losing to Tech, UT, OU, and South Florida at a bare minimum.”

Doesn’t change the fact that it’s gosh darned Kansas we’re talking about.

Coach School Salary
1. Bob Stoops Oklahoma $3.8M
2. Mack Brown Texas $2.75M
3. Mark Mangino Kansas $2.3M
4. Gary Pinkel Missouri $1.85M
5. Mike Sherman Texas A&M $1.8M
5. Art Briles Baylor $1.8M
7. Mike Leach Texas Tech $1.66M
8. Bo Pelini Nebraska $1.1M
9. Mike Gundy OSU $1.05M
10. Gene Chizik Iowa State $1.03M
11. Dan Hawkins Colorado $936K
12. Ron Prince K-State $755K

“I think the O should be a little better in 2008 than in 2007 because Colt can’t possibly thow as many interceptions and fumble as much this season as he did last season, because the O line should be more competent…”

I could not agree more. I will probably get bashed for this, but I do think Colt is a bit under-rated. No, he didn’t make the best decisions last year, but most of that can be traced back to not having enough time to even get the snap, much less try to decide where to throw it. I do think he let it get in his head as well, which led to hurried decisions when there shouldn’t have been, but cut the kid some slack. Not only is he following VY, but that was only his second year as a starter (and his first year was behind a ridiculously stellar o-line).

“The horns O needs to help out the more than it did last year in terms of just hanging onto the ball and permitting the D to rest and giving it good field position when it gets on the field. Too often last year, the horns’ O was chaotic, with Colt running around in a random fashion until somebody got open (or he threw into double coverage).”

Agreed. I think the one game that gives me hope about this year’s offense was the Tech game last year. I remember being very impressed with how the offense kept an incredibly slow but steady pace while on the field. I realize this year’s game is at Tech, but I am speaking of the broader implications of that game. The offense was so discombobulated last year in almost every other game. The Tech game showed that they could be “on” for an entire game and control the tempo and clock like they wanted.

And I agree with Nate on KU. They may go better than 8-4, but last year both KU and Mizzou caught people off guard. This year they won’t. It should be a good indicator of where each is as a program, IMO.

Tell you what, Chris. Let’s revisit this discussion AFTER KU plays their first tough Big 12 schedule with the Orange Bowl champion tag on their backs. Anything better than 8-4, and I might be willing to agree with you. But I see KU losing to Tech, UT, OU, and South Florida at a bare minimum.