Nebraska And Football

Have you ever been talking to someone for 10 minutes, only to find that the conversation has drifted to Huskers football? If so, you are talking to a Nebraskan.

For Thanksgiving my wife and I went to her Mom's place in Omaha. It just so happened that it was also the weekend that their college football coach was getting fired. I could not believe how big of news it was. It was on the front page of the newspaper, it was on the radio as I was flipping through the stations, it was on the 10 o'clock news as the lead story, then another 5 min during the sports segment. My mother in law was getting phone calls about it.

I admit I'm not much of a football fan so I'm not completely surprised by how out of the loop I was on this, but I realized this trip that Husker football is the Nebraska culture. Heck, they even elected a former Husker coach as a US Congressman! I knew it was big there, but I had no idea it was that big.

As a Minnesota boy, I was trying to think of something similar that all of us Minnesotans have that we rally around and defines the state. Probably nothing to that extent. Fishing? Hunting? Hotdish? I don't know. What defines Minnesotans?