THE BUGMUNCH -- Opinion

Unlike us Cornhuskers, the only thing K-State fans care about is football

Jeez, there sure are a lot of Kansas State football fans walking around these days. Ever since the Wildcats got good at football, these people are everywhere. You see them at Walgreen's in their purple sweaters, and on the highways in jacked-up trucks with that goofy-looking Powercat logo plastered all over them. Well, I guess that's to be expected, with Lincoln only being about 120 miles from Manhattan and all, and with Kansas State getting a few licks in on the Huskers as of late.

Unfortunately for me, my wife Starla has relatives in Kansas. So we often take our fair share of ribbing in public when we go down there to visit. Generally, Wildcat fans are pretty nice people, despite the horror stories I've read about them in the newspaper and on the Internet. But do you want to know what the really sad thing about the Kansas State people is? Get this: The only thing they really care about is football!

I guarantee that right now, no Wildcat fans even care to realize that the college baseball season is going on, or that their school even has a baseball team, for that matter. Nope, they're busy poring over their team's spring football depth charts and scouring the Manhattan Mercury newspaper for even the most minute of practice updates. I really feel sorry for them once spring football is over, because that's when their dry spell will really set in and they'll start going stir crazy. They'll spend the entire summer counting the months until August, when their football season finally kicks off, giving them something to live for again.

They really are deserving of our pity and not our hatred. Because let's face it, life as a Kansas State fan isn't as broad, enriching and diverse as it is for us Cornhusker backers. Oh sure, we've got a nationwide reputation of getting wound up over our football team each fall, but what separates us from those folks in purple is that we also apparently have good programs in baseball, softball, volleyball, gymnastics, women's rifle and women's bowling, or so I've read.

Believe me, the recent successes of those teams come in handy when you're looking to score points in a debate with a Kansas State fan over whose school is better. Whenever I'm in my Husker clothes in Kansas and a Wildcat fan starts giving me some junkity junk about how they beat us in football, I usually feign indifference and say that being a Nebraskan doesn't mean you have to put your red clothes away in January. No, it merely means you duck and cover for about a month while the basketball team wallows around like a dehydrated sea lion, and then baseball starts. So while the people in Manhattan are hibernating and reliving past glories and defeats this spring and summer, we Huskers are scanning the newspaper for reports on our baseball and softball teams in their quests for the College World Series. Starla and I have yet to make it up to Haymarket Park for a ballgame, but sometimes listen on the radio if nothing else is on TV.

Boy, those purple people really need to broaden their horizons down there. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with liking football. But when you focus all your energy and attention on one sport like the Kansas State fans have done over the years with their football team, it can really be tough if the team goes into the crapper. Witness their 2001 season, when they went 6-6. Can you imagine how long of an offseason that must've been for those fans? That's why I'm glad we here at Nebraska are blessed to have other successful programs to fall back on if the football team doesn't live up to expectations.

I don't expect anyone wearing purple to have any perspective, though. In 1998, after we brought our second-worst team in 40 years down there and barely lost to their best team ever, all you could hear about was what a big deal it was. Truth is, it was their first win over us in about three decades. Two years later when they barely won again in Manhattan, all you heard was the "We've beaten you two out of three" talk. And now that they beat our worst team in 40 years last fall, we have to put up with "We've gotten you three out of the last five." To which I usually say, "And we've gotten you 72 out of the last 87 times," seeings that Nebraska holds a 72-13-2 overall edge in the series. That usually shuts 'em right up, though I hate to have to play that trump card.

I imagine that supporting the teams from a small land-grant university in an area of the country that has no real economic or cultural relevance and influence on the rest of the nation would be a tough thing to live with after a while. Especially if you had a reputation as perennial football losers. So I completely understand why, now that KSU is good, why Kansas State fans have latched on to their football team and made it so that's all they care about. So if you encounter any Wildcat fans trying to talk "football trash" with you, keep this in mind. Very few schools are blessed with such a well-balanced athletic department as Nebraska's, and the all-around fans to go along with it. So let those Wildcats put all of their emotional eggs in one basket, and just tell them to get lost.

And if that doesn't work, remind them that we beat Arizona State worse than they did last year.

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Ed Berg, a retired pole man from Lincoln Telephone Co. and rabid Husker fan since October 1962, lives in Lincoln. His column, "Go Big Ed," appears monthly.

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