August 21st, 2006.
Somewhere in there is the first article ever written on CornNation. So CornNation is 20 years old. Pretty much today.
This all came about by happenstance. I had written in the computer industry for almost 20 years, and when blogging came out around the year 1997, 1998, somewhere in there, most of the magazines I wrote for went out of business. Book publishers stopped accepting never-ending books about IT.
And then came the cause of writing online.
I wrote for one website for a while.
When the year 2000 hit, they want me to do an article on “Man’s Greatest Accomplishments”.
They asked me the question, “What is man’s greatest invention”.
I said “Crack cocaine. It only takes one hit and you’re addicted.”
They didn’t publish the article.
Listen. I was getting paid a pretty good sum to write for magazines, $500-1500 per article. I was getting paid $25 to write online. Do you get the idea I was pissed about it?
I quit writing about IT. I spent the next three or four years bitching about it – the blogging that destroyed the magazines and the “I am not writing”.
What I discovered was my brain is really full of shit. And instead of blabbering on to everybody in my life about whatever was on my mind, I decided I’d start writing for fun. I started my own little website about the Nebraska Cornhuskers. Somehow SB Nation found me and asked me, and they asked me to be their Nebraska guy. So CornNation was born.
There’s a couple specific reasons that this website has its name.
Number 1, I looked at the blogosphere and realized that there wasn’t another Nebraska site that really had a lot of fun in its name. I named it CornNation to remind me to have fun with this.
Secondly, Steve Peterson was the athletic director at the time. Everything I’d heard about him was that he was such a megalomaniac, he would probably go around and start suing anybody with Huskers in their name because it was a trademark.
Therefore, CornNation.
It’s been an evolving website over the years.
One thing that’s dramatically changed is SB Nation’s clamping down on us for writing joke and satire articles because they wanted to be more serious. I had heard that the Indiana Athletic Department at one time refused to credential any SB Nation blogs because they pointed to CornNation and basically said, “we don’t want that kind of writing representing us.”
So SBNation told me that label our jokes and satire articles as such. To be honest with you, if you label something as a joke or satire, what’s the point of doing it?
We’ve gotten in trouble a few times. The Creighton starts a football team was one, because people picked it up as real news. Tim Miles getting a jobafter being fired by Nebraska was another because Tim Miles’ mother was sure he got a job. I heard from various sources that Tim Miles wasn’t very happy with us.
There was the Northwestern using brain technology to read our plays. That might be of the last ones I did because that got taken seriously, and also got me in trouble.
My memory is not the best, but let’s see.
I can think of a few articles that stood out to me. Number 1 was the 2011 Ohio State game thread. I started the game thread by stating that that we should all cut down on profanity. And that game was a horrid mess. Nebraska couldn’t do anything until I made asingle comment in the game thread.
FUCKITY FUCK FUCK FUCK
Fucking joining the Big Fucking Ten.
Fucking Defense that won’t play tough.
Fucking offensive coordinator.
Fucking stupid ass shit for brains offensive line coach.
Fucking defensive secondary that can’t cover my mom (MY MOM iS 90)
I know I’ve asked y’all to not swear during game threads. BUT FUCK IT.
This happened just before David’s strip of Miller for the fumble that lead to the turn around in this game.
And suddenly the game thread, moments after that comment, I think it was Levonte David made a fumble recovery, and the comeback was on, and the game thread was full of, “holy crap, the profanity must be working.” There was a massive amount of stuff being said. Nebraska came back for 1 of the biggest… reversals in the Big 10 history.
2018 I did an article about sprint car racing in Oklahoma. The one in which I almost got killed from a car coming inside the track to avoid an accident.
I am nearly run over by a driver who comes into the infield on a corner to avoid an accident. She passes so close I can feel her exhaust on my legs.
Then there’s the, There’s No Hope. F*** Everything. Go Big Redbusiness.
There’s another anniversary on this day. 11 years ago,I had a heart attack. I was dead for 20 minutes, got a permanently damaged heart, a brain injury, and life has never been the same since.
And through it all, through it all, Nebraska has gone through maybe 20 years of not the best football in the world. It’s been hard to do this. Every single offseason, I’ve looked at my wife and said, “maybe I should quit this.” And she said, “are you going to watch college football every day on Saturday during football season?” And it convinces me, yes, I am because that’s who I am.
I plan on doing CornNation until I’m too old, sick, and full of dementia and can’t anymore.
At least that’s the plan now. If that’s good enough.
One more thing:
It wasn’t too long after 2006 that Husker Mike came along and then God knows how many people have joined with us since. I loved our writers, our staff members like a family. They’ve been with me for a lot of ups and downs. To the gin-drinking game threads, to quitting drinking, being dead, and all the dumb stuff I’ve done over the years.
Thank you Corn Nation writers!
And thanks to all you who have supported us over the years.
