An 8-3 mark more trash than treasure in Nebraska?

IOWA CITY - “You come to a crossroads and the expectations get so great, people get spoiled by success and there gets to be a lack of appreciation. We're kind of there now.”

That was said in a Wall Street Journal story last week by Terry Saban, the wife of Alabama coach Nick Saban. Her hubby is the emperor of the college football coliseum, three wins from a third-straight national-title. Any Bama fan who would publicly criticize Saban would be asking for a public floggings. But his wife is moaning about expectations.

The guess here is that there are plenty of Crimson Tide fans who have sufficient appreciation of her husband's job-performance. But if it doesn't feel like it to the First Family of Alabama, it doesn't feel like it.

Iowa plays Nebraska Friday. The Cornhuskers are last year's Legends Division champion. They are 8-3 this season. They are coached by Bo Pelini, one of just four coaches in the history of BCS conference schools to win nine or more games in each of his first five seasons.

Pelini's record is 57-23. Those raw numbers indicate more than a little competence, yet he has one foot on a banana peel when it comes to job-security. Nebraska fans are widely regarded as hospitable and decent sorts. Nonetheless, they expect more than 9-4 records. They have no interest in Capital One Bowls.

Ten years ago, Frank Solich got fired as Nebraska's coach before his team went to the Alamo Bowl. His team was 9-3 at the time. From 1999 to 2001, the Huskers were 33-5 under Solich.

People wanted more. They wanted to get back to that magical place known as the next level. That's because those prairie people had been to the mountain top so many times before, tasting national-titles in 1994, 1995 and 1997 under Tom Osborne, and in 1970 and 1971 with Bob Devaney.

Those were different eras, a different millennium. But 16 years after that last No. 1 finish, 8-3 still isn't anything resembling satisfying over there. Husker fans would accept an Outback Bowl bid this season with clothes pin over their noses.

It's easy to say Iowa fans would be pleased as punch had Iowa's last five teams gone 9-4, 10-4, 10-4, 9-4 and 10-4 a la Nebraska.

“I'd like to find out, put it that way,” Hawkeyes Coach Kirk Ferentz said Tuesday, drawing his biggest laugh of the season from the Iowa football press corps.

While an Outback Bowl invitation this season would be clung to tightly in Hawkeyeland, everything is relative to expectations. Iowa was 4-8 last year, and many professed they would be satisfied with any kind of bowl bid this year.

But that “next level” concept is universal. The phrase “next level” was burned into the Iowa lexicon in the late 1990s when then-athletics director said this after hiring Steve Alford to replace Tom Davis as the school's men's basketball coach:

“I think that Steve's reputation has allowed us to leverage the university's profile and move to the next level,” Bowlsby said.

Just like when Nebraska replaced Solich with Bill Callahan after the horrors of a 9-3 regular-season.

“One thing that's usually common in sports, it's never enough,” Ferentz said. “It's all relative to where you're at, what level you're at, that type of thing. That's a common denominator nationally in all sports, not just football.

“I'm just saying, you know, complaining about whatever is pretty common in sports, I think that's one thing that attracts it in some sick way.”

Of course, it didn't help Pelini's approval rating in Nebraska when a two-year-old tape of him ranting about Nebraska fans and media was leaked.

“We'll see what they can do when I'm f------ gone.” Pelini said inelegantly.

If his team doesn't beat the Hawkeyes Friday, he may start getting his answer sooner than he wants. Is that right or fair? It doesn't matter.

You walk into a job as a state employee getting paid far more than the governor, the expectations are greater on you than the guv.