Column: Nebraska is a place you can survive

You can't run from fear forever.

I had gone my entire life without traveling across Nebraska on the ground. I got as far west on I-80 as Lincoln twice before 2011, and that was only because I had to cover football games there. But I rolled into town at night both times by design. I didn't want to see where I was.

Hey, most fear is irrational. And the longer you put things off, the worse they get.

For my whole life, I heard what a long, mind-numbing trip it was from one end of Nebraska to the other. Don't drive it if you don't have to, I heard time after time, year after year from emotionally scarred friends who had boldly gone where I'd never gone before.

I've spent hours, days even, in the hearts of some of America's toughest cities. I've lingered in the south Bronx, in Detroit, in Atlantic City. During Iowa's two trips to the Sun Bowl in El Paso, I crossed the bridge over the Rio Grande and spent time in Juarez even though some have called it the world's most dangerous place.

I once walked the streets of Beijing after dark with a police officer eyeing me suspiciously. He surely wondered if should arrest me on principle alone.

None of that made me flinch. But I was never going to drive across Nebraska. It may as well have been Namibia or Nepal. It was foreign to me, and all I knew about it was it terrified me.

Then Nebraska joined the Big Ten in June 2010. As long as I had this job in which I cover Iowa football games, I was going to have to go to Nebraska every other year. And maybe slide over there for a basketball game once in a while. It was time to confront the terror.

So in August 2011 I drove from Cedar Rapids to Denver, because there had to be a carrot at the end of the stick. The civilization of Denver combined with the splendor of the Rocky Mountains was the carrot. If, that is, I could survive the stick.

Naturally, it wasn't as bad as everyone had made it out to be. OK, it helped that there were no blizzards. And yes, it often felt like I was driving on the moon. But driving across Iowa is dull, driving across Illinois is dull, driving across most states via the Interstate is dull.

Plus, when I pulled over for the night in North Platte in a motel that had cars in its parking lot with license plates from at least a dozen different states, I could sleep in comfort knowing I wasn't alone.

But what's this nonsense have to do with today's Iowa-Nebraska game? Like me, the Hawkeyes have now had their indoctrination into Nebraska. That also was in 2011. They didn't give the Cornhuskers much of a game.

However, the program survived. Nebraska's Memorial Stadium is one of the great college football venues, but it doesn't swallow opponents whole.

For the Hawkeyes to make their first appearance in a bowl of any consequence in four years, they must slay the Cornhuskers in Lincoln Friday.

UCLA and Michigan State did it this fall. It's just an opponent and a venue. There's really nothing to fear about being in Nebraska but the fear itself.

But there's something to be said for prudence, too. Once I was west of Lincoln two years ago, I never strayed any further off the freeway than it took to get gas, food and lodging. Why tempt fate too much?