You can't spell boo without Bo

This feels like the best-timed bye week in Husker history, doesn’t it? A wild-ride first half of a season ends with NU right about where most of us figured they’d be: 5-1. But oh, what a strange, unsettling trip it’s been.

For now, though, a chance for everyone to catch their breath, get a grip, adjust expectations, regain some perspective and just generally chill the hell out.

Here’s what we’ve learned in the 2011 season so far:

-- College kids are unpredictable and often immature, and man-children who have been worshipped for their athletic prowess for years not surprisingly come to feel entitled to such worship and aren’t very adept at handling rougher treatment.

-- Football is a glorious yet stupid game.

-- It’s not the ‘90s in Husker Nation anymore, and never will be again.

-- Nebraska fans, who love to preen about their national reputation for good sportsmanship, can be as surly and unforgiving as the average Philadelphian at times.

-- And Bo is a supremely stubborn guy with a nasty temper and kind of a dick to the media, which makes him similar to probably 75 percent of the nation’s other college football coaches. And the more he wins, the less we’ll care about the aforementioned.

So, what’s new here?

Presumably, Bo and his boys will make some mid-season adjustments during their bye week. Some Husker fans might consider doing the same.

Let’s start with the booing. Apparently, some fans booed Taylor Martinez after a second-quarter pick Saturday night. Some who were there heard it; others didn’t. Clearly it wasn’t most, or even many, of the fans, but Bo seemed to hear it and the TV cameras – surely he knows by now there’s one trained on him at all times -- caught him gesturing in disgust toward the crowd.

Certainly, booing at college athletes is bad form. I can’t imagine how anyone who has, or ever had, a 19-, 20-, or 21-year-old child could do it. After all, they are students. Would you go into an English classroom and boo students’ poor performance there? OK, actually, I would, so that’s a bad example. But you get the point.

Another problem with booing is that it’s so unfocused and scattershot. Are fans booing the quarterback’s play, a missed block by the left tackle or the offensive coordinator’s play-calling? Or perhaps it’s a section-wide outbreak of gastrointestinal distress from the week-old fare the hot-dog man just fobbed off there.

Maybe it’s an Occupy Memorial Stadium protest against the evils of big-time college sports. Or perhaps it’s just an anguished cry to the heavens at the existential unfairness of it all.

There’s a certain mob mentality in these moments. If there’s safety in numbers, there’s also douchebaggery. But try this test: If it were just you sitting in the stands, alone, watching the game and players therefore could hear you, and only you, would you boo? If not, then don’t do it as part of a crowd.

The privacy of your own home is another matter. There, I have been known to thoughtfully question a player’s or coach’s understanding of the sport from time to time. At particularly frustrating moments, I may even point out to the dog that a certain coordinator might be happier plying his trade elsewhere and perhaps should be encouraged to do so, covered in tar and feathers as an inducement if necessary. And more than once, I must admit, I’ve permitted myself to think, just fleetingly, perhaps this team would be better, and therefore I happier, had a certain player or coach taken up swimming or tennis instead.

Booing aside, this has become an unquestionably surly fan base in recent years. One wonders: Can Husker fans enjoy following a sport that might never again win a national title, or even seriously compete for one? One that might win a conference title only once every five years, or even once every 10 years?

In other words, can they enjoy, as some dude once wrote and a certain university thought eloquent enough to inscribe in a certain stadium, "Not the victory but the action; Not the goal but the game; In the deed the glory?"

Hell if I know, but we may be about to find out.

Finally, there’s Bo. His post-game press conference Saturday night was classic. He gets hostile with an Omaha World-Herald sportswriter who had the audacity to do his job. Bo’s smart enough to know that picking a fight with the media is good politics for him with most fans. But let’s be clear: It is not a sports reporter’s job to support the home team. That’s what fans do.

Well, that’s just who Bo is, a phrase becoming nearly as ubiquitous around here as “if you don’t like the weather in Nebraska, wait 10 minutes.” Let us just be grateful as a society that he went into football coaching and not, say, hmm, well, just about anything else.

Oh, well, Husker football will be here long after Bo has gone on to Ohio State or LSU, where he’ll either win a national title or end his career by going Woody Hayes on Erin Andrews on national TV. Or maybe both.

Either way, we’ll say we knew him back then. Some of us might even say, “yeah, I used to boo at that SOB all the time.”