KSB’s Husker Predictions…
Every August for nine years running, the staff of KSB School Law have set aside their actual jobs to do something far more important: predict, in painstaking and increasingly unhinged detail, exactly how the Nebraska Cornhuskers are going to break our hearts this season. Some years we're right. Most years we're not. Here's 2026. (Buckle up…..)
KAREN’S PREDICTION:
VIA CERTIFIED MAIL, EMAIL, AND SCREAMED INTO THE VOID
To whom it may concern:
This letter serves as formal notice of claims and a demand for relief for my clients, Husker Fans Everywhere ("Plaintiffs"), a certifiable class of individuals who have, in reliance on decades of false hope, suffered severe emotional distress for the past two decades. See. e.g. KSB Husker Football Predictions Are In (Tanner Lee era); KSB Predictions for Season 1 Under Frost (no explanation needed); The Blog Post You Wait All Year For (Rhule era begins); KSB's Husker Predictions… (Dylan Raiola's freshman year).
I. STATEMENT OF FACTS
Plaintiffs are a class of otherwise rational adults who, every August, willingly re-enter a relationship they know to be abusive. Defendants have, with actual malice and a truly impressive lack of competence, constructed a schedule and fielded a football team specifically engineered to maximize suffering, including but not limited to:
Scheduling rival opponents whose fanbase includes at least four individuals in counsel's own office (and one Notre Dame fan, whose gloating rights are legally dubious but exercised anyway), guaranteeing weeks of insufferable gloating;
Placing at least one (1) genuinely winnable game directly before at least one (1) unwinnable game, for the sole purpose of inducing hope immediately prior to its systematic destruction; and
Continuing, year after year, to allow Vegas to set a win total that entices certain members of the Plaintiff class bet on, lose, and then relitigate at excruciating length at the KSB weekly Monday morning meeting. (see Bobby, generally).
II. ITEMIZED SCHEDULE OF ANTICIPATED HARM (2026 SEASON)
In support of damages, counsel submits the following game-by-game forecast of emotional injury:
Projected Final Record: 6-6. Bowl eligible. Nothing more. Nothing less. Exactly the amount of hope required to guarantee Plaintiffs’ continued self-harm in 2027.
III. DAMAGES
Plaintiffs seek the following relief:
Compensatory damages for pain, suffering, and the fair market value of every stupid "Our Red Burns Brighter" t-shirt purchased;
Emotional distress damages, calculated at one (1) unit of despair per point Nebraska trails at halftime, times the number of kids now locked out of selling Runzas in Memorial Stadium; and
Injunctive relief, specifically a gag order on Steve and Jordan, whose smugness re: Michigan constitutes a separate and ongoing tort not addressed in this filing.
IV. SETTLEMENT DEMAND
In lieu of litigation, Plaintiffs would accept the following in full satisfaction of all claims:
One (1) bowl game that does not require a map to locate;
A win over Iowa in any form, fashion or manner whatsoever;
Six consecutive weeks without a single "this is the year" article appearing in any Nebraska-based publication; and
Emotional immunity, retroactive to 1997, for anyone who still believes.
Failure to remedy the above by kickoff on September 5 will leave Plaintiffs no choice but to continue watching anyway, out of habit, love, and a complete inability to quit something that keeps hurting them — which, frankly, may be the most damning evidence of distress in this entire letter.
Please govern yourselves accordingly. Go Big Red.
Yours very truly,
Karen A. Haase
Counsel for Husker Fans Everywhere
cc: My therapist, who has heard all of this before, and is now billing me for reading this blog post
STEVE’S PREDICTION:
The Huskers will start strong against inferior competition, as they usually do, with wins against Ohio, Bowling Green, and North Dakota. They win closer-than-they-should-be games against Michigan State and Maryland. Woo hoo! A 5-0 start! Then, the wheels fall off. The good news? Apparently, fewer and fewer people will be there to see it! Blowout losses to Indiana and Oregon. An ugly defeat at home at the hands of Washington. They lose a winnable game at Illinois, but follow up with a win at Rutgers. I’d love for the Huskers to beat the evil team from Ohio, but they just can’t do it. They end the season with yet another painful loss to Iowa. A 6-6 finish, another low-quality bowl game, and the grumbling begins about the need for a new head coach.
BOBBY’S PREDICTION:
I love and hate this blog post. It’s like Steve staring at a new box of Oreos; or Dylan Raiola liking “nature” in Oregon, but not his new depth chart. Just as I’m dreaming through the reasons why this team might turn a corner—finally some competent OL coaching; a deeper DL; and a quarterback with a lot of live rounds—I’m forced to step back into reality. This is an old team, which is usually good. But those combined snaps across all 3 phases are a lot of the same players. And then there’s a brand new defense and a bunch of new coaches who were only able to snag some mercenaries to fit their preferences. I desperately want to feel alive inside this August, but I can’t move the needle off 7-5. I promise, I’ve tried. That’s already north of the oddsmakers’ regular season win line, which has been elusive for 15 years.
Wins: Ohio, Bowling Green, and North Dakota. These aren’t Houston Baptist-esque teams. We’ll know a lot in the first 3 weeks, but I think we get it done.
Losses: Indiana, Oregon, and Ohio State. Getting 2 at home is nice, but I fear it won’t matter. Maybe we lose by 21 instead of 35. We’re not in the same stratosphere in terms of roster talent. Plus, Cignetti is a witch with Mark Cuban money now.
That leaves half the schedule in the tossup category. I think each of these games has a spread within 6-10 either direction. Vegas thinks we win 3 or 4 of those, which makes it sound harder than it really should be, but we haven’t yet proven we beat the teams we “should.” I think we get Michigan State in year 1 of Fitzy’s return. I think we get Rutgers and Maryland, though both make me nervous. I’m guessing we only get 1 of Washington, Illinois, or Iowa. I’d love it to be Iowa, but apparently only an interim HC can beat them. So, it’s 7-5, with a shade toward 6-6 compared to 8-4 if I had to hedge.
SHARI’S PREDICTION:
The Huskers open with a two-game winning streak and Husker Nation starts whispering "Big Ten title" like it's 1995 again. We win the next two games and the excitement continues. Then October happens. I think we could possibly lose all of those games. At this point Husker Nation is getting anxious. We have rebound wins against Illinois and Rutgers. Those two wins come with all the talk of six wins and bowl eligibility. That glimmer of hope is quickly diminished by two disappointing losses to Ohio State and Iowa. We will hear more about how it was a “building year” and the talk of the transfer portal will heat up once again.
COADY’S PREDICTION:
Thank goodness for the cupcake beginning (knocking on wood as I type). Nebraska will start 4-0, because the new Fightin’ Fitzgeralds aren’t quite up to ending the Huskers’ season-beginning winning streak in East Lansing on September 26. After that, the only clear win will come at Rutgers. Everything else is almost surely a loss (Indiana, at Oregon, Washington, Ohio State, and at Iowa***) or a toss-up (Maryland, at Illinois). Assuming that Nebraska splits those toss-ups, the Cornhuskers finish 6-6. This team is quite possibly improved, but the schedule will make it too tough for the record to show very much improvement.
***Author’s Note: To my core I don’t believe that Iowa is as vaunted an opponent as the New-and-Improved-Hoosiers©, Oregon, Washington, or Ohio State. But unless and until Nebraska shows that it can end our long national nightmare Day-After-Thanksgiving Tradition of watching an excrutiatingly-frustrating loss while non-Nebraska-fan family members stand to the side aghast at being exposed to the bewildering existence of Nebraska fans, then Iowa is firmly in the Loss Column for purposes of KSB Husker Predictions.
JORDAN’S PREDICTION: The Sound of Silence
A few familiar beeps followed shortly by the clang of metal on glass, the smacking of lips, and a salacious exhale. The clattering of fingers on a keyboard, a frustrated growl under the breath, and a string of cuss words never before chained together yet forged with the menace of an epithet and the promise of being dropped on a live recorded webinar. A rhythmic, raspy rumble keeping time like a metronome with a sinus infection. Whether it's Steve rapaciously razing his first Hot Pocket of the day, Karen building her latest slide deck, or me breathing 25% too loudly, these are the deeply, viscerally disturbing sounds of a silent KSB Office at 10:22 in the morning, which is both too early and too late for any of this.
Sometimes quiet is too quiet. There’s a Simon and Garfunkel line I’d love to use here, but Copyright Compliance Czar Bobby says quoting a lyric on a firm blog is how you find out what a cease and desist looks like. Use your imagination. It’s the one about darkness. You know the one.
Which brings me to Husker Nation.
It has just been too quiet. Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe you've all resigned yourself to a lifetime of mediocrity in a football conference only your ego truly ever fit in. And yet I can't shake how unsettling this particular silence feels. It's the deafening silence of suddenly not hearing your kids playing in the next room and knowing, immediately, that something is wrong. Very wrong. Even the program has gone quiet, barely making a headline all summer, and that worries me more. Rhule might be instilling a quiet confidence in a team that used to fold over backwards every fourth quarter like the flimsy folding chair I broke at last year's teachers conferences.
And it is with this fearful, fitful uneasiness that I predict the best Husker season in recent memory. The starting schedule has the structural integrity of one of Steve’s morning Hot Pockets, molten in the middle, frozen at the edges, and guaranteed to collapse the moment anyone bites down on it. Five easy wins. After that, they only drop three: Indiana, Oregon, and Ohio State. Which means yes, I am on the record, in writing, predicting Matt Rhule beats Kirk Ferentz in Iowa City on Black Friday. Please screenshot this so my children can find it someday.
Nine and three, a big time bowl, and a near miss at playoff contention. I suspect this is the last offseason of silence for a long while. Enjoy it, Husker Nation. I can't say you deserve it. You need it. But more than that, you need one season built to hold a former lineman (or at least last year’s quarterback), not a folding chair pretending to be furniture.
TYLER’S PREDICTION:
Last year, rather than prognosticate on the infinite possibilities of the nation’s luckiest unlucky team (or unluckiest lucky team, depending on your feelings) I left my decision making to flipping a quarter. It went…fine? Fate had them at 5-7 and they ended up at 7-5. So pure chance was not materially different from my colleagues (9-3 guys? Come on now).
So this year, we’re doing fate again, but with a twist of predicting scores as well.
For each game, I rolled seven dice for each team. I then dropped the highest and lowest dice from each roll and totaled the rest. We have to have some consistency here. Otherwise, this process would be arbitrary.
Will this be closer? Probably not. Will this be more entertaining to me than reading Husker blogs? Probably yes.
Here is what the dice gods dictate:
So there you have it. 6-6. The dice have spoken. They probably didn’t speak accurately, but they’ve definitely spoken.
SARA’S PREDICTION:
This summer, America flocked to theaters to watch The Odyssey: a story about a man who spends an absurd number of years suffering through one obstacle after another, convinced that eventually he will make it home. Naturally, I thought of myself and my delusion regarding Nebraska football. We are now entering Year Four of the Matt Rhule era, which means we have officially reached the point where we ask, is this the year? (All Husker fans collectively whisper - “we have said that before.”) Still, I am predicting 7–5.
We open with Ohio, Bowling Green, and North Dakota. Nebraska should win all three games, and I see absolutely no reason to complicate this. Nebraska then heads to Michigan State, where I’m predicting another win because at some point the plot has to move forward. Maryland comes to Lincoln for Homecoming, and I’m taking another win. Just like that, Nebraska is 5-0. (The fans scream Yes!) And that is when Nebraska fans make our annual mistake: hope. Someone will post a graphic comparing Matt Rhule’s Year Four record to Tom Osborne.
Then comes Indiana. Loss. Then Oregon in Eugene. Loss. Suddenly we are 5-2. Nebraska returns home to play Washington on Halloween. This feels like exactly the game Nebraska has spent the last decade losing by four points after committing a turnover that causes 90,000 people to simultaneously stare into the middle distance. But, remember . . . hope! So not this year. Nebraska wins and becomes bowl eligible.
Hilary Duff (truly iconic - top 3 best concert) is touring again, Nebraska is going to a bowl game, and millennials everywhere are being asked to believe that the things we loved in 2003 can actually come back. This is what dreams are made of. (Can you tell I am a millennial? Don’t forget . . . Bobby is what they call an “elder millennial.”)
Then comes November. Illinois on a Friday night in Champaign? Absolutely not. Nebraska falls to 6-3. Rutgers comes to Lincoln, Nebraska gets win number seven. Next, Ohio State comes to Lincoln. I appreciate optimism. I also appreciate being a realist. Loss. 7-4.
Which brings us, inevitably, to Iowa. Eleven games. Months of travel. Trials. Triumphs. Monsters. Questionable officiating. Reddit prophecies. A brief period when we convinced ourselves we were nationally relevant. And after everything Nebraska has endured, one final obstacle stands between us and home: Iowa.
I hate it. I reject it. I have nevertheless seen enough Nebraska-Iowa games to know how this ends. It will be ugly. It will be cold. Iowa will punt approximately 19 times. Nebraska will outgain them by 170 yards. And then Iowa will win on a field goal.
Final prediction: 7-5. Not exactly the triumphant return Husker fans have been promised, but another bowl game and another winning season.
AMANDA’S PREDICTION:
My oh my, imagine my surprise when I cracked open the Husker schedule this year and saw we're hosting the state of Ohio three times. Ohio on September 5. Bowling Green on September 12. Ohio State on November 21. At what point does this stop being a schedule and start being a courtship?
Now, as someone who roots for Ohio State (I know, I'm the worst) with roots that run deep in the OH, I did briefly consider whether I could ethically predict the Huskers take the L against all three. But as a woman of integrity, I have to be honest, and so here we are: Nebraska goes 2 for 3 against my people.
With all that said, I'm predicting a 6–6 season. How does that shake out? Nebraska wins against Ohio, Bowling Green, North Dakota, Michigan State, Maryland, and Rutgers. Nebraska takes the "L" against Indiana, Oregon, Washington, Illinois, Ohio State, and Iowa.
In the meantime, while we wait to see how this all shakes out, go Huskers. Mostly.
MATT’S PREDICTION:
Another season for the Huskers! Well let’s see how we can get to 6-6 on the season.
Ohio coming to Lincoln should be a win for the Huskers. I think it will be closer than it should be, but they get it done and win by 10. 31-21 over the Bobcats!
Bowling Green coming to Lincoln should be another victory for the Huskers. I think the Huskers win this handily 38-14. I feel like the defense will get a turnover or two, maybe a pick six.
North Dakota coming to Lincoln won’t be close and we could even see the backups. The Huskers win this 48-17.
Finally get into BIG TEN play! Going to East Lansing, this could be a defensive battle. I do feel that the Huskers pull this one out late and win 24-21.
Maryland and the Huskers both undefeated going into this game. I feel like it’s a high scoring game and Maryland wins a big one in Lincoln. 42-38 type of score.
The next two games are not even close. I think Indiana wins this one big. The Huskers are just out matched, they just don’t have the athletes to compete. That’s funny to say with Indiana, but it’s true! 49-21.
Oregon is another blow out and once again the Huskers just don’t have the athletes to compete with Oregon. 56-17.
I think they get back on track against Washington since it’s at home. I think the offense gets back on the same page and they start running the ball again and the defense dies just enough. 24-21.
Huskers go on the road to Champagne and lose a close one. Since Brett has been at Illinois he hasn't lost against the Huskers. I think he keeps it rolling and wins another. 38-31.
The Huskers stay on the road and go to New Jersey and get a big win against Rutgers. The defense made a big stop on the last drive. 31-28.
Now they host Ohio St. and of course get blown out. Jeremiah Smith goes off and gets career high numbers. 45-17.
I know Matt Rhule struggles against the Hawkeyes and it continues. The Hawkeyes ground and pound the Husker defense. 27-17. Another average season for the Huskers. GOOOOOOO Sker’s!