Forgive us if we were a little excited this morning after Steve Sipple not only mentioned us by name in his Husker Extra blog post today, but also linked to our webpage and called us “a bona-fide must-listen to radio show”. Given that a few weeks ago in the LJS we were “a Thursday morning talk show” without an actual name, it’s nice to see the love.
I like Sipple. Not only do I eat up everything he writes as soon as I can, but I also have come to realize he’s one of the truly nice guys in the media. Since I’m still a relative newcomer to the hardcore media scene in Lincoln, and particularly sports media, I can tell you that many of the personalities in the field tend to be a touch unfriendly, clique-ish, and often have egos so large that there isn’t much room to take the time to be interested in newcomers. Perhaps that’s the nature of a competitive media environment, but either way, Steve has never been any of those things in my dealings with him. It’s pretty refreshing and doesn’t even mention the fact that he’s on top of the Husker football beat like no one else right now.
Steve will join us on our show tomorrow at 7:35 so we can make sure his shout-out wasn’t sarcastic and so he can clarify that we didn’t pay him off, but we’ll also talk about the Tom Osborne/arena issue that seems to be one of the driving forces behind his decision to stay as AD indefinitely. I find it interesting that Osborne said to Brian Christopherson “we have to know [about the arena], probably within a year, it may go to a vote next spring and maybe not. Maybe people will feel it isn’t even worth bringing up to vote. So if we don’t have a new arena, we’re going to have to do some significant things to (the Devaney Center).”
That’s noteworthy because there are many who believe the city is only going to be taking its ‘first crack’ at an arena vote next Spring and will try again in subsequent years if the initial vote fails. That scenario now seems unlikely because it sounds like Osborne & Co. are ready to do their own thing as it pertains to basketball facilities if the voters reject the arena in 2010. If that happens and Nebraska basketball and Tom Osborne aren’t involved in the arena push going forward in subsequent votes, the arena is never going to get the public support it needs barring some kind of windfall of private funds.
Tune in tomorrow at 7:35 for more discussion.
Posted by jackm1400 
