The Diamondbacks have been a pretty close mirror to the Brewers this year: Both teams had a way-better-than-expected 2011 and expected another strong, contending club this year. Instead, they've both experienced a perfect storm of injuries and underperformance in just about every area of the game, and find themselves floundering near the bottom of their divisions. I put a few questions about the state of the D-Backs to Zavada's Moustache of AZ Snake Pit, and he was kind enough to answer. Here's our exchange:

BCB: From an outsider's perspective, it seems as though the main culprit for the D-Backs' slow start is a significantly underperforming lineup (Jason Kubel and Chris Young excepted), something that's quite surprising after last year's strong performances. Do you see this team as just in a fluky slow start and primed for some positive regression, or are there some deeper causes for alarm going on?

ASP: The pitching certainly hasn't been great so far (team ERA of 4.23), but they've done a decent job of treading water while Daniel Hudson recovers from injury, and I think it's fair to say that the offense is the most disappointing part of the team right now. And to answer your question, I think there's a little of both at play right now. Justin Upton has probably gotten the most press for his struggles so far, just because he was such a demigod last year, but I feel confident he'll rebound. He's a notoriously streaky hitter, but he's almost too talented not to rebound. It's already started too, as he has put up a line of .450/.556/.650 over the past week.

The rest of the lineup I'm less sure about. Everyone was enamored with Paul Goldschmidt last year (I probably don't have to remind you guys about the NLDS grand slam), but he's struggled so far. The results haven't been there so far (OPS of .670) and he has simply looked lost at the plate for much of the season. His approach to hitting has looked much better recently though, and here's hoping his .917 OPS over his last six starts is a sign of legitimate improvement, rather than just a statistical blip. Of course, guys like Ryan Roberts and Gerardo Parra simply had career years in 2011, and they probably just won't reach that mark again in 2012.

More on the D-backs, after the jump.

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So, remember in February when we all jumped into a Google Doc together for, like, five hours and drafted a bunch of guys based solely on how much WAR we thought they would produce? Well, I thought it might be a good time for an update - not that we can do anything about our teams at this point, but more just to remind us who the heck is on our team and how they're doing.

WAR, of course, is a terrible way to measure a player's value after only about 35 games. But when you're in a pseudofantasy baseball league based solely on WAR, it's a wonderful way (actually, the only way) to measure how well your team is doing. So here's the roundup, with totals added up before Tuesday night's games. Links to each team's roster on Fangraphs are in the table (and yes, I included all the bullpens and the guys who weren't in Fangraphs yet when we drafted).

Your leader about a fifth of the way through the season is -JP-, who's riding some phenomenal pitching in addition to some solid hitting. He's making us all look silly by drafting Jake Peavy (1.7 WAR) in the 17th round. His home-run rates for his pitchers are absurdly low, though, so he's primed for some regression at some point.

Running just behind him is Hyatt, who is getting tons of production from his bats and a bit less from his pitching. My favorite part about his team is that his second-leading hitter, Chris Young, has put up 1.5 WAR in 46 freaking PAs. A .588 wOBA will do that for you. The apparent downside for Hyatt is that he has both Chris Sale and Aroldis Chapman as starting pitchers, so if I understand the league rules right, he'll lose their WAR (1.8 so far) if they don't end up qualifying at SP.

Rounding out the top tier is NoahJ, whose "draft all your pitchers first, so you can grab the Braves bullpen" strategy seems to working out for him, but probably not in the way he expected. Unless the other part of that strategy was "draft the overperforming bastards from the Brewers' rivals" - because he's being led by Bryan LaHair, David Freese, and Yadier Molina.

Jordan M is being kept in the hunt by the Rangers' bullpen, which has accumulated half of his pitching WAR, as well as Derek Jeter's insane start. He's lost Chris Narveson for the season, but once his pitching staff's high home run rates regress, they should make up for him.

I, Cheeseandcorn, also went with the "draft the overperforming bastards from the Brewers' rivals" strategy, and it seems to be working out OK for me, too. With Matt Holliday, Carlos Beltran, and Rafael Furcal, I feel kind of bad tangentially benefiting from the Cardinals' deal with the BABIP devil, but I'd still be as happy as anyone to see them start slumping. Also: Austin Jackson is amazing, and Yu Darvish is the only thing keeping my pitching from being a complete black hole.

Right now, Rendezvous' team is pretty much just Michael Bourn, Carlos Ruiz, and Justin Verlander (and the Yankees bullpen). Jayson Werth just went on the DL, but I suspect this team will make a run once Lance Berkman comes back and Tim Lincecum and Yovani Gallardo start pitching like themselves.

Decent performances up and down Mr McGehee's roster, led by Matt Wieters' breakout start. If Jose Bautista and Mike Trout start hitting, this team could move up in a hurry. On the other hand, Gio Gonzalez is probably going to actually give up a couple runs at some point, too.

Saltire's going to ride Matt Kemp like Rubie Q's raptor, because that's pretty much all he's got so far on the batting side. He also has three players who have yet to play this year (Michael Morse, Roy Oswalt, Jorge de la Rosa), so yeah, Kemp had better have a 70-homer season in him.

ecocd has gotten some pretty solid pitching (thanks, Reds bullpen!), but this team's got a whole lot of meh on the offensive side. Except - oh look, at the top of the list! Another Cardinal (Jon Jay) with a .400 BABIP! (No, I'm not bitter at all.)

Tepo6688's team has been pretty average on both sides so far, though I could see a few players taking off soon. Yoenis Cespedes (only 0.1 WAR?), Clayton Kershaw, and Adrian Gonzalez seem like pretty good candidates.

brewcrewshrew's pitching is solid (mostly King Felix, Wandy Rodriguez, and Jaime Garcia), but the batting is pretty weak, and then - ewwwwwww, Marlon Byrd. -0.7 WAR, yikes. Evan Longoria's out for a couple of months and the pitching should be due for regression, so things might get worse before they get better.

SRB has Josh Hamilton and Zack Greinke, so I wouldn't be surprised if he's already jumped up three or four spots just from when I grabbed these numbers Tuesday afternoon. He also has Bryce Harper, who's racked up 0.6 WAR in a week and a half and whose defense UZR loves. But unfortunately, Albert Pujols is the Yuni B of this team - destroying something that could otherwise be beautiful.

MrLeam's being killed by having two starters (Tim Stauffer and Scott Baker) who haven't thrown a pitch this season, though the ones who have thrown for him have been decent enough. He's got a lot of really slow starters on the offensive side, too (Miguel Cabrera, Mark Teixeira, Dustin Ackley).

The pitching for bschles is decent, but there's a crapton of dead weight on the batting side of the ledger. Erick Aybar, Rickie Weeks, and Lorenzo Cain are the worst offenders, and Mat Gamel's done for the season. But Jose Altuve's been awesome, so that's cool, I guess.

And there's masondlo, with Brennan Boesch and Eric Hosmer obliterating his batting WAR and Jhoulys Chacin (who's now been demoted) and Clay Buchholz laying waste to his pitching WAR. This team's been just a trainwreck so far (sorry, Mason), and outside of Hosmer, there's not a whole lot you can blame on luck. Mason may be proving the old adage that you can't win a title in April, but you sure can lose one.

Here's the league standings (table shamelessly stolen from mkecheese):

Let's face it: The last 24 hours or so have been a really, really awful time to follow Brewers baseball. As several people (myself included) have said in today's postgame thread, this sure feels a lot like rock bottom.

But the Brewers also hit rock-bottom points a lot like this one during May of each of their last two playoff seasons. I thought I'd look at back at what rock bottom looked and felt like* in those seasons, and how the Brewers looked after that point. Because unless you're following the 2002 Brewers, the best part about rock bottom is that the only place you can go is up.

*The quotes I picked out aren't meant to mock or call out the people who said them - just to give a flavor for how depressed we all were.

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Edit: Survey is now closed. Thanks to everyone who took it.

As you may know if you read CN comment threads regularly or use Google to stalk random people you find on the Internet, I'm a grad student at the University of Texas (I know, I know) studying journalism and the Internet. As part of one of my projects I'm running a survey on online discussion quality, and I'd really like for you to take it.

Since most of us engage in online discussions of varying levels of quality (and profanity, and lolcat concentration) most every day, especially during the season (and since the rest of you lurkers read them), I think this is a pretty relevant survey for us here at CN. And lest this seem spammy, I should note that the almighty Jon Johnston has given me permission to do a FanPost on this.

Here's the link to the survey. It's really quick and painless - 5 to 10 minutes, max - and it would be hugely helpful to me, and maybe even fun for you. If you're so inclined, go ahead and pass it on via Twitter/Facebook/email/smoke signal, too.

If you have any questions about specifics of the survey or the study as a whole, feel free to email me at markcoddington(AT)gmail(DOT)com. Thanks a bunch for your help.

As extremely observant BCB regulars and/or Google stalkers may have deduced, I'm a grad student at the University of Texas studying journalism and the Internet. As part of one of my projects I'm running a survey on online discussion quality, and I'd really like for you to take it.

Before you jump down to the comment section and type "Spam!" I should tell you that Kyle's given me permission to do a FanPost on this. Since most of us engage in online discussions of varying levels of quality most every day (and the rest of you lurkers read them), I think this is a pretty relevant survey for us here at BCB.

Here's the link to the survey. It's really quick and painless - 5 to 10 minutes, max - and it would be hugely helpful to me, and maybe even fun for you. If you're so inclined, go ahead and pass it on via Twitter/Facebook/email/smoke signal, too.

If you have any questions about specifics of the survey or the study as a whole, feel free to email me at markcoddington(AT)gmail(DOT)com. Thanks a bunch for your help.

Anthony Shadid, longtime Middle East correspondent for the New York Times, Washington Post, AP, and Boston Globe, died yesterday from an asthma attack while covering the unrest in Syria. He was one of the finest journalists in the world over the past two decades, providing bold, clear, and insightful reporting from many of the globe's most important events. He won two Pulitzer Prizes for his coverage of the Iraq War, and he covered the Arab-Israeli conflicts from Lebanon, Israel, and the West Bank. Over the past year, he wrote riveting, heartbreaking stories on the Arab Spring from Egypt, Libya, and Syria.

Shadid risked his life to uncover the truth about injustice and suffering and to bear witness to it to the world. He was shot while walking down the street in the West Bank, hounded by Egyptian police, and kidnapped by Muammar Gaddafi's forces in Libya.

And Shadid was something else, too - he was a diehard Packer fan. As he wrote in the Journal Sentinel last year, he would go to ridiculous lengths overseas to follow the Pack, no matter where he was - racking up giant phone bills by listening to the radio broadcast, plopping down an extra few hundred dollars for hotels with satellite TV broadcasts of games, spending countless hours reading about the team online.

Shadid was a UW-Madison grad and became a fan in the early '90s as an AP reporter in Milwaukee. He got hooked at the beginning of the Brett Favre era, and finally made his Lambeau Field pilgrimage last December, when he saw the Packers beat the 49ers 34-16. Shadid said that throughout his 15 years as a foreign correspondent, "I feel like the Packers were there on every assignment, from Cairo to Islamabad."

I know the Packers connection is a trivial one, especially in light of the incredibly weighty matters to which Shadid dedicated his life. But it's humbling and heartening to know that one of the most honorable, courageous, passionate, and talented journalists of our generation was living and dying each week with the same team we were. The Packer Family - and, more importantly, the world - has lost a remarkable man. Godspeed, Anthony.

It's barely after New Year's Day, but believe it or not, it might actually be about as good of a time as any before spring training to get a glimpse of what this year's Brewers will look like. The starting lineup, rotation, and bullpen are all about as set as they'll be until March, and the only two big questions remaining until then are whether Ryan Braun will be suspended and whether the Brewers will sign Norichika Aoki as a backup outfielder.

Given that, I thought it'd be fun to look deeper at the Brewers' ZiPS projections, which went up earlier this week. Those projections only have some of the basic stats, and when I saw a Viva El Birdos post this week converting the Cardinals' numbers to wOBA, FIP, and ultimately WAR, I thought I'd give it a shot for the Brewers.

So these are my own 2012 WAR calculations for the Brewers based on ZiPS projections, plus a bit of my own estimates on defense and playing time. The plate appearances (and, to a lesser extent, the innings pitched) for each player are all knocked down a bit from a full season's worth to account for the possible for injury for each player. Defensive estimates are in runs relative to league average per 150 games and come from a rough average of the past two years of UZR and Baseball Prospectus' Total Zone-based FRAA. (If you want to know all the nitty-gritty stuff about how I calculated my WAR, I put the methodological details at the end.)

Here's what the offense looks like:

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Hey all, Cheeseandcorn here. Like you guys, I've been eagerly awaiting this game since, oh, about three seconds after it was announced. I know a lot of you folks from either here or Brew Crew Ball or Acme Packing Company, so I thought it might be fun to have a Q&A thread going as we lead up to the game.

In case you were wondering, yes, I do count myself a fan of both Nebraska and Wisconsin (I split my childhood between the two states). I'll be mostly cheering for the Huskers on Saturday, though I'll really be happy either way as long as both teams play a strong, well-contested game. I'm just as excited for Nebraskans to see what the Badgers' smashmouth style is all about as I am to see how the Huskers measure up against it.

So ask away, and here's to an instant-classic game!

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Win Probability Added isn't a particularly useful stat for measuring player performance - it doesn't account for defense and a lot of baserunning, and it can't distinguish between a pitcher who strikes out the side in order and one who walks the bases loaded before getting out of the jam.

But it's one of my favorite stats because it's one of the few that meaningfully measures how much a player's performance matters, which is a lot more closely related to our experience as fans than just the performance itself. So I thought it'd be a good lens through which to examine the Brewers' first half. I decided to measure it on a game-by-game basis because a) you can just find the season-long totals here; and b) I think the game-by-game tally will be probably be more interesting anyway.

I'll start with the game MVP and LVP tallies for the season. (I'll have some hitting-specific stats and the best and worst of the season tomorrow, and then I'm undertaking a foolhardy attempt to measure fan anguish in a post I'll put up on Tuesday.) One note: Batting is included in pitchers' WPAs - in most cases, it didn't significantly affect their totals.

Brewers WPA MVP Leaders

15 - Prince Fielder
11 - Rickie Weeks
7 - Ryan Braun, Shaun Marcum, Randy Wolf
5 - Yovani Gallardo, Carlos Gomez, Chris Narveson
4 - Jonathan Lucroy, Casey McGehee
3 - Corey Hart, Mark Kotsay
2 - Marco Estrada, Zack Greinke, Mike McClendon, Sergio Mitre, Nyjer Morgan
1 - Erick Almonte, John Axford, Yuniesky Betancourt, Tim Dillard, George Kottaras, Josh Wilson

Brewers WPA LVP Leaders

9 - Kameron Loe
8 - Yovani Gallardo, Casey McGehee
7 - Rickie Weeks
6 - Yuniesky Betancourt, Marco Estrada, Chris Narveson
5 - Corey Hart, Randy Wolf
4 - Zack Greinke
3 - John Axford, Prince Fielder, Carlos Gomez, Mark Kotsay
2 - Erick Almonte, Zach Braddock, Shaun Marcum, Nyjer Morgan
1 - Ryan Braun, Craig Counsell, Tim Dillard, Sean Green, Danny Ray Herrera, Brandon Kintzler, Jonathan Lucroy, Takashi Saito

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Since last Saturday, the Brewers have crossed the plate just 12 times. That's 12 runs in nine games - a legendarily bad total. In fact, the Brewers have just finished the single worst nine-game offensive stretch in the history of franchise: Since 1970, no Brewers team has scored as few as 12 runs over any nine-game period.

But this obviously isn't the first time the Brewers have gone into hiding offensively; this franchise has a long, storied history of ineptitude. I found a few of the worst Brewers hitting stretches of varying length and thought I'd provide you with a little flashback.* If there's a moral of the story, it's that things have been a lot worse than they are now. This year's team is so much better offensively than many of the others on this list, it's ridiculous. Putting together this post was kind of therapeutic for me in that way - I hope it's the same for you to read.

*I found this by going back through Baseball Reference manually, so there very likely are some stretches I missed. If someone has B-Ref ninja skills, feel free to correct me.

Worst four-game stretch: 2 runs, Aug. 4-8 and Aug. 12-16, 1998. Record: 0-4

This Brewers team actually accomplished this feat twice in the span of two weeks. The team was miraculously two games above .500 when the first slump began, and by the time the second was over, they were 7 games under and well on their way to a fifth-place finish in the NL Central.

Opposing "aces": A few legit studs - Randy Johnson during his insane run with the Astros, Kevin Brown in his prime, and a 23-year-old Matt Morris. But also Sterling Hitchcock and Kent Mercker, who combined to give up 1 run in 16 innings.

Egregious lineup inclusion: 34-year-old Darrin Jackson actually batted cleanup in one game. He finished 1998 with a Yuni-esque slash line of .240/.276/.373.

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I put this up over at Corn Nation yesterday, but when I saw that this blog had been launched, I thought you fellow nerds might find it interesting, too. As I wrote at the bottom, I have a lot more spreadsheet data analysis possibilities than I used here, so if there are any crosstabulations by conference, college, position, state, team, etc., you want to see, I can run some numbers for you. Might as well put the data to good use, you know?

For some reason the embed code isn't working, but you can find the maps at the links. If you want to see all of them embedded in the post, they're there at the Corn Nation link.

Back in the home stretch of recruiting season, SI.com recruiting guru Andy Staples wrote a fascinating article on where elite (i.e. NFL) defensive linemen come from, finding that a startling number of them hail from the South. Staples went on to explore factors like evolutionary theory and obesity rates as possible explanations for this phenomenon, but I remained fascinated by just how strikingly South-heavy his map was.

This made me curious: Is this just a defensive line thing, or do all of college football's elite players predominantly come from the South? So I set out to do just what Staples did, only for every offensive position. Here's what I found: Every offensive player in the NFL, mapped by high school, grouped by college conference. (You can zoom in and out, click on the conference tags at the bottom to sort by conference, and click on each pin to get info for individual players.)

View Hometowns of NFL offensive players in a full screen map

Looks quite a bit different from Andy's and a bit overwhelming, right? Well, I'll break it down a little bit and try to make some sense of it after the jump.

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**Beware: lots of pretty maps and not-so-pretty statistics ahead**

Back in the home stretch of recruiting season, SI.com recruiting guru Andy Staples wrote a fascinating article on where elite (i.e. NFL) defensive linemen come from, finding that a startling number of them hail from the South. Staples went on to explore factors like evolutionary theory and obesity rates as possible explanations for this phenomenon, but I remained fascinated by just how strikingly South-heavy his map was.

This made me curious: Is this just a defensive line thing, or do all of college football's elite players predominantly come from the South? So I set out to do just what Staples did, only for every offensive position. Here's what I found: Every offensive player in the NFL, mapped by high school, grouped by college conference. (You can zoom in and out, click on the conference tags at the bottom to sort by conference, and click on each pin to get info for individual players.)

View Hometowns of NFL offensive players in a full screen map

Looks quite a bit different from Andy's and a bit overwhelming, right? Well, I'll break it down a little bit and try to make some sense of it after the jump.

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[Jon - I can only imagine how many times we're going to re-hash the offense this offseason. At least once a week? Hahahhaa. Well, we're starting somewhere!]

You knew the other shoe had to drop sometime. Now that we've all been encouraged by a look at the Huskers' possible defensive two-deep next year, it's time to examine the offense. Grab a stiff drink.

Again, the years are next year's classes, but the stats are this year's, and the awards are cumulative.

Quarterback:
Taylor Martinez, So., 13 Games, 12 Games Started, 1631 yds., 59.2% comp., 10 TD, 7 INT, 965 yds. rushing, 12 TD, Big 12 Offensive Freshman Of The Year

Cody Green, Jr., 9 G, 2 GS, 340 yds., 55% comp., 3 TD, 1 INT, 96 yds. rushing, 1 TD

Also in the mix: Brion Carnes, RFr., Jamal Turner, Fr., Bubba Starling, Fr./baseball

Gone: Zac Lee, LaTravis Washington

Comments: We all know what's going on here - which is to say, none of us have any idea what's going on here. I'm pretty sure Martinez will enter spring ball and fall practice as the presumptive returning starter, but didn't we all think that about Lee last year? My wild guesses: Martinez will begin the season as the starter, Green won't seriously challenge for the starting job but will hang around in a similar bailout backup role as this year, Starling will go pro, and the only one of the freshmen who make a real play for the job will be Carnes. Who knows, though.

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Everybody's trying to get the taste of the 2010 season out of their mouths, and the easiest way to do that (since not thinking about football at all is obviously out of the question) is to start looking ahead to 2011. I thought I'd take a stab at breaking down what Nebraska's two-deep might look like next year, so we have a starting point when we talk about how Nebraska might stack up in their first season in the Big Televenelve.

So here's the defense and special teams, and I'll put together the offense sometime later, when I get my lazy butt around to it. The years are next year's classes, but the stats are this year's, and the awards are cumulative.

Defensive line:
Left DE: Cameron Meredith, Jr., 14 Games, 14 Games Started, 64 tackles, 8 TFL, 1.5 sacks, 1 pass defended, 2nd Team All-Big 12
Jason Ankrah, So., 10 G, 0 GS, 2 tackles

DT: Baker Steinkuhler, Jr., 13 G, 13 GS, 46 tackles, 4 TFL, 3.5 sacks, 2 PD, Honorable Mention All-Big 12
Terrence Moore, Sr., 13 G, 1 GS, 16 tackles, 3 TFL, 1 sack, 1 PD

DT: Jared Crick, Sr., 14 G, 14 GS, 70 tackles, 17 TFL, 9.5 sacks, 2 PD, 1 forced fumble, 2nd Team All-American, two-time 1st Team All-Big 12
Thaddeus Randle, So., 12 G, 0 GS, 7 tackles

Right DE: Josh Williams, Jr., 13 G, 0 GS, 12 tackles, 1 FF
Eric Martin, Jr., 13 G, 2 GS, 26 tackles

Also in the mix: Walker Ashburn, DE, RFr., Tobi Okuyemi, DE, RFr., Donovan Vestal, DE, RFr., Jay Guy, DT, RFr., Chase Rome, DT, RFr.

Gone: Pierre Allen

Comments: If Crick comes back, this unit should be a real strength of the defense. Martin could very well start on the right side once he learns the position. Of the redshirt freshmen, I expect Rome to have the best chance of playing, as he's the only one I've heard coaches talk about.

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I think I speak for most every Husker fan everywhere when I say that we've got the dream matchup for the last Big 12 Championship Game (for the foreseeable future). So much history between these two teams - Osborne, Switzer, Rodgers, Pruitt, Sims, Selmon, Rozier, Gill - I feel like they should just go ahead and air the game in grainy 1970s-style footage.

So what else are we going to do for the next six days but talk about it? I know plenty of us Husker fans are itching for some NU-OU talk, so I thought I'd start a thread here for that purpose.

I've never posted here before, but I've talked plenty of sports with dishingoutdimes at the SBN Brewers and Packers blogs, and he seems like a helluva guy, so I thought I'd give it a shot. Consider this your open thread to ask the Husker fans here (there are a few of us lurking) anything about strategy, personnel, fan psychology, memories - you name it. Have at it, and we'll see y'all Saturday!

Via Iowa State media - sounds like it was overheard from the Journal Star's Steve Sipple. I'm guessing it was speculation on Sip's part (probably educated speculation) or misunderstanding on the ISU guys' part, since if it was firm, Sipple would publish it to the LJS blog first. Here's the LJS' latest post on the issue.

I have no connection to anyone in the know, but FWIW, I've read rumors that both Martinez and Lee are hurt, so this wouldn't exactly surprise me. Not great news, though - especially for those praying for no turnovers.

Every time you hear people talk about how good Nebraska's offense or Taylor Martinez is, someone inevitably follows up with the "Yabbut." You know how it goes: "Yabbut, who have they played?" Check out the defensive rankings of the teams they've played so far! Wait'll they face a real defense!

This always drives me a little batty, because my first response is always, "Well, why do think their rankings are so poor? 'Cause Nebraska ran all over 'em!" Obviously, this counterargument holds a lot more weight earlier in the season, when each game makes up more of a team's season output.

Well, I wanted to find out how good (or bad) the defenses Nebraska's played against are, without Nebraska's performance against them factored in. It's a pretty simple task: You just subtract the amount of yards Nebraska gained against them, re-average the new total, and place them back into the rankings to get their adjusted-for-Huskers defensive rank. The result is much closer to the team's true defensive quality, if you're using it to evaluate the Huskers.

So that's what I did for each of Nebraska's opponents so far, with rushing defense and total defense. (I didn't include passing defense, because Nebraska never tries to pass.) Two notes: 1) South Dakota St.'s rankings are obviously FCS; and 2) Kansas St.'s totals include last night's Kansas game. Stats and observations after the jump.

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As you might have heard, we Children of the Corn are just a wee bit excited about the NU-UT game this Saturday. And while I know a lot of the luster has worn off the Longhorns' 2010 season, a win over Nebraska in Lincoln would go a long way toward salvaging the season and setting Texas up for both a strong run at the end of this year and a conference title run in 2011.

Since the game's pretty much all us Nebraska fans are going to be talking about (online and offline) for the next five days, I thought I'd throw something up here so we could chat about it with Longhorn fans here, too.

I'm not one for smack-talking - I just wanted to have a place where you could ask questions or make observations about Nebraska leading up to the game, and us Husker fans (I know Jon Johnston, Ceek, and jdhusker tend to frequent these parts, too) could try to give you some responses. A little genteel discussion before the EPIC BRUTALITY!!!!!1! that is Saturday afternoon's clash, if you will.

So let 'er rip, any subjects you want - backup left tackles, the general emotional state of Husker fandom, the relative fruitiness of Taylor Martinez's nicknames, whatever. Floor's open. Consider this your open thread for Nebraska-related inquiries and discussions.