With a title on the line, can Nebraska be perfect?

So here we are. One game to separate them all...or at least Nebraska and Kansas State. If Nebraska wins, they get the North title in an ugly year, credit for rebounding from some October setbacks for the second consecutive year, and more prized momentum in the race to become a perennial North division front-runner.

If Kansas State wins they get the North title in an ugly year, even more momentum considering nobody foresaw a division title, and so many (deserved) Bill Snyder is a magic-man pieces that it will haunt Nebraska fans through the spring.

The crazy thing is, the reason both teams are here now facing a de facto championship game largely comes down to how things broke against Iowa State.

Going back and rehashing the way things went is ultimately useless but that doesn't mean it's not interesting. In the first North division game played this season Kansas State beat Iowa State in Kansas City on a blocked extra point with 32 seconds remaining. Give the Wildcats credit for getting up and making a play when they absolutely had to, but the odds of winning on a blocked extra point are minuscule. Nothing is to say the Cyclones would've went on to win that game in overtime--the box score, minus TOP, was essentially a draw--but it was a tight game and it's not hard to see one bounce the other way changing it entirely.

Same with ISU-Nebraska. What if the Huskers only turn it over seven times? Kick one measly field goal with their crack shot kicker? The box score in this one was much more lopsided (minus the turnovers of course). If that happens, assuming all else stayed the same, Nebraska goes into their game Saturday night with a stranglehold on the division, needing only one win against either KSU or CU to lock things up.

But they're not. The fact is, Nebraska shouldn't lose at home to Iowa State. You can't defend it, and that's not the point. The point isn't to extrapolate a result for this Saturday based on two games against ISU either. The point is that the margin for error at Nebraska, and in the North in general, is still razor thin and that margin might just be the best indicator of where the Huskers are at as a football program.

There's a mostly inspiring/moderately cheesy scene in the film version of Friday Night Lights where Permian coach Gary Gaines asks his team if they "can be perfect." As you'll see below, he doesn't mean the traditional definition of perfect, but a more coach-friendly version:

That's fiction you might say, but if Tim Tebow's BCS halftime speech proved anything it was that the real life script is rarely any less hokey or more inspiring than the Hollywood one. So, what can we learn from this particular piece of fiction?

Well, in Gaines' speech he says that being perfect isn't "about the scoreboard" or "winning or losing" and over the long run, as a motivator of men, he might be right. But screw that. In the short term, Saturday night is all about winning and losing. Win and Nebraska meets expectations. Lose and they don't. Win and they gain a length on the division going in to next year. Lose and they're stuck on the rail looking for a gap like everyone else.

Perfection in this sense has nothing to do with going undefeated but even if it did, the Huskers haven't been perfect for a long time. My definition of perfection is simple: Execute and win the games you should win. Nebraska has lost a lot of games they deserved to lose this decade but they've also failed to get over the hump on occasion by losing some games they shouldn't have (see: Longhorns, Texas). If the Nebraska football of old is the measuring stick by which any current, former or forthcoming coach will be measured--and it is--then this has been the preeminent difference between then and now.

Nebraska almost never lost games they genuinely were expected to win for nearly 30 years. Sure there where huge upsets, bad breaks, and undeserving losses along the way but it was hardly the yearly occurrence it's become over the last eight or nine years. By simply doing that, Nebraska was almost always in a position to breakthrough against equal or superior foes and, while it took too long for some people's liking, eventually they did.

If anything, that approach makes even more sense in today's parity stricken college football landscape. USC is sort of a fluky exception, but it's a model that has worked for Oklahoma and Texas among others. Competing for national championships in college football has always been about either a) winning all your games, or b) losing the best. But as talent has equalized across the board that second option has come into play more and more frequently. That's good news for Nebraska as they can still sit in the catbird's seat in the North. Wasn't reestablishing that advantage what this season was supposed to be about?

It can still happen. Saturday night Nebraska will play their most important "game they should win" this season. They're at home, as a 13-point favorite, with a chance at a BCS bowl on the line. Judging by the Oklahoma game, Memorial Stadium can still be a pretty inhospitable place and I expect it to be again. The Wildcats have defied the odds all season and their entire postseason rides on doing it one more time against a Nebraska team with some momentum. There's no doubt in my mind that they're capable of doing it. They can be perfect too.

This time of year, there is no "losing best", only winning. There's a lot on the line Saturday night, both historically and in the present tense. More than anything else, Bo Pelini is an execution guy and that, I think, is a large source of most of the optimism surrounding Nebraska football since he signed on. So far in year two, Nebraska hasn't been perfect but that's the great thing about the week to week, staccato rhythm of college football: there's always another week to prove it.

String enough of those perfect notes together and eventually you'll create a pretty sweet song.